Life & Work with Alexandra Cespedes

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Cespedes.

Hi Alexandra, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I come from the corporate world, where I have worked for fifteen years. I’m an industrial engineer, started off as a consultant, and then transitioned to Strategy Manager for my family’s construction company. I consider this work experience has given me personal and professional skills that would be of great help in my journey ahead as a potter.

I’ve always had a connection with art since I was very young: writing, playing violin, drawing, and any craft that involved the use of my hands. I started seeing art as a weekend hobby to focus on the career path I started on.

At the university, I felt the need to take up art courses whenever I could and took up pottery, photography, and philosophy courses to nurture that part of my soul. Engaging in those courses kept me curious about arts while making the most of my university years. I started thinking about my dream “Someday, I’ll have my own brand, my own creations, and studio”.

More than a decade later in Bogota, Colombia, I saw an event at a tea place to learn to make your own teacup. While learning to make a teacup using pinching, I felt a connection with clay, and my inner voice planted a seed to explore clay and pottery. The following weekend, I started taking Saturday classes with the teacher who taught at the teacup event. I went back to the wheel after more than 14 years of college and I didn’t want to stop. Working on a wheel became a way to center my thoughts. As time passed, my interest in pottery kept growing and I kept increasing the time I spent each week learning more about it.

In 2019, I got married and relocated to Phoenix, Arizona where I joined an art class at Phoenix Center for the arts and got a wheel, and set up a garage studio to continue to practice and learn.

At the beginning of 2020, I went on various studio tours to get to know local artists and find an apprenticeship. My classes were canceled due to Covid, but I kept working on my own and firing at a local business. I felt that I wanted to learn more and get guidance from a professional, so I started looking for options. I considered starting an MFA in Ceramics. I wrote to Prof. Samuel Chung, who teaches the MFA program in ceramics at Arizona State University.

I met Prof. Chung, who answered my questions very kindly, and the discussion helped me understand how MFA was more focused on the conceptual side of art and students have pre-existing knowledge of the basics. This meeting helped me clear my path as I was looking for more functional pottery with hands-on studio time.

My husband and I enjoy spending time together in the kitchen as one of the ways to connect with each other. He likes to experiment with new recipes and ingredients and surprise me with different flavors. We both come from two different culinary worlds – my Colombian roots use mild flavors whereas his Indian roots bring a variety of spices and flavors that have helped me see food being cooked and served from a new perspective.

As I continued to evolve in my skills, I also started spending more time in the kitchen. The experience inspired me to think about dinnerware and pots to reveal all the amazing colors and options Indian and Asian cooking use. I started by making serving bowls and pots to serve food on the table with my cone-6 clay. While researching clay bodies for oven use, I found an article about Robbie Lobell in Ceramics Art Network that described her work with flameware.

At that point, little did I know that my life was taking me to open the door to flameware and take my learning experience further. In a serendipitous moment, I ended up being an apprentice with Robbie through her Zakin Apprenticeship Program. This transition was unimaginable initially as we were living a settled life in Phoenix and relocating to another state was not something we had discussed.

Due to personal reasons, we decided to move to the Seattle area in a matter of a couple of weeks and as soon as I knew we were moving, I wrote to Robbie immediately asking her about the program. Neither my husband nor I had heard of Whidbey island despite having visited Seattle before.

Things started to flow – I submitted my application and met with Robbie and her partner, Maryon Attwood right after we arrived. The experience was very inviting as I saw the island, Robbie’s studio, and discussed details about the apprenticeship. Soon after, we found a place to stay and relocated to the island.

I have been an apprentice for around 15 months now and during this time my life has been enriched with acquiring new skills and honing existing ones. Along with pottery skills, the apprenticeship experience has been a way to start defining a path to live life going forward.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think it has been a long journey of self-discovery and allowing myself to believe in my dream of having my studio and creating my brand. It has been a challenge to question myself to make more room for this artistic calling and give full-time attention.

This journey has also come with valuable lessons about becoming an apprentice again: have an open mind for learning, honor the life of a crafter by practice, and practice putting out in the world something that speaks about my relationship to clay and how I interact with the world.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work is mainly functional and driven by the idea of functional pots for the kitchen and sharing around the table.

When you see my previous work (on my website www.aleclaylab.com) before the apprenticeship, it was mainly serving bowls and trays. In the past months of my apprenticeship, I’ve learned about a new clay body which is Flameware for creating cooking pots that can go on the oven, stovetop, or grill. This new clay has been an eye-opener to me and fell completely in love with this kind of clay.

I’ve created a series of prototypes and seeds for my work ahead that I want to focus on main and on the side keep working as well mostly on stoneware for the table.

I’m very proud of my decision last year to be an apprentice, to have an open mind, and to allow myself to be a beginner again to hone my skills in hand building, wheel throwing, and understanding what it is to be a potter. I could say this changed my studio work forever and also helped me to understand how much more there is to learn in this world. To be humble always to that knowledge.

I could say that I’m starting my studio, everyone’s art is unique and there is abundance for everyone who has an intention and wants to share it. My work is the fusion of where I come from merged with my connection to my husband‘s Indian roots and love for cooking and food. That is something that has been our connection and that I want to share with the world.

I would love to teach and grow a community around my studio. Pottery has brought to my life a lot of healing and meaning I have also on my mind projects related to sharing my knowledge through pottery and being a channel for people to connect with self-love, relationship with food, and being more present.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I believe that pottery being a craft has always been part of our human history, the big change I see, and I thrive also as a potter and as a human is to contribute to reducing the impact of climate change.

That aspect is about being mindful of what pots I put out there and how I use the resources in the best way possible to make a living. To encourage and join the movement of more pots and less plastic.

No matter how much technology comes to the industry, use it wisely, to respect and honor the crafters and potters before me by honoring the craft by having in mind that less is more in this fast world.

Contact Info:

• Email: aleclaylab@gmail.com
• Website: www.aleclaylab.com
• Instagram: @aleclaylab