These works were made during the annual symposium “Earth, Water and Fire”, intiated by the Bulgarian artist Tsvetan Donkovski, which took place in Dalbok dol, a village close to Troyan, one of the major ceramic centers in Bulgaria.
For this symposium, Vasilena Gankovska returned to her home town and her first artistic training – art ceramics. The resulting works are based on the centuries-old tradition of of engobed clay vessels and utilised various elements of her painterly works, such as depictions of nature, combined with reduced colour splashes. The small compositions appear like models for monumental, large-scale sculptures awaiting their realisation.
The fifth edition of the symposium brought together established and emerging artists in the field of object sculpture and ceramics, such as Silvia Chaneva, Dimitar Petrov, Momchil Mirchev, Alexandra Kalcheva and Vasilena Gankovska. They dedicated themselves to ceramics as a material and conducted experiments with a unique wood-fired kiln, built in the Finnish style by the artist Tsvetan Donkovski. The material, fireclay/shamotte, is fired at high temperatures together with transparent glaze and engobes, with the fire flame being introduced directly through the inside of the kiln and thus touches the works directly. The resulting works – sculptures, objects and vessels – were then subsequently presented in an exhibition at the National Fair for Crafts and Applied Arts in Oreshak, Bulgaria.
Vasilena Gankovska 