In the Oven - The Ceramics and Print Exhibition 2022
Over two hundred students of ceramics and print come every week to
the Collaborative Art Center at Givat Haviva to explore, plan, experiment,
practice and create shapes, volumes and ideas.
The creative processes that mature and slowly rise in the classroom
spaces are eventually refined, physically or metaphorically, and serve as the
basis for all the works that have been "baked" in our workshop ovens
over the past year. The annual exhibition echoes the heat of the kilns, the
material and human encounters, the successes, the failures, the surprises and
the alliances that are forged between the artists and the tools that serve them
during the creative processes.
Like the flame in the wood-burning stoves of the ancients, the
process of creation begins with a small fire that alternately intensifies and abates.
One who insists on maintaining the flame will eventually connect to primordial
fire, which brings humans together with their place, with nature and with their
most basic essence.
The products that have ripened and are displayed in this
exhibition, express a wide range of creative expression, which would not have
been revealed here to you without the kiln. The kiln is sometimes mistakenly
perceived as a purely technical tool, a partner without credit, when it is in
fact an essence in itself, whose role in the process is vital, and whose values
are priceless.
Michal Niv, Avner Singer and Moshe Roas.