Finding the perfect balance between shape, color, surface and structure is always a challenge, an emotional struggle. The mere existence of this powerful energy makes it so appealing to me to work with clay. My work has a strong connection with nature and its organic structures. My inspiration comes from small artifacts of nature from my daily walks. These fragile imprints of nature provide me with rich visual vocabulary, endless shapes and colors for my new works in the studio.      

Each piece begins as a thick, flat clay slab, which is stretched out on a concrete floor or wooden board to create surface tension. Sometimes I’ll punch holes to add texture or to make the walls of the finished piece look inviting instead of impenetrable. While the clay is still wet, I add colored slips, creating a malleable body whose surface is already finished (rather than decorated later, when the clay is hardened, though sometimes I do that, too). This approach gives me tremendous freedom to make my shapes. The color is cohesively bonded to the clay body from the beginning, and it’s behaving naturally all the way to the end, as one material. The holes and other markings move and stretch as I cut, bend, twist, coil, and build the clay into my three-dimensional forms: pods, cocoons, flowers.

As a ceramic sculptor I use the language of the malleable clay to speak freely in a world which doesn’t understand my mother tongue. I utilize the power of colors and rich surfaces to accentuate my accented voice working with clay.

Judit Varga, 2025