Robert Lawarre - teapot

Robert Lawarre is a man who creates pottery and other ceramics. Lawarre was born in February 1972 in Lima, Ohio and moved to Titusville, Florida at age 13. At age 14 he started working in his familys aerospace business as a machinists student and began working on cars. In the early 1990s his family sold the business and started a stockcar race team; a continuation of a family tradition that started back in the 1960's with a dirt sprint car and an Indy team. Working for this NASCAR team allowed Robert to develop mechanical , which he used to create his unique tools from scrap automobile components, and was an important part of developing Lawarres visual language. References to automotive industry often appear on his work in the form of riveting, nuts and bolts, casting marks and upholstery stitching. Lawarre started working in clay in 1990 but did not realize his attachment to the clay medium until 1997 as he completed his AA degree at Valencia Community College under the direction of Michael Galletta. His education continued at the University of Central Florida, where he earned a BFA in Ceramics under Professors Robert Reedy and Hadi Abbas. Roberts work has been displayed at galleries and museums nationally and internationally, in total more than 100 shows in the last 7 years. His pottery extends through the USA, Canada, China, Taiwan, Austria, Croatia, Italy, France, and England where he won 19 national and international awards since 2006.

Wood, much like clay, tells many stories, like an ancient footprint. Quote of Ah Leon Born Taiwan, 1953 When Ah Leon discovered Yixing pottery, he dropped his painters brush forever. The more he learned of Chinas 500-year-old teapot-making tradition, the more deeply it impressed him. On a visit to the United States, his mastery of this ancient art came face to face with the inventive freedom of Western ceramists. Ah Leon decided to embrace both, and the results were spectacular: his teapots evolved and mutated until they were not so much teapots as, in the artists words, sculpture with teapot features. Having taken tea ware to its limit, he began making pure sculptures in which unglazed pottery is almost indistinguishable from aged wood. The desk and chair in Memories of Elementary School (2010) are a memorial to Ah Leons youth. Old and run -down like his body and those of his friends, they still evoke the playful innocence of those long-ago days. I think the best time, the happiest time in our lives was in elementary school, the artist says. We had no responsibilities; it was like heaven.