What we leave behind

“Terroir” is the French term for a wine’s sense of place — distinct from its origins or make, inclusive of the seasons and climate at the time of planting and harvest, local to the plot of land. Clay is no different, in the hands of a potter, particularly in its foraging, blending, aging and final form. Terroir and Tapestries is a group exhibit by Pablo Capati III, Geraldine Javier, Paulo Lozano, Mikee Naval, and Jose Solon Perfecto that recently opened at Aphro Living in Karrivin Plaza, Pasong Tamo extension, Makati city.

The group exhibit features works from various terroirs across the Philippines. Potters Paulo Lozano, Mikee Naval and Jose Solon Perfecto were together at Pablo Capati III’s farm in San Jose, an in-land municipality in Batangas once called, “Malaking Tubig,” until it was destroyed during Taal Volcanos eruption in the 1750s. Today, the land remains and flourishes with coffee and black pepper.

Capati’s farm grows rambutan trees, which, when felled, make their way into his ash glazes. Some of the potters’ works were hand built, thrown on the kick wheel, and fired in the anagama kiln of Capati, whose studio, decades of experience in ceramics and kindness of his heart, he made available to the younger artists.

Manila-based pottery instructor Lozano finished his pots in different studios, bearing the same shape but each producing its own character. A select few have glazes of his own formulations applied for the first time. Naval’s intuitive approach to her coiled vases and sculptures reflect her daily coastal life in Sorsogon. Naked clay bodies reveal the pinches of her fingers on the vessels, imprints of her meditations on nature.

Solon Perfecto, disassembles wheel-thrown pieces into abstract expressionist sculptures with ash glazes from his own studio’s mango trees and rice husks in La Union. Celebrated painter Geraldine Javier, uses flora as veil to the physical elements in the ceramics with her spiritual narrative of the life cycle, wherein our bodies when we pass become part of the land again.

The show explores what the land gives to the artist and what they return. Potters mold and create to leave behind artifacts of culture and civilization.