Catherine Chavigny, contemporary sculptor

Artistic career

I discovered clay sculpture some twenty years ago, and the unique method of creation “sur le vide” developed by Monique Sidelsky, sculptor and founder of the workshop Le Cru et Le Cuit.

When I’m shaping clay, the thing I like most is watching new ideas being formed by my hands and seeing original ideas emerging. Now, it’s become a game. What was my initial intention and what became of it? I began to explore the figures of femininity, maternity andmomentum, which are still my three favorite themes today.

Over the years, I’ve learnt to avoid having overly precise ideas that can distract from what’s truly inside in favour of letting the unexpected emerge. I love the silent and patient moments of trial and error. The long moments where time seems to come to a stop, and it’s just me and the clay.

For me, embarking upon the act of sculpture is to dare to take the path of creation, intuition and exploration. It’s also about accepting the constraints of the material itself, its fragilities – and the fire. I then like to bring the pieces I create to life in a variety of ways, in bronze, resin and new materials.

I regularly run sculpture workshops to help people discover and share this creative process.

For me, sculpting means daring to take the path of creation, intuition and exploration. It also means integrating the constraints of the material,its fragility, the fire.Working with her over the years, passing on our passion to both children and adults has become essential to me. Beyond my own experience, I have observed how much this process has to offer – its richness and depth – and to what extent it could nourish and satisfy people. I am delighted to share my passion with you now as I take the leap to showcasing the fruits of several years of work.

Inspiration

I discovered clay sculpture 25 years ago, along with the unique method of creation “on the void” developed by Monique Sidelsky, sculptress and founder of the workshop Le Cru et Le Cuit. Working with this material and the infinite field of expression it offers quickly became my passion. I began to explore the concepts of femininity, maternity and momentum, which are still my three favourite themes.

In 2009, an inspiring encounter with Ateliers Stéphane Gérard led me to discover the world of new materials created for each piece through specific research.

Clay sculptures became translucent, metallic, colourful, slate, stone and opaline. Today,

clay remains my working material. . I like to bring the pieces I make to life Infinite and exciting possibilities! I explain my creative process in more detail on this page.

ways, using bronze, resin

and

new

materials. In addition, I run regular sculpture workshops to help people discover and share this creative process. I also use work with clay in a business context through workshops and training course to help managers innovate and develop their creativity.

Artistic influences

It seems to me that my sculptural work is inspired by a variety of influences.

Sculptures inspired by the primitive arts, simple forms, a desire to express the essential, a dynamic, a movement, with as much simplicity and harmony as possible.

Subjects of decades of work: women, their emancipation, the conquest of their freedom, power, the feminine, maternity, momentum.

I feel a real passion for pure lines, shapes, a call for simplicity.

Pure, rounded forms, with soft, curved lines, which don’t prevent them from having strength and power, on the contrary, a deep-seated search and desire to celebrate harmony, in reaction to approaches with abrupt, aggressive expression, and more generally to the brutality of the world that our Western world constantly shows, showing so little of its beauty, its splendor, its magic, and what goes on there that’s beautiful. A harmony that goes hand in hand with the aesthetics of form. The harmony of the human being with himself, of a mother with her child, with the world, with nature.

A resonance with biomorphism, with forms reminiscent of the organic world. In biomorphism, and this is what speaks to me, forms inspired by the living and nature, plant, animal, human, and claiming the need for thought, imagination, abstraction, to bring out the dynamic. For example, does a landscape painting show this link to living things?

I’m seduced by the idea of using abstract sculpture, inspired by reality but at the same time detached from it, to show a link to the living world that I can see, but that a figurative representation wouldn’t be able to show. The women I’ve represented almost all have a message to give on the subject of the feminine and its expression!

A great admiration for Jean Arp, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, who were also interested in the pleasure of materials, and a quest for harmony in the post-war period. Why should this quest for harmony be confined to this period? I want to express softness and power through slender, round shapes that I don’t choose, that emerge from my hands because they speak to me.

A lifelong admiration for Niki de Saint-Phalle, and her rounded, colorful women, and the link between her art, her history and her personal evolution, from anger to freedom, femininity, her relationship with joy and color, her creativity.