A Coffee & a Donut with Pia Chevalier

I receive newsletters and media releases every day, my inbox is a pandora box … an explosion of information and while I am searching for relevant news and interesting topics to explore and to share, I came across this French ceramicist and her work: Pia Chevalier . A delightful rainbow feast for the eyes. Cup after cup, colour after colour and one main think in common the distinguish circle handle in the collection called Donut.

Pia work focuses on the everyday object that the artist consider as a sculpture capable of raising emotion and create emotional bonds. Pia obsession is to give solemnity to these objects to make them endearing.
Through oxidation, metal allows the created objects to evolve over time, to live.
And it is this living character that makes it possible to create a singular relationship between the object and its user. Thus, these objects cannot perish anymore but become durable and collectible.

In her studio in Saint-Denis, Pia Chevalier develops objects that border on the unique piece and the work of art, leaving room for spontaneity in the process of creation and composition of her pieces.

Pia likes to be in direct contact with raw materials to then transform them and create unique pieces. Her work focuses on the everyday object that she understands as a sculpture capable of arousing emotion and creating an emotional bond. Her obsession is to give solemnity to these objects in order to make them endearing. She appreciates the defects of materials, their tendency to degradation, and entropy, which leads her to accept the unforeseen, the ephemeral. Nowadays she works with clay, steel, brass, and copper, each project leads her to discover new materials.

Pia understands ceramics in a very intuitive way, the techniques she likes are modeling and pinching. She finds in this material very great freedom of expression which gives birth to disproportionate, funny sculptures often inspired by the culinary universe such as octopus and donuts where the handle becomes the ‘biscuit’ and the glazing the ‘flavor’. Gorgeous way to be in the kitchen with her while sipping coffee.

After six years of craftsmanship and product design at L’école Boulle in Paris, Pia start developing her objects on the edge of unique pieces and art objects and appreciating the flaws of materials, their tendency to degradation, to entropy, which leads the artist to accept the unexpected, the ephemeral….