cERAMICS
Ismene King
Could you share a bit about yourself and your background?
Hi, I’m Ismene, and I am a sculptress and ceramist, based in Athens, and the person behind KARIS STUDIO. I came into the world of ceramics through a visual arts background, and my work and approach towards the material of clay is always parallel and entwined with my practice in sculpture. I create ceramic utility objects, I teach ceramics and sculpture workshops, and I also develop a sculptural practice, exploring embodied methodologies for making, and researching materials, traditional crafts and processes of making together.
Where did you grow up, and how do you feel those places, the people, and any crafts traditions have influenced your approach to ceramics?
I grew up in Athens, and then spent a few years in the UK studying, before returning to my hometown. I have origins from Pelion, a mountain in Greece, as well as from Cyprus and the UK. My experiences with these places infuse my work with an interest in traditional crafts and motifs rooted in the folklore and antiquity of Greece and Cyprus, particularly in pottery and textiles.
Traditional embroidery motifs, stitches, patching, and woven designs all find a place and iteration in my work and approach to creating gestures. Ornamental motifs of narratives, flowers, plants, fish, and birds translate into gestures on clay and brushstrokes of oxides. The element of repetition and rhythm, over and over yet never the same, always unique. A symmetry and geometry that is always a bit off, influenced by the properties of the material.
How did Karis Studio come about?
Karis started to form in 2021, as a project which would contain my endeavours around functionality and as a leap of faith to start something of my own. It started out as a ceramic jewellery brand, and gradually developed into a full time practice around objects of utility and daily ornamentation.
The word ‘Karis’ means shrimp in ancient Greek. A funny connection to a creature of the sea, which carries a fascination of mine with water, as movement and gesture. An animal with a curious structure and slightly awkward movement and connection to the soil and rocks of the sea. Karis started out in a co-working ceramics studio, where I had a couple of shelves to myself and used the communal kiln for firing. There, I met amazing people, learned a lot about clay through this coexistence, and shared my knowledge as well. I also received valuable information and support during my baby steps towards running my own ceramics business. I eventually moved into my own space, with the precious help of The People’s Trust, an organisation which provides financial support to small businesses in Greece, and KARIS STUDIO was born, as a space which is primarily my studio, as well as a place where I also teach workshops in ceramics, sharing my approach towards clay and sculpture.
We know that you did your MA in sculpture. How has this background shaped your view of ceramics and influenced the way you approach your artistic work?
There is always a connection between my ceramic pieces and my sculptural work. Small utility objects may become quick testing grounds for ideas that may translate into a larger scale and vice versa. Each end may provide solutions for the other and methodologies for making.
One of the main things I take from my connection to sculpture is the relationship to materials and their properties. I approach the various materialities of clay with great interest, embracing and exploring subtle or intense variations, working with the possibilities of the colour of unglazed clay, the movement of the glaze onto the textures, the properties and colours of oxides.
I am also very interested in exploring ways that functionality merges with sculptural form, and for that reason I have been very drawn to techniques such as ‘Kurinuki’, a traditional Japanese technique which involves carving a ceramic vessel out of a block of clay, the final object being thus the culmination of carving and mark making. I am thus always really interested in creating objects through exploring the properties of my materials, my tools, sharp, leaving their mark onto soft clay, my hands as tools for building or imprinting, the pieces which have been cut off and may return to the object giving the solution of a handle or an ornament.
Could you take us through how you develop your unique pieces from the initial spark of an idea to the final creation?
This process is often very quick for me, an instantaneous need to put something out in the world, to materialise through things I see, things I find and collect from my surroundings. I often make quick, urgent, ugly sketches, notes to myself for later. I may sketch the same cup over and over, as a diagram, and colour in variations of colour or decoration, to help me visualise or remember.
I work in quite a repetitive, serial mode, repeating gestures of carving or handbuilding, almost always ending up with multiples, which may give solutions towards efficiency, or provide canvases for variations, yet each object is the unique result of the gestures that created it. A lot of my work throughout the year involves producing pieces for collaborations with shops and restaurants, so the way I work considers ways of translating the creation of one into the creation of many, yet maintaining their uniqueness.
At the same time I find great excitement in pieces which may come up and surprise me during the process, offcuts, imprints, interesting marks, or ‘mistakes’, which may develop into intriguing, quick, rough objects, or turn into solutions for a whole new collection.
What or who serves as a source of inspiration for your creative pursuits? Are there any specific influences that consistently inspire you?
I find great inspiration in my surroundings, observing motifs in nature, collecting and bringing back to the studio surfaces and objects which excite me. I always find myself deeply connected in objects and motifs from the realm of archeology and the folklore, forms, ornamentations, the brilliant ways in which figuration offers solutions for functionality. I love looking at the swirls and drips of glaze on traditional terracotta pottery from Sifnos island, the plant or animal like decorations and runny copper glazes of Canakkale vessels, or cobalt drawings and the rough symmetry of traditional Japanese ceramics, the vast variety of intense or subtle carvings on contemporary Kurinuki vessels, or the innovative and critical approaches to ceramics of contemporary artists and sculptors whom I admire. I find great interest in visiting, exploring and mindfully reiterating these elements as gestures in the vernacular of my practice.
How much does the ability to express yourself freely through hands-on work mean to you, and how does it influence your overall happiness and well-being?
I have always thought of myself as a maker, a builder of things and perhaps the work of the hands, working through materials is what comes most naturally and intuitively to me, a safe space. The rest has had to be learnt or unlearnt. A lot of what has developed as my ongoing research into the material of clay began as a response to the start of the period of COVID. The shift towards the hands, from means of creation, now seen as carriers of insecurity and fear, those fingertips imagined as if covered in black paint in videos of how to properly take care of them and the surfaces they touch.
I remember feeling almost an electric charge at my fingertips, as if they were entities no longer of my own, but rather as destructive tools within a network of connections, and a need for them to leave their marks, thoughtlessly, carelessly, joyously as once, and declare their space back into the world. I thus began exploring making objects through pressure, mark making, cutting and carving. Small quick gestures of touch, the marks of fingerprints on the surface of clay, releasing congested energy. This has informed an ongoing, reciprocal, and therapeutic process of recording presence, and listening to the soft materiality of clay, which has been integral for my work ever since, and a process actively linked for me to processing thoughts, and emotions.
Where do you think lies the biggest potential to preserve important local crafts in the contemporary context?
I find great potency in the work of the hands as a basis for creating narrative and community, and this is one of the reasons why teaching workshops or working with others is so important to me. Working with materials, and the touch of the hand, slowing down, learning, observing, appreciating, reconnecting with one’s body, and at the same time creating with others, creating-with, sharing and connecting in an embodied, often non-verbal way, or as the hearth around which stories are told, becomes a potent ground for reiterating such connections with ourselves and with others within our daily lives and rhythms.
What upcoming projects make you excited right now?
Over the following period I am planning on slowing down a little and taking the time to work on pieces which I have had in mind for a while but never got round to doing so. I am excited to develop these thoughts and phantasies of pieces into intricate, playful works, experimenting with the process of imprinting with natural materials, in the studio and out in the wild, bringing these gestures into elements of utility and ornamentation, drawing inspiration from my ongoing research into the joyous structures of narrative and depictions of nature in traditional folkloric crafts. Let’s see how these will turn out.
How can people get more engaged with your work? Where can they find and connect with your work?
I’m always happy to meet people at my studio in Neos Kosmos, Athens, which they can visit by appointment, and have a chat and a browse at pieces and new experiments, or they can join our weekly ceramics classes or seminars. They can also find me on instagram under @karis.studio.athens and of course visit my website www.karisstudio.gr, where they can drop me a line and stay in touch about exciting upcoming projects, shows and workshops.
Object and studio space photos belong to Ismene, while the portraits and working hand photos are by Erianna Dimitriadou.
