The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 48 No 3 November 2009

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Education -------~- - Everything is Possible Alejandro Conyers reports on Margarita Echavarria's experience of working with Australian teachers with the right attitude Margarita Echavarria is in love with Australia's approach to teaching ceramics. Working under the guidance of Jacqueline Clayton, the Colombian born designer has found her teachers have, what she calls, a wonderful 'can do' attitude. Margarita said, "Back home whenever I was preparing projects for teachers or former bosses, I used to pitch complex ideas and I knew they would be brought down, simplified, before being green lighted. Here, you can come up with the craziest, most difficult idea in the world, and the attitude of the teachers is, Okay, let's try it. " Thanks to her Australian teacher's daring attitude, she had the opportunity to develop a piece that, back in Colombia, would have stayed in her sketchbook. It wasn't easy. She spent long days during the first semester of her Masters of Design, at the ceramics workshop of UNSW's College of Fine Arts, working on a very complex mould to create her Bird on a Branch porcelain vase . "I've been interested in mould making and casting for a long time and have accumulated some experience, but doing this was an absolute challenge." The piece needed two moulds, one for the branch and one for the bird; the branch mould alone had eleven interlocking parts. Her work during the casting process was so intense she felt the need to keep evidence of the joining of mould pieces in the finished vase. "I'm very passionate about the likeness of crafted and industrial production, so leaving the footprints of the craft work on a product that can be, sort of, mass produced, was just natural." As hard as the work may have been, difficulty was not Margarita's main motivation. "I was trying to get out of my comfort zone. As an industrial designer, I usually follow the precept "form follows function " and generally confine myself to creative processes like abstraction or constructivism. In this project I did not use either of those, since I was less concerned about designing the shape and more focused in designing a story." She never thought an eleven-piece mould would be required to tell that story, but hey, that's what you get when your teachers think" everything is possible". Could the story have been told back home? "Absolutely," she said, "but it would've been a different story. Back home we try to solve problems before they appear. If the project is too complex, teachers will try to simplify it and make it achievable, probably to prevent their students from screwing up; whilst here they'd rather see you fail trying, and that's great. You should never fear trying new and exciting stuff. " Colombian hard work and Australian boldness have paid off. Admired by faculty and peers, Bird on a Bra nch has been chosen for exhibition at the UNSW Spring Fair in September 2009, where the vases will be sold. Margarita Echavarria; E: margarita.echavarria@gmail.com 52 THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 200
Education Margarita Echavarria, Bird on a Branch, 2009, porcelain, Master of Design, COFA UNSW THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 2009 53
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The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 48 No 3 November 2009

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