The artist 

Passionate about everyone’s creative and artistic potential, especially through ceramics. This is the artist we want to tell you about today! 

The artist’s name is Cristiana, she lives in Ovar and graduated in Plastic Arts at the Faculdade de Belas Artes of Porto University, in the sculpture branch. During this period, she went to Poland for Erasmus, moved by the desire to learn more about her great passion: ceramics.  

After that adventure, and more recently, she decided to continue to improve and deepen her knowledge, completing a master’s degree in teaching visual arts, so she could be a teacher and share her love for art with others.  

Nowadays, she has her own atelier, where she creates her ceramic works and develops other productions, for example working with tiles. She runs workshops, intensive courses of 4 sessions and teaches adults. She also has a class for children from 5 to 12, where, guided by their interests and wishes, they explore ceramics and other materials. Occasionally, she also works on projects with the NGDO Rosto Solidário. 

The benefits of ceramics 

From the diversity of artistic projects in which she is involved, Cristiana especially highlights the ceramics classes, because she feels that people are in great need of connecting with the creative act, of challenging their creative potential and, often, of reconstructing preconceived ideas about themselves and their own abilities.

In a very natural way, spaces of sharing and creation are developed in a group, where people, usually women, disconnect from the daily rush and find a moment to stop and be in another way, with a different focus.  

“Very often I get feedbacks of people who feel that being in the studio working with the clay is a very relaxing time, and usually the time rushes by, which means that people enter in a state of flow, of focus and concentration, where they can abstract from everything else to simply create and be present. It seems to me that those spaces and times, these days, are increasingly essential.” – Cristiana 

 

The challenges of being an artist 

Unfortunately, as we all know, the Covid-19 pandemic brought numerous consequences and difficulties for society.  

In Cristiana’s case, the greatest impact was on her classes, making it impossible for her to teach what she loves most.  

However, unable to see the glass as “half empty”, Cristiana points out that when the classes resumed, people came back full of enthusiasm, with much more interest and need to engage in this kind of creative activities. That was a positive thing that the pandemic brought, the fact that people started to value and get even more involved with the classes and the art. 

 

The Time and Commitment Dilemma 

For the artist, the “dilemma of time and commitment” is the main challenge she encounters daily. Whether in her personal case and in her creations or in people’s relationship with her classes and workshops, there are many difficulties in finding time and creating a commitment, of each person with themselves.  

People easily recognise that they want to create, that they want to repeat the experience and make working with clay something more consistent and recurring, but the speed of life and external commitments end up getting ahead of something that ends up not being considered as “essential”.  

“But no doubt, for me, having a space for care, for connection, for relaxation, for creation, is essential for a more authentic life.” – Cristiana