IOLANDA GRAÑA CERÀMICA

Piece title:

Osaka Vase

Conceptual description:
Inspired by the Osaka Museum of Ceramics and by the practice of painting with Japanese brushes made with very long natural bristles. The gesture is difficult to control and flows freely, allowing the movement of the brush to become part of the expression of the piece.

Year of creation: 2025

Technique:
Wheel-thrown and decorated with cobalt oxide applied using Japanese brushes.

Main materials:
Porcelain, cobalt oxide and transparent glaze on the interior.

Piece title: Japanese Bowl

Conceptual description:
A wheel-thrown bowl painted with Japanese brushes, inspired by the work of Antoni Tàpies and strongly influenced by Cruaña’s work. An Eastern influence is also present, stemming from the ceramic artist’s long stay in the Philippines.

Year of creation: 2025

Technique:
Wheel throwing, decoration with Japanese brushes and the application of pigments in layers.

Main materials:
High-fired stoneware, black pigment, cobalt and red iron oxides, and transparent glaze.

Piece title: Osaka Vase 2

Conceptual description:
Part of the Cobalt series, this piece focuses on a fluid, spontaneous and unpredictable brushstroke, encouraged by the use of Japanese brushes with very long natural bristles. Their difficult-to-control movement allows gesture and chance to become an essential part of the piece’s expression.

Year of creation: 2025

Technique:
Wheel throwing and decoration with cobalt oxide applied using Japanese brushes.

Main materials:
Porcelain, cobalt oxide and transparent glaze on the interior.

Piece title:

Cobalt Jug

Conceptual description:
A functional porcelain piece decorated with cobalt. In this case, the brushwork is controlled and deliberate, in contrast to the more spontaneous and unpredictable gesture found in other pieces from the series.

Year of creation: 2025

Technique:
Wheel throwing and decoration with cobalt oxide applied using Japanese brushes.

Main materials:
Porcelain, cobalt oxide and transparent glaze on the interior.

Series title:

Lollipops Series

Conceptual description:
A series of wheel-thrown pieces that capture the vibration of the oxide as it dances across the Japanese brush. The result evokes flowers or rusted sugar lollipops, balancing spontaneous gesture with the delicacy of the forms.

Year of creation: 2025

Technique:
Wheel throwing and brush decoration.

Main materials:
High-fired stoneware, red iron oxide and glaze on the interior.

Piece title:

Black Flower Vase

Conceptual description:
In fact, it is not a vase, but a hand-held piece that cannot hold a bouquet of flowers. Instead, buds emerge and spread across the surface of the stoneware, like lichens growing spontaneously upon it.

Year of creation: 2024

Technique:
Wheel throwing and assembly of three pieces; stamping with black pigment.

Main materials:
High-fired stoneware, black pigment and transparent glaze.

Piece title:

Red Heart Vase

Conceptual description:
A vase shaped like a waning gibbous moon that evokes, rather, the image of a heart mortally wounded and still bleeding. Its form and reddish tones heighten this sense of fragility and wound.

Year of creation: 2024

Technique:
Wheel throwing and decoration with a Japanese brush.

Main materials:
High-fired stoneware, red iron oxide, black and red pigments, and glaze on the interior.

Pieces titles:

1. Almost Moon Vase with Neck

2. Brown Waning Gibbous Moon Vase

Conceptual description:
This is almost a moon vase, the first in the series, with a neck. Black, fluid brushstrokes like waves. Japanese brushstrokes and black penis. This is where the development of her sugar lollipops and black ink began. Her first Japanese brushes and an attempt to make Korean moon vases resulted in waning gibbous moon forms.

Year of creation: 2024

Technique:
Wheel throwing and decoration with a Japanese brush.

Main materials:

1. High-fired stoneware, black pigment and transparent glaze.

2. High-fired stoneware, red iron oxide, black pigment and glaze on the interior.

PIECE TITLE:
Trencadís Series

CONCEPTUAL DESCRIPTION:
The Trencadís series stems from the desire to give discarded ceramics a new life. Fragments of fired earthenware, pieces that no longer serve a function, and materials that had been rejected are incorporated into new forms, where they cease to be waste and become an essential part of the work.

The transformation process continues through firing. Some of the fragments undergo additional firings and, during this process, the glaze changes in colour and texture, while differences in tension between the materials may cause some fragments to detach. What falls away, however, also leaves a trace: a texture, a mark or a void that becomes part of the work.

The series thus explores transformation, reuse and the imprint of the process. What had been discarded is reassembled and acquires a new identity, while chance and the reactions of the firing process intervene in the final result.

In some pieces, this combination of fragments coexists with ordered and repetitive structures; in others, the material unfolds in a more organic and spontaneous way. Between these two poles —order and disorder, control and accident— emerges a ceramic language that embraces the beauty of imperfection and the possibility of transforming what already seemed to be finished.

YEARS OF CREATION:
2024 and 2025

TECHNIQUES:
Wheel throwing, assembly, stapling, texturing at the leather-hard stage, trencadís using fired and unfired ceramic, sgraffito and reduction firing.

MAIN MATERIALS:
High-fired stoneware, raw and fired earthenware, fired ceramic fragments, pigments, cobalt oxide, glaze and transparent glaze on the interior.