Artist
Juan Manuel
Martínez CallejaCeramic artist · Workshop in Tamajón, Guadalajara
Before the clay came the eye. Spaces, objects, the way they live together: everything Juan Manuel chooses says something about him. Ceramics gave him the language to say it with his hands.
Origin
At the foot of the Ocejón
Tamajón has been with Juan Manuel since childhood: the place where the plain gives way to the mountains. Today he works there, in the shadow of the Ocejón. Whenever he can, he heads up the mountain; some of what he gathers there ends up in his pieces.
Tamajón
Clay
The first encounter
Some fifteen years ago, Juan Manuel had to choose between the brush and the clay. He chose the clay, almost without knowing why, and from the very first day he knew he would come back.
Craft
The patience of the hands
Years of workshops, of teachers and of trials. In La Bisbal, a land of potters, he learnt to read the materials of each place; the rest the clay teaches him, piece by piece.
Ways of seeing
What surrounds him
What matters to Juan Manuel is what a photograph cannot hold: the weight of an object, the way the light touches it, the silence it gathers around it. His sanctuary says it without words.
Today
Calleja Estudio
Today, Juan Manuel searches within the material itself: blends of clay, ashes, glazes he prepares himself. Calleja Estudio gathers that work: pieces to be looked at closely and lived with.
The work