Alice Riehl
www.aliceriehl.comwww.annettepetavy.com/
Alice Riehl is a French ceramist who explores the association between porcelain and textiles. Dora was impressed by her work incorporating crochet, and asked me to find out more. Alice agreed to talk to me from her home in Paris. It was a fun and fascinating conversation about needlework and emotion, and how a hostile corporate world forced Alice to connect with the artist she always was deep down.Annette Petavy
Annette: I believe you are completely unknown to the majority of the readers of CI. Let's start simply: Could you please explain what your art is?
Alice: I'm a ceramist. My raw material is clay, and I've chosen to work with porcelain. I bring the porcelain together with cloth, lace and different types of crochet work. From the start, I was searching for texture. Searching for it in needlework is a personal thing, linked to my childhood. That's why I wanted to use it in my work with porcelain.
I use the needlework pieces in two different ways. One way is to press them onto the clay, so the stitches are printed into the material. The other way is to dip them into liquid porcelain. The textiles remain inside the porcelain until I fire it. Porcelain is fired at a very high temperature, up to 1280 C° (2330 F°), and at around 300 C° (570 F°), the textiles burn. In the end, they are no longer there, but they leave their shape in the porcelain. The positive and negative spaces in the fired piece are the positive and negative spaces of the textile used as a base.
Annette: Do you work with old textiles? How do you find the textiles you use for your pieces?
Alice: I work with whatever I happen to find. I try to vary it as much as possible to obtain different effects. I started with leftovers I had at home. After that, I started to look for needlework at flea markets and in thrift stores. When I started to show my work, people in my family, my aunts and my mother, searched their drawers for me. They gave me whatever they had, even things with holes in them. That's not a problem for me.
Not long ago something wonderful happened. A lady called me, having read an article in a magazine about me. She told me she was old, and had a lot of needlework in her house. Her grand-daughters were not interested in it at all. She was going through her belongings and giving away as much as she could. She told me she would be happy to give me her old needlework, knowing that I would use it. So she sent me a package. To me, it is moving to work with textiles that have this kind of story attached to them.
Annette: On your web-site, your work is grouped in different "families", with different shapes. Where do you start? Do you have an idea of a shape you want to make, and then search for a piece of textile which would work for that? Or is it the needlework heirloom you happen to find that suggests a shape to you?
Alice: It works both ways, depending on the piece. Sometimes, I search my fabrics and my lace to find the right texture for a certain shape. Sometimes the texture is there, and it inspires me to create a shape. Creation meanders, there is not one single direction.
Annette: You work a lot in white. Old textiles, lace, crochet or fabrics, are often white. Is there a connection here? Have you chosen this color for it's purity and symbolic power, or is there a connection with the textiles?
Alice: It's a bit of all that, actually. From the start I chose to work with porcelain because I was attracted by white. It's very white and pure, compared to other clays and that's one of the reason I chose it.. Then, when I started to combine it with lace and doilies, it seemed very logical to respect the original color of these textiles. Besides, what I really want to emphasize is the texture. Working in white gives a certain neutrality, which allows the texture to shine. I have started to slightly tint the porcelain, but I work with grey or black. It's still neutrals that don't overpower the texture. I'm most of all interested in volumes and textures.
Annette: I'm very interested in your different "families" of shapes. There are wings, shells, imprints, eggs and cocoons as well as nests. Are these examples of your creativity taking off in different directions?
Alice: Sometimes I want to go with a shape, and sometimes the textiles indicate the directions. The nests are based on ribbons. The ribbons made me think of nests and different shapes of containers.
The eggs and cocoons came naturally with the theme of "recycling" needlework. This work has an aspect of "rebirth" or "new life". I use textiles to make them enter a new life cycle, and I liked the idea of using a shape which very clearly symbolizes life and birth. It is also a very simple and pure shape. To me, this was exactly suited to my work with doilies and such.
When it comes to the wings, it's different. One thing I try to achieve is lightness and delicacy. It's a bit contradictory when you work with clay, which is a heavy material.
Annette: Yes, but not in your work!
Alice: No, exactly, I try to make pieces as light as air. If only I could make them fly! And that's where the idea of "wings" comes. I want to go where the lightness is, making a piece which could almost fly, challenging gravity and the weight of the material.
Annette: I could also see these shapes swim under water.
Alice: When I put the "wings" and the "cocoons" together, they create a sea-like universe. I think it's because of the movement.
Annette: You talk about the contrast between a light shape and a heavy material. Your work also makes me think of the contrast between the fragile and the durable. When you fire your pieces, the textiles inside burn. The porcelain stays, and it's very hard. But if you drop an object in porcelain it will shatter, which will not happen to a doily or a piece of lace.
Alice: I don't try to achieve fragility, I really work on lightness and delicacy. Fragility is a consequence. But I find this rather funny. One thing I like about my work is being in a feminine universe. People often speak of women as "fragile", which I think is totally wrong. It's funny that people say this about my work too, since it's not really relevant. Of course, if you drop one of my pieces on the floor, it will break, but porcelain is a high-temperature clay and one of the most resistant materials. That's the reason why it can be worked with such delicacy. You must go beyond the first impression, and something that looks fragile may not be. That’s the case both for porcelain and for women!
Annette: I do agree. On your website, you write very well about your wish to pay tribute to textile handicrafts, often dismissively called "ouvrages de dames", or "ladies' work.”
Alice: Yes, but these handicrafts are such a strong connection between women. I see that when I'm at a market or an exhibition. My use of needlework brings out strong reaction in people. It reminds them of a lot of things, they are brought into a universe of memories. It's something so many people have in common, men as well as women. And at the same time, this work is considered to be minor creations. I don't believe that at all. How could an art which is practiced by so many persons, in so many generations and in so many countries, be considered as minor?
It's true that needlework is often regarded depreciatively. It's totally unjustified. I don't really do needlework myself (laughter). I sew a little, and there was a time when I made embroidery. I'm really bad at knitting, and never learned how to crochet. But still, to me these pieces are so close, they are a part of my world. I attach so much feelings to them – it's a world connected to my mother and my grandmothers.
Annette: That's exactly what I wanted to ask – what does needlework mean to you? You say that you react to these pieces with feelings and memories. What does it mean to you? It must be something you've carried with you all the time that has lead you to using these textiles today.
Alice: As a child, I spent a part of every school vacation with one of my grandmothers in Normandy. My grand-aunt was there too. The weather isn't always beautiful in Normandy, especially in winter! And I have all these memories of us sitting around the table.
My grandmothers knitted. They had a lot of grandchildren, and they made a sweater for each and everyone of us, one after the other.They had sixteen grandchildren, and in order to make sweaters for them all, they couldn't let go of their needles often! My mother knitted and crocheted, too. I learned how to knit, but I was never very good at it. My sister knits well, she's a success! (laughs). I often did embroidery. These memories are very happy, all these generations of women together who hand down their knowledge… I didn't think of it that way as a child, of course, but now I find it very moving. I have experienced this strong connection between women and generations through needlework.
Annette: I think this is a very important aspect of textile traditions. And even though the techniques may demand skill, generally you don't need cumbersome tools. So you can bring your crochet or your knitting and gather together.
Alice: It's a way to express your creativity. You can follow your desire.It's funny, last week-end, I was selling at a market in Melun, near Paris. An elderly couple came over to look at my booth. The lady seemed quite moved by the needlework aspect. I understood she used to crochet. But her husband got all worked up and started to say: "I don't understand, why don't women want to get out of all this sewing and needles?". I tried to explain that what I wanted to do was exactly that, giving tribute to this work done by women, because it's meaningful to so many people. And it was clear that it had meaning to him, too, though not in a positive way. He said: "I don't want to criticize your work, but still, I ask myself: Why don't women ever make grand works of art?" (laughter). He was a rather old man, and let's say his vision of the sexes was old-fashioned. Well, he was really a male chauvinist. At the same time, I felt he was a bit jealous, because he felt excluded from that world. Anyhow, it's something which makes people react!
Annette: Yes, and it's always an emotional response. It can be rejection or lovely memories, or anything between. I guess, for that gentlemen, the battle is lost!
Alice: Yes, but it was interesting to see how strong his reaction was.
Annette: Tell us a bit about how you got where you are today. I understand that you haven't exactly followed the traditional path of an artist.
Alice: Oh no, I started recently, let's say perhaps a bit late. From the start, I went to business school.
Annette: It's almost the opposite!
Alice: Yes. When I had finished high school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I listened to my parents, who tried to guide me towards something "secure," so I wound up in business school. The only thing I found really interesting in this school was that we spent a year abroad. I travelled during a year, and I spent six months in New York City. It was a special year, and I discovered different cultures and other ways to live and think. But otherwise, business school wasn't very exciting.
When I had finished, I spent around ten years working in the corporate world. I started at Pernod, selling pastis to stores. The job was… a learning experience. It's a lonely job. After two years, I was bored and changed jobs. I went for a "classier" job – marketing was considered much smarter than selling at the time. I worked for a company which specialized in market research, doing surveys. The products we worked on were rather nice – it was the early days of games on CD: But it was the most boring job you can imagine. I managed to hold out for another two years.
Still influenced by business school, I was convinced I should go into operational marketing, and be responsible for the marketing a specific product in a company. This was when things turned really bad. I found a job with a German company owned by a Swiss group. Talk about inflexibility!
For about two years I was responsible for the product "pie pastry". I gained over 20 pounds, I was eating pies constantly. Looking back, it's actually funny, because pie pastry has quite a few things in common with porcelain, especially porcelain in sheets.
Annette: You can shape it, it's cooked in an oven…
Alice: Well, it may have been a kind of premonition! I couldn't keep a job for longer than around two years, because I got so bored. So I left again, and was hired to work on the "women's segment,” of a new web portal. Once I arrived, however, the idea was abandoned and I ended up with the horoscope section.
This was the turning point for me, an all time low. I realized that I couldn't continue changing jobs every second year. I was going nowhere. I had tried so many different companies, I couldn't go on. I told myself that retirement was far away, that I had many years to work ahead, and that I needed to find a universe where I felt I belonged. It was increasingly difficult for me to act as expected, to play the part you're supposed to play in the corporate world.
I spent many hours surfing the Web. I had always liked crafting. When I had some time, I always had fun making small things like lamps, or doing a bit of embroidery… I didn't have a favourite craft. Finally, I realized that I really wanted to work with my hands and be creative. I also yearned to work alone and to be independant.
Since I was working for a company in a big group I had the right to take time off for training. I studied for a year in a school in Sèvres, France, called l'Institut de Céramique Française. [http://www.icf-ceramique.com/] I spent a year studying all the techniques full time. At the start, I knew nothing at all about ceramics.
Annette: So how come you decided on ceramics?
Alice: It's very difficult to say. It was almost as if I woke up one morning thinking "it's ceramics". When I surfed the Web, I was very attracted to clay and finished ceramics. But I knew nothing about how to work clay, I had never touched it.
Annette: It was almost a kind of revelation, then.
Alice: Yes, almost.
Annette: So you started from scratch when entering the ceramics school.
Alice: Exactly. I plunged in. It turned out I really had a thing for this medium. I wasn't wrong.
Annette: So it was a one-year curriculum.
Alice: Yes. It was a year of happiness and rebirth, totally different from the corporate world. At last, I was doing something I was interested in, even passionate about. Before, I had to force myself to get up for work in the morning. Now, I hurried to school and wouldn't stop working the whole day.
Once I finished school, I created a small workshop at home. I started to try things out. After a year and a half of testing, I decided to go for it, and started to show my work and try to make a living at it. I first sold my items in a market in April 2006.
Annette: That's incredible, because I think your work is really that of a full-fledged artist. But in fact, you haven't done it for very long.
Alice: Ceramics is a huge field. My curriculum was very complete. When you finish school and you ask yourself "So, what am I supposed to do?" it really gives you vertigo, because there are so many possibilities. I didn't want to take too much time, I wanted to change careers quickly. To me, this was really a career goal, not just something I did for pleasure. I needed rather quick results, so I didn't experiment with many different clays. I chose porcelain, and right now, my work is exclusively centered on porcelain in association with textiles. This doesn't mean I will not evolve and change over time. But to start, I really wanted to concentrate on a specific area so I could be efficient.
Annette: You've said you started to sell you art in markets. How do you find your audience today?
Alice: During my first year, I sold in a few markets and art and crafts fairs, where a mix of mediums were represented. But now I realize that I belong in the ceramics world. I show my work mostly in ceramics markets and special ceramics fairs and festivals. Right now, there is an exhibition of contemporary ceramics at the city hall of the 14th arrondissement in Paris. I’m starting to have some contacts with art galleries, though that's an area which is difficult to get into.
At any rate, I really like to be in touch with people. It's very stimulating. I don't want to stop selling in markets, because I have a lot of pleasure doing it and it gives me a lot of stimulation to get back to work.
Annette: It's a change from working alone every day.
Alice: Yes. I like working alone, but it's also a pleasure to get out of the workshop and be in touch with people. I try to be present at a lot of markets, also for financial reasons.
Annette: I'm not an expert, but I truly believe your work is different from anything else one can find out there. You have really found your medium, and your potential market niche.
Alice: Well, we'll see!