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This intense search is still ongoing, and
is filled with dreams and intuitions. Pablo says that he sleeps
and wakes in the world of pottery, and that dreams have given him
a path to follow in his work. These are nighttime dreams, of people
who come and take him to caves or ancient cemeteries and teach him
to make ceramic pieces.
"I have made pieces of pottery that I have seen in my dreams, I
have entered rooms and seen pieces and them reproduced them," The
Seminarios are firm believers in their own intuition, an intuition
that brought them to the valley, an intuition that spurs them to
research and recreate a language that has yet to be deciphered.
"There are designs that we've made for years and don't know why
we make them. And them suddenly one day we're walking somewhere
in Peru and come across it. You start to recognize shapes, objects
and animals that identify your country, your culture".
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The ceramic portrayals made by the Seminarios
teem with magical elements and games, characters in simple shapes,
in the Vicús style, seafish, stars in striking colors and geometrically-shaped
ancient temples.
Here we find extraordinary characters, flying figures which are
very common in Nazca and Paracas iconography which come to the coastal
desert to glide over colorful Andean landscapes, studded with fields
of corn and soaring mountains. The Seminarios describe them as "the
idea of guardians, spirits, angels or whatever you like to call
them. But they are always beings, linked spirits, which connect
us to the world above, the religious, magical world. We also admire
beings with a complex inner world, birds whose bodies show the landscapes
they have flown over, and the beings wrapped up in their thoughts".
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Pablo believes each living being has an inner
world, filled with dreams and memories, which he translates into
images on clay. "The bird also has its own world, so it is a world
within a world within a world. We also have another world within
our world. It is a way of portraying the different visions of the
world in various ways. It's one thing for me to draw a landscape
within a human figure, and quite another to draw that same landscape
within a bird figure - they'll give you different sensations. The
figure of a man standing they're with a landscape inside will give
you an idea of a static landscape seen by someone standing on the
ground. But if you put the landscape inside a bird, it can make
you feel as if you were flying and gazing down at the landscape
from above".
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In addition to being a proposal to revive
tradition and Peru's culture, the Seminarios' work is an art that
wishes to bring magic and the world of dreams back to people's lives.
For many, the motifs and colors of the potters' designs can strike
them as childish, and they are. As Marilú says, their work involves
creating "an object that makes us happy, which makes us feel
good, and which simply is to be looked at, which creates an ambiance,
which makes you dream. We grab the part that gives one a sensation
of a childish, almost naif world".
"The idea is that it nourishes what
we call the spirit, and help you to live." Pablo adds. Part
of his interest in crafting utilitarian objects stems from bring
these designs to people's everyday lives, nourishing people in their
capacity to watch and dream on a daily basis: "Our function is
also found in a cup. Not just the cup itself, but the decoration
of that cup".
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Today, one comes across the Seminarios' pottery
in countless locales and homes in Cuzco. However some 90% of the work
that Pablo Seminario produces at his workshop is exported, and the
Seminarios' pieces are now found all over the world. Researchers at
the San Francisco Modern Art Museum have visited Urubamba to study
their work, and the Seminarios' pieces constantly appear in magazines
on decoration and art in several countries. However, the Seminarios
do not lose sight of their own style and are not distracted from their
goal: "I can't consider it a challenge to be stuck in museums,
art galleries, exhibitions, to be a great ´artist'.
My goal is here, in this search, this cultural recreation, this idea
of providing continuity to art, in something that is so highly personal.
What's more, I don't have the time, I have enough work to do with
what I'm doing now. I never seen to have enough time, there's so much
more to get out and see and investigate." |
Text of Rumbos Magazin
Shades of pre-Colombian
pottery
Discovering
a language
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