About me

It all started with a penguin.

I always liked ceramics. Grandma's china plates. The botijo that rested in the shadow of a town house in those eternal summers of bare knees and cool water. The fruit bowls with their trompe l'oeil of vegetables.

But the first time I touched clay, I decided to make a penguin. Robert Frost would have been very proud of me " from here to eternity: two roads diverged in a forest and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference ."

I was sixteen years old, I could have made an ashtray for Father's or Mother's Day. Or a bowl. But no, I decided to make a penguin. And that made all the difference.

Penguins mate for life. They may be apart for a long time, but they always come back to each other. And that has been my relationship with ceramics.

I did other jobs, I was even happy with them, but, in the end, I returned to ceramics. Because ceramics are my partner in crime . My way of returning to myself.

And so, I decided to take the road less traveled. Stop, listen to me and take risks. And learn, a lot. Ceramics is a bottomless pit in which there is always something new to learn. Perhaps that is the stuff that lifelong relationships are made of: the ability to surprise and discover that one does not always know everything about the other.

Wheel, glazes, modeling, molds... I have tried, I have learned and I continue to learn. I often like to combine several techniques to find the result I'm looking for. This, in ceramics, is a real leap into the void. With its joys and its sorrows, like any relationship. But it's what makes all the difference.

So welcome, I'm Raquel. The artist behind Aktitude Ceramics. The girl who chose to make a penguin and fell in love for life, as I hope you will with my pieces :).

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