Five Minutes With... Ulrica Trulsson

Ulrica Trulsson, Stoneware Canister with Glaze on Glaze and Glazed Porcelain Bottle, 2021. Photo: the artist. — Ulrica Trulsson, Stoneware Canister with Glaze on Glaze and *Glazed Porcelain Bottle*, 2021. Photo: the artist.

We spend five minutes with Swedish-born ceramic artist Ulrica Trulsson ahead of her Collect exhibition Surface Stills.

All images courtesy of the artist.

Much of your work references the earth and landscape: sand, rocks, the movement of tide. What draws you towards these forms as inspiration and how is it translated into your work?

I am particularly drawn to the rhythm of revealing and submerging. In a way, the tide mimics seasons as I used to know them. I grew up with a blanket of snow covering and transforming the world around me for a large part of the year. What was hidden underneath was then revealed in spring, and the full cycle took the whole year rather than twice in a lunar day as it does with the tide. It is the way patterns, textures and objects in the landscape even in their simplest form holds your attention and makes you notice new details I hope to translate in to my work. This can be found in the apparent simplicity of my pots, a celebration of the materials and my intuitive approach to making.

As a ceramicist you touch and handle each object throughout the entire making process. Walk us through your approach from conception to completion.

I think of the beginning stages as seeing a slightly blurred image of a pot in my mind, and then I want to see what it would look like if it came into being, to capture and focus in on that image. I enjoy an exploratory approach as the materials are a great ‘collaborator’ making the image in my mind morph and unexpected shifts occur. I throw the wet clay to the rhythm of the revolving pottery wheel, starting with a ball of clay and resulting in the fully formed shape of a pot. Once the pot has dried to the ‘leather-hard’ stage it can be trimmed to refine the shape, fit lids, assemble two parts if they were thrown separately and form the foot. At this stage I may apply slip to the surface using my fingers to move through the liquid clay creating patterns and textures. There are two firings to follow after the initial making stage. The glazing happens after the first firing when the work is still porous enough for the glaze to adhere to the pot. It takes time to get to know the qualities of the glazes and how they respond in the kiln, and the glazes will need to have been tested to achieve the desired results (allowing for numerous variables). The act of glazing itself may seem straightforward, but there is still much to consider at this stage and not just which glaze you choose but also thickness in application, glaze and clay body combination, and the edges where the two meet. I glaze the interior of the pot first by pouring the glaze in and the pot needs to dry before the exterior is dipped. The pot is then handed over to the kiln gods for a second firing.

Ulrica in her Brisbane studio. Photo: the artist.

Stoneware Canister with Glaze on Glaze, 2021. Photo: the artist. — *Stoneware Canister with Glaze on Glaze*, 2021. Photo: the artist.

Your work focuses on wheel-thrown pots with shifting shapes and surfaces, exploring the relationship between space and form. Through these arrangements, what feelings and experiences do you hope to impart on the viewer?

For me, the grouping and arranging of my pots is the stage where I ‘get to know’ them after they have been through the final firing. Although I have been closely handling each pot during every stage of the making, it is unfinished until I have given it over to be finally transformed in the kiln. The surface changes from powder to melted glaze, the colours appear, density and size changes. There is much to grasp as they emerge from the kiln and I spend time with the works; the way they sit in a space and with each other, their individual personalities and slight quirks. I hope this invites the viewer to spend time getting to know the work as well, and find their own connection and notice details that capture their attention.

Since you first began as a ceramicist over ten years ago, how have your influences and style evolved?

The more time you spend making, learning from and about the materials and other potters, the more you have to draw from. You see things around you more intensely, notice small things around you that can feed back in to the work. It’s far from a linear progression, more like a leap forward and somehow you find yourself back at the beginning only with a new outlook. Two steps forward and one step back on a good day. I am mostly focused on the pot I am making in the moment, or any pots stuck in my mind waiting to be made. But none of them would happen without the ones that came before. The evolution is more of an accumulation of impressions and experience I suppose. Clay keeps you on your toes, it keeps you interested and challenged, and down to earth (or, I am fond of the Swedish word “jordnära” which better translates to “close to earth”).