CANOA LAB
Raquel Vidal & Pedro Paz
In 2016, Raquel Vidal and Pedro Paz launched CANOA, a place to objectify their experience through a production of metal and ceramic pieces focused on handcraft value and artistic experimentation. They come from two different corners of Spain, Galicia and Almeria, having covered one of the longest diagonals of the country to meet. They live and work in Valencia together with their newly arrived son Andre.
After years combining plastic production with image projects linked to photography, video, graphic and art direction, they came across metal and clay, two materials that, being strongly connected, caught their attention in terms of durability and because they have undoubtedly marked the development of our society. Their research draws on Iberian, Roman and Greek forms, ancestral production methods, and the Mediterranean landscape immediately around them.
Greatest inspirations and influences?
Our focus has a strong naturalistic and historical character. We find ancient forms and ancestral ways of production throughout different times in history. We continually observe primitive designs produced with as little tools as possible, and pay special interest to Iberian, Roman and Greek designs, which are an intrinsic part of our Mediterranean culture. Looking at what surrounds us we find textures, colours and shapes that the natural world offers if you dedicate the right time to its observation. This influence is mixed with the imaginary of designers such as Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Ewen Henderson, and Johannes Nagel.
Tell us about your creative process.
Our creative process is not subject to a previous single and concrete idea that may develop later, rather it is a becoming, a continuum in which one thing leads to another. We try to think and reflect on processes without a concrete opening and closure. One idea accompanies us to meet another. We draw and observe objects all the time, archive images that throughout the process are present, make sketches and small experiments that serve us to think and reflect about the shapes, textures, structures and images that we could use once the pieces are finished. But all this happens parallel to the construction of our objects, without a clearly differentiated before or after. We could say that we build thinking and think about building.
Ceramics and metal allow us to review ways from the past into the present. Two trades that need a slow production time, which makes the observation and acquisition of small fragments indispensable for the creation of cartography. Experimentations with glazes, with natural beeswax and its subsequent casting process, with the shapes and hybridisation of both materials are territories rich in processes which deserve to be observed. This makes us feel like metal and clay archaeologists.
How has this year changed your creativity?
Since Andre was born, our days have changed a lot and our organisation is quite organic and full of unpredictable leads, as it is him who conducts the working times. Otherwise nothing has changed. The time we spend on the project and each piece will remain very important to us. Our objects are born from being always observing, thinking and making, a gerundio that accompanies us from the beginning of the project.
What advice would you give to budding artists?
This immersive temporality makes every step we take critically thought out and analysed, learning from mistakes, and trying to maintain a consistent and more robust line of work every day. The time we spend on the project and each piece will remain very important to us.
Which contemporary designers do you appreciate?
Faye Toogood, Studio Haos, Max Lamb, Vincenzo De Cotiis, Lukas Cober, and Rooms Studio.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
To have the possibility to manage our own time and share each minute together.
"We could say that we build thinking and think about building. This makes us feel like metal and clay archaeologists."
Raquel Vidal & Pedro Paz · Canoa LabCeramics and metal allow them to review ways from the past into the present. Two trades that need a slow production time. Experimentations with glazes, natural beeswax and its casting process, and the hybridisation of both materials are territories rich in processes which deserve to be observed and from which samples are taken for future study.
I moved to Madrid in my twenties, and as my former flatmate was taking a degree in Filmmaking, it was during those years that I visited the Prado Museum, the Queen Sofia Modern Art Museum and some other art galleries for the first time. My interest in art was growing, so I made the decision to return to college. I first took an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts in Granada and later a master's degree in Artistic Production in Valencia, the place where I live and carry out my work together with Raquel and our newborn son Andre.
I was born in a fairly artistic family. My father has always composed and played music with almost every instrument he has laid his hands on, and my mother devoted her free time to the theatre. My grandmother on my father's side was a craftswoman; she made dolls and painted in oils, and I would walk down the stairs to her workroom, with the excuse of searching for the cats, when what I actually wanted was to look, smell and touch everything there. That room became my fetish shelter. Afterwards, I studied at Almeria School of Arts, got my undergraduate diploma in Granada and came to Valencia to study the same master's degree as Pedro.
To have the possibility to manage our own time and share each minute together.
That is wellbeing.
Read more artists working in clay and metal at ninunina.com/ceramic-art.
