Klára Bán

I have been fascinated by clay and ceramics since I was a child. My mother told me that I was already 5 years old, when the carrier was unloading the wood from his cart, I was already inking his horse.

In my primary school years I loved to draw, and several of my drawings were exhibited.

Painting accompanied me until I was a teenager, but I was also drawn to ceramics. In high school I chose a Latin class, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but my career was more technical and it wasn't until I was 35 that I came into professional contact with ceramics. For years I worked with Éva Bod, a Munkácsy Prize-winning ceramicist.

I have been working in my own studio since 2005.

My works can be found in galleries in Budapest and in rural cities.

In the past years I have had exhibitions in Vác, Szombathely, Veszprém, Pécs and Debrecen, and I am especially pleased to have been able to show my works in Budakalász, where I live.

I work with two types of clay, a coarser clay and a finer, more malleable white clay. The former is excellent for the more complex, moving sculptures, while the latter is excellent for the more delicately worked "white" sculptures. The colour scheme you have in mind will also influence your choice of clay.

I use a wide range of colours, which I apply using different processes depending on the mask. The sculptures are exposed to high temperatures (1080-1140 C^o), they reach their final shape in a single firing.

Once you have the inspiration, which can be a mood, a feeling, a graceful movement, a colour, a shape, you can start designing. The making of ceramic sculptures is a long technological process, with some phases separated in time (inspiration, design, moulding, drying, painting, firing). The painter sees his work ready after putting down the brush, the ceramist only after opening the kiln, always a tense, anticipatory (joyful, sometimes annoyed) moment.

Emotions, moods, places can be expressed in many different ways with ceramics.

There is a wide range of possibilities, from the use of abstract space and colour elements to naturalistic representation.

I would like to cast the diversity of life in clay with precisely crafted, finely worked, realistic sculptures.

I try to portray primarily feminine beauty, elegance, the mother-child relationship, the harmony of movement.

In my studio, there is no regular schedule. My hobbies - besides household chores - gardening, planting and tending flowers, feeding the birds in winter, sports, yoga and my French bulldog puppy take up a lot of my time, so ceramics often squeeze into the late evening. However, a new and exciting task keeps me completely occupied and the world around me disappears.

I often listen to music at work. Music, like art, is a bridge to reality. They transmit moods, emotions, impressions, invisible things, they distract, calm, stimulate and give new perspectives.

As a member of the beat generation, I am a musical omnivore, playing a wide range of light and serious music.

I want my sculptures to give others the same joy and good feeling that I get from creating them.