NON-HUMAN
This collection explores the intimate parallel between the vessel and the human form. Crafted through a unified technique — hand-built coiling, fine terra sigillata, and a satiny wax finish — the series traces a conceptual transformation from ancestral archetype to human posture.
The surface treatment evokes the tactile quality of human skin, bridging antiquity and physical intimacy. The silhouette evolves: from the monumental qvevri/karas archetype crowned with protective architectural spines, to asymmetrical pouring forms, and finally to geometric torsos where the vessel fully resolves into an anthropomorphic sculpture. Together, the series reflects the belief that every human being is a living vessel carrying memory, lineage, and soul.
METAMORPHOSES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
This work investigates transformation as a state of becoming rather than completion. Formed by hand through the coiling technique, the vessel began with the familiarity of a vase, only to be disrupted through acts of pressure, distortion, and fracture. The resulting surface carries both intentional marks and accidental ruptures, situating the piece between control and unpredictability.
The vessel operates as a record of time: scratches and fissures accumulate like the traces of daily existence, mapping the persistence of lived experience onto matter. The glaze, shifting between matte opacity and glossy fluidity, enhances this instability, suggesting that nothing in the everyday remains static.
In this sense, Metamorphoses of Everyday Life becomes less an object and more a process — a shifting material body that resists resolution. It embodies fragility and resilience simultaneously, offering a tactile language for the uncertainty that defines both art and life.
CANVAS
In the Canvas collection, the vessel becomes more than a functional form — it is a sculptural object, a silent carrier of emotion, memory, and meaning. Through bold yet fluid shapes and expressive, painterly glazes, each piece explores the tension between what is revealed and what is concealed.
Historically associated with the feminine, the vessel holds a long-standing symbolic connection to the body — as container, as keeper, as bearer of the invisible. In this work, the form becomes a space to explore the quiet power of what is held within: shifting emotional states, unspoken experiences, inner landscapes.
It is interesting how surfaces can speak. The contrast between exposed clay and layers of translucent glaze mirrors the interplay between vulnerability and opacity. Each vase is an act of balance — between chaos and control, gesture and stillness, rawness and refinement. They do not shout, but they speak — softly, and with weight.
Explore other works by Gaya Vartanyan