About
A propos
After studying contemporary philosophy and music in Paris, I returned home and started studying photography. One thing led to another the material obsessed me more and more, I had to touch it with my hands. So I started collecting clay and studying ceramics. I continue philosophy, music, photography and ceramics together, always in the same perspective, the same obsession to work on the substance of things.
The pieces in my shop are made from local clays that I collect, study and improve. I do not use a potter's wheel but a more sculptural technique (Tama-Zukuri, Kurinuki) that allows a greater freedom of creation. We work a solid mass that we then come to hollow out in several successive passages (it is a work of 10 to 60 times longer than a turned piece). I make my enamels and engobes using materials that I harvest around my home. Grinding is laborious. Then the pieces are fired at 1320 ° C in a large wood oven (Anagama) for a week 24 hours a day. There is one cooking per year. During firing the wood comes to make at a certain temperature a natural enamel on the pottery. This enamel is different depending on the soil and wood used, as well as the pipe and cooking conditions. In parallel, I study Black Raku (Guro Raku), a kind of cooking modeled on the eruptive functioning of volcanoes based on thermal shocks and cooking at 1250 ° C. I also cook with an electric oven in neutral cooking at 1280 ° C. I hope you enjoy my work.
Live and works Ardèche
Birth in 1987
After studying musical improvisation and contemporary philosophy, Simon Manoha settled in Ardèche to devote himself to ceramics and photography by being as close as he could to nature.
His sensitivity for the wild and the natural, visceral penchant for deviance and self-taught character led him to choose this life.
Simon Manoha wishes to make the soil speak in its purest and most poetic form. He spends his day exploring, picking, and collecting clay, minerals, and wood essences in the nearby woods. Then, he tests them, explores their unique properties, and uses them to create his pieces. Having rigorous environmental ethics, he fires in wood and electric ovens that he builds himself, constantly adjusting and improving them.
Simon Manoha's pieces show the power of the Earth. Often anthropomorphic, sometimes evoking known shapes, his art is like petrification.
As if they came from primitive times, with mineral nuances and textures, Simon Manoha's sculptures bring to mind the weight of time.
