Details
| First Name | Lissa |
| Last Name | Claassens |
| Nickname |
My Ceramics
| In the studio I like to do | Handbuilding, Throwing on the Wheel, Sculpting, Slip casting, Everything to do with Ceramics |
| Pottery Wheel | One electric, cone-driven wheel and one electric, direct-drive wheel, both locally made in South Africa |
| Clay body | Earthenware, Stoneware, Porcelain |
| Clay Brand | TR1 from Reinders in Cape Town, TR6 and Super porcelain from Cape Pottery Supplies |
| Kiln Type | Electric Kiln, Raku Kiln |
| Kiln Atmosphere | Oxidation Atmosphere |
| Temperature | 1200 degrees centigrade and 1000 degrees for raku |
| Glaze | I use all kinds of glazes, mainly dipping glazes and some bought, some made myself. I also occasionally use Amaco paint-on, but I find them laborious to apply. Sometimes I spray my glazes on too. |
| You can buy my work from | De Nagmaal Online shop, Boschendal Shop, Art of Connection, Roche Bobois Cape Town, myself |
About Me
| Introduction | My name is Lissa Claassens. I live in Cape Town South Africa and I work from my home studio. I also teach ceramics to adults. Until the pandemic I also taught children. I love sculpting figurative work and recently more abstract shapes. I also throw domestic ware on the wheel and I love experimenting with all different techniques. I share my building, sculpting and decorating techniques in specialised workshops that I hold over weekends in my studio. This includes raku, sculpting the body, the head, image transfer techniques like photolithography, monoprinting and waterslide transfer. My clients come to me with requests to make specific pieces for their shops or clients of their own and I love the challenge of finding the best way to achieve their ‘look and feel’. |
| What I Love about Ceramics | I love the thrill of creativity, and making something beautiful and useful out of the earth. I love how it brings people together and how therapeutic working with it can be. |
| How I started with ceramics | My mother was a potter and also taught at home so I guess I just grew up with it, and now my daughter, Natasha Human, is also a potter! I studied Social Anthropology and African Languages and also Ceramic Science. |
| What inspires me | I’m inspired by human emotion and lately colour is hitting the right spot! |
| What I'm working on at the moment | I’ve been working on a themed exhibition that has just been launched at Roche Bobois Cape Town. It’s an exhibition inspired by Matisse’s Cut-outs. I am loving working with intense, bright colours and playing joyfully with a 3-d rendering of his paper cut-outs. I am loving where this is leading me artistically. I’m also working on a range of peasant ware in terracotta, including Spanish ‘Lebrillos’ and French and Italian ‘Splatterware’ I love the rough, earthy, casual feel of the pots made and decorated in this way. I’m always refining my colour and glaze exploration. |
| My Artist Statement | I’m a potter who loves every aspect of the medium. So I find I am endlessly stimulated by what I do and happy to try any technique and any challenge. See above for more detail. |
| My CV | LISSA CLAASSENS SHORT CV Lissa started her professional journey with clay working in the studio potteries of Kolonyama in Lesotho and Mapepe Craft in Henley-on Klip. She has owned her own craft shop and worked in a non-profit organization giving therapeutic outreach pottery sessions to vulnerable people. Lissa sculpts figuratively, lately focusing on themes exploring her own childhood in South Africa. She is also a production wheel thrower and teaches pottery lessons to adults and children in her Hout Bay studio in Cape Town. Making for the film industry has been an exciting new departure. She recently made lamps and idols for the Troy series and ‘smashables’ for Warrior 2, both filmed in South Africa. She is now producing online workshops via private YouTube videos on different techniques to reach a worldwide audience. Lissa studied Social Anthropology and African Languages at the University of Cape Town and studied Ceramic Science at the Witwatersrand Technikon. She is a second-generation potter. http://www.earthplaystudio.com Instagram: @earthplaystudio and @lissa.pottery Facebook: Earth Play Studio |
