My favourite thing about pottery is spinning the pottery wheel (this is when I feel uninspired or don’t have any project started). And then I like moulding; that’s when I can let loose. The colours I use for my pottery are engobes, made of ceramic clay, dyed with metal oxides:

iron - red, burel - black, copper - green, cobalt - blue, titanium - yellow

These are used on dry pottery (that has not been fired). It is more absorbent. After it dries, you can coat your object with engobe and then fire it at the LOW-FIRE range, below 900 degrees Celsius. You don’t glaze the object after it has been fired. You coat it with burel or iron and then fire it once more at the HIGH-FIRE range, at a temperature above 1,100 degrees Celsius.

And why pottery? How much time do I spend on it? I find this activity enjoyable and fulfilling. I spend about three days a week in the workshop. I started enjoying this while studying to be a gardener at the Jedlička Institute. We would go to various workshops: basket-weaving, working with textiles, woodworking and pottery. And that’s where I got into it.

I like this workshop activity. When I turn the pottery wheel and it’s going well, I feel happy about the result. Spinning the wheel is unpredictable. You can never tell when something will turn out well or not. It also has to do with your mood. From experience, I know that if you’re not in the best of moods, this will likely be reflected in your work.

If I’m angry, for instance, I’ll sit at the wheel and feel like smashing the object I’m making, I prefer to go and mould the clay by hand instead. I’m better able to express my emotions like that. I put those emotions into my work and, paradoxically, if I’m in a really bad mood, my projects are better and more precise.

What I think about artists: Generally artists of all sorts are regarded as “lunatics”. But I don’t think that’s the case. These people express their emotions differently and their work helps them manage the pressure that society places on them. And they also help enrich our culture.