Maria Enaes

STUDIO VISIT

This week, we return to Enaes Studio to visit our dear friend and colleague Maria Enaes. You may remember Maria from last month’s feature for The Community. Maria’s space, Enaes Studio, possesses a warm, nurturing and generous spirit that’s hard to distill in words— but alas, we try! We wanted to try and replicate what it would feel like to spend a day in her studio. So today, please join us for a studio visit to Enaes Studio where you’ll get to see what a day in the life of a ceramicist looks like.

// Maria is wearing Organic Cotton Poet Sleeves Sweater in Kelp.

Serenity is the first thing you think of when entering Enaes Studio. The space is a softbox— white walls, airy and minimal, awash with sunlight. As you step into the space, you see walls lined with wooden shelves filled with a mix of works in progress, vessels waiting to be trimmed, and freshly fired works of art sit in harmony with one another. It’s quiet here. Time flows freely.

// Maria is wearing Signature Panel Pockets Shirt Jacket - Fall Edition in Off-White.

If she’s not teaching a workshop, Maria can be found here, hovering over her wheel, hands in the clay, tinkering on her own projects. On these days, there isn’t always a set plan, but she enjoys having this time to explore and develop new pieces or glazes. The double-edged sword of having a space where your creativity is free to roam is that it can be hard to organize the plethora of new ideas. Maria underlines that “it takes a lot of discipline to be a production potter – and although I do feel like the discipline is in me, I still want to maintain the excitement of making, and to me that is constantly trying new shapes.”

The projects that Maria has been enjoying as of late center around experimentation. Lately, she’s been creating items that consist of combining two or several elements into one piece. Like teapots and cake stands. She is intrigued with this form because of how these items look and function after all the pieces come together. It’s in this space where time flows freely, that Maria can play and experiment. And it’s a joy to step into the vessel that her work takes place in, and witness the ideas take shape.