The earth reaches the hands.
Water meets pigment.
Before form, there is gesture.
Before the result, there is time.
Hands that shape.
Hands that wait.
Matter
asks for listening.
It asks for presence.
Wabi Sabi Academy
The Way of Earth and The Way of Water
Honest Beauty
Honest Beauty begins with the honesty of the gesture.
With what happens when the hand meets matter without knowing exactly where it will lead.
An imprint.
A trace.
A colour that moves.
A form that changes while it is being shaped.
Not everything can be predicted.
Not everything needs to be corrected.
The gesture leaves what has happened.
The material holds it.
For me, Honest Beauty means this:
allowing the process to remain visible.
Not creating a form to hide what has happened,
but working with what emerges.
This is where making becomes practice.
The Way of Earth
The Way of Earth begins with the encounter with clay.
When earth meets the hands, a silent knowledge awakens.
It does not require explanations.
It requires attention.
Shaping clay is an act of grounding.
The form is built slowly.
Sometimes it changes.
Sometimes it resists.
Every imprint remains.
Every gesture leaves a trace.
Clay holds what happens.
Earth carries a different sense of time.
A time that cannot be forced.
The hand searches.
The material responds.
The Anthroposophical Approach: Form, Body and Soul
In my work, I also encounter the anthroposophical tradition, to which I feel deeply connected and which runs through my education and my practice.
From this perspective, form is not only a structure to be created.
It carries a quality, a movement, a relationship between body and space.
Sphere.
Cube.
Tetrahedron.
Threefold form.
The form of the human body.
Forms that can be encountered through the hands, before they are understood through thought.
Modelling becomes a way of observing.
The hand searches.
The material responds.
The body participates.
Creating a vessel, a cup or a Moon Jar does not simply mean giving shape to an object.
It means entering into a relationship with the material and with the time needed for that form to emerge.
The Academy’s practice is born from the meeting between the Studio Pottery tradition, Mindful Creation, mindfulness practice and the Wabi Sabi vision.
The work moves from the pottery wheel to handbuilding, through lessons, workshops and individual pathways.
Different forms.
Different materials.
One shared time:
the time of making.
The Way of Water: Watercolour as Expansion
Water meets pigment.
Colour moves.
It opens.
It gathers.
It expands across the surface.
The hand accompanies.
The eye observes.
Time allows things to happen.
In watercolour, not everything can be controlled.
Water carries colour in directions that cannot always be predicted.
One pigment meets another.
One transparency passes through another.
The form slowly emerges.
Sometimes it is precise.
Sometimes it remains open.
The Way of Water is born from this encounter:
water, colour, hand and surface.
In the anthroposophical tradition, colour is not simply something applied to a surface.
It is living matter, experience and relationship.
For me, painting is also this:
entering into colour without fully knowing where it will lead.
Working with watercolour means allowing space for movement.
Observing what happens.
Intervening.
Waiting.
The lessons, workshops and individual pathways arise from this practice of colour and gesture.
A form that is not imposed.
A form that emerges.
The Time of the Process
In the Way of Earth and the Way of Water, the result is not the starting point.
Before comes the gesture.
The relationship with the material.
The time needed for something to emerge.
Practice begins with listening.
With the ability to observe what happens.
To allow space for the unexpected.
To recognise when to intervene and when to wait.
Earth and water have different rhythms.
Both ask for presence.
The atelier in Via Cascia 6, created through the regeneration of the former Gio Style factory, is part of this process.
A luminous and open space.
A place for work, practice and encounter.
Matter changes.
Forms change.
The space itself remains in movement.
Not a place to visit,
but a space to inhabit.
The Roots of the Practice
Wabi Sabi Academy is born from the meeting of different paths that, over time, have found a shared direction.
Painting.
Ceramics.
Art therapy.
Mindfulness.
The research into gesture and matter.
I bring into this practice more than twenty-five years of artistic experience, academic training in painting, international training in high-temperature ceramics, and professional work in art therapy according to the UNI 11592 pathway and the ARTE.A register.
These roots are joined by the Studio Pottery tradition, the Wabi Sabi philosophy and the practice of Mindful Creation integrated with the MBSR protocol.
Every pathway is born from this interweaving:
experience, matter, listening and time.
The relationship with each participant is an integral part of the practice.
It is not about following a model to apply,
but about accompanying a process.
A space in which to learn, experiment and work with matter without judgement.
A Practice That Continues
The Way of Earth and the Way of Water are not only creative pathways.
They are encounters with matter.
With necessary time.
With the gesture that takes shape through practice.
What is born from the hands continues to inhabit everyday spaces.
A cup.
A colour.
A form.
Small traces of a process that does not end at the moment of creation.
Matter preserves a trace.
The hands preserve an experience.
Before form, there is gesture.
Before the result, there is time.
A practice.
In earth.
In water.
In presence.
