HANNA JÄRLEHED
Cluster Crafts Exhibitor | 2024
BLACK & WHITE RADIANCE | 2021
CRYSTAL WATER | 2020
OPEN CHANNEL | 2019
STINKING NIGHTSHADE | 2024
Hanna Järlehed was born in 1970 and grew up on the west coast in southern Sweden. In the home there was a good supply of artist's materials as the father taught art and worked as a toy designer. Creativity was encouraged and seen as one of the most important things in life. In the summers, much of the family's life was spent in the forest or out at sea.
Clay has been around in various forms for most of Hanna's life, and after completing natural science studies at high school, she spent a couple of basic years on various aesthetic educations before entering the arts and crafts course at the University of Gothenburg, with a focus on ceramic art. In 1998 she took her master's degree and then started a ceramic workshop together with two coursemates.
STINKING NIGHTSHADE | 2024
Since then she has exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has had a series of one- and two-person exhibitions and participated in international ceramic competitions and fairs.
Last fall, she won a bronze prize at the Cheongju International Craft Competition.
This is her second time participating in the Cluster Craft Fair.
CYSTAL WATER | DETAIL
“Round, round, round, rhythmically, calmly and methodically, I shape flat wide shapes of clay. The circle recur, closed and endless, a simple basic form to start from. In the middle is a core, a glazed center. Sometimes the glaze flows over the top layer of clay and covers it completely, sometimes I arrange slats of raw clay out from the glazed base.
The circle is not only a symbol of eternity and wholeness, it recurs everywhere in nature; in the core of the body’s cells, in the shape of a snowflake, the sun, the moon and the earth.”
“As a ceramicist, I have had the round shape with me from the start, from simple shapes formed on the wheel. In conversation with the clay, it is sometimes difficult to know what comes from me and what comes from the material. But it is in that meeting, between the given and the spontaneous, that the work is carried forward.”
BROWN GALAXY | 2019
