Enric Orobitg Clua

Phone: +34 973347220

Why ceramics

My father was a special man. Then since he had been a teacher, he lived through the war, the repression, he went into exile, he was a man of ideals.

All this forms you. Then he painted, at the time he was in exile in Andorra, he painted landscapes, he wrote poems, he liked classical music, he wrote literary works...

And then my father, he was the one who told me look, listen, why don't you try ceramics, you like it anyway. I had my turn and that's where I started. And I made myself a clay oven that never worked, but I made my first oven.

Then I set up a company there, I set up a ceramics workshop. But things didn't quite work out and in the end that's when I left Andorra. And I came here to Verdú, I set up a ceramics workshop there.

Then you start to think and see what's in the market, and that allowed me to have a market that I could place pieces, pieces that were all made with a manual process and low production.

Then, I started making some figures and with those figures the market expanded, and we did a lot of things, the dragons...

And we kept expanding and we had more and more to work with because we made more pieces and had more market. And that fell apart after the imports appeared and all that; and I tried to survive with these conditions, and then many murals came and with the murals I had a way to express myself.

I am a craftsman, I am a man who works with his hands, who has acquired some knowledge, because to work with ceramics you have to have some knowledge, you have to know all this material that you work with, and that you seek to introduce something of your own, you seek to leave with your work that recognizes what you do.

Influences

Well, I would say that of ceramists, of many, of different ceramists.

At the level of... maybe the figures I make, I remember that one of the characters I really liked, when I was looking at the art books, I liked Bosco.

With all the figurative artistic expression and not to mention the greats, but I also think that there is something in them all. Specifically, it can be from no one in particular, but from everyone, yes from everyone.

The ceramist in contemporary society

In contemporary society the ceramist is... what, it seems to me that he has no role. It seems to me that ceramics has been so decisive and so important for humanity because I believe that ceramics has been one of the first activities and that later it must have become as a craftsman or as an industry, we could say, that facilitated that we could develop in the sense that we needed objects to hold food, water, wine, whatever.

And ceramics... It gave us this solution.

Future of ceramics

Well, for my future, I already understand it, I'm already there, I've already worked, I've done my homework.

I keep doing something because it's the activity I do and that's how I stay alive, stay awake, alive. Not with the living sense that it seems that if you don't do something you're not alive, I don't share it either. For me, to live is to enjoy life, it's to be attentive to what's happening around you, isn't it? And I'm busy making ceramics.

Ceramics as a hobby may be the future, and among these ceramics as a hobby there will always be the creative one, which is ahead and will make some wonderful pieces... but already I feel like it has overtaken us a bit .

But let's go very fast, the modern world is very fast and everything. I don't know, I can't predict.