Emil Yanos Design



Emil Yanos Design

About The Artist

Emil Yanos • Napa, CA
Ceramics • WHOLESALE AVAILABLE • CUSTOM COMMISSIONS

Clay allows me to explore it’s many textural options. Each piece plays with contrasting surfaces: rough vs. smooth; matte vs. shiny; large-scale vs. small-scale to add visual depth and tactile interest. Textures envelop the surfaces of forms and are an invitation to touch. I work from both memory and photography. My work records both that is real and perceived. The marks and textures help to create sensations, that I would want you to experience both through my work and in nature.



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Q&A with the Artist

Tell us how your work is made.

Some pieces are thrown in part, then added to other pieces to create a compound form. Other pieces are formed from slabs which have been molded into a shape, then combined with other pieces to create a compound form. Still other pieces start off as tiles. Once the form is created, texture is applied either by carving, impression or by addition of clay bits. Layers of colorants are applied, then the piece goes through its first firing. More colorants and "glazes" are applied and goes through its second firing. Additional rounds may continue until the desired effect is achieved.


What makes you passionate about the medium you work with?

My work is an examination of texture. Clay is a great medium to explore texture because it reacts differently at its different stages of dryness. Texture can be carved into clay, objects can be impressed into clay. The clay itself can be stretched or torn creating different textures. Clay provides so many options to explore texture, more avenues of texture are opened, the more I explore.

What is something unique about you or your practice?

Familiarity is what makes my work unique. My use of texture and color are familiar in a way that they resemble something that you may know, but it is presented in a way that it becomes unrecognizable. I don't try to duplicate on object, I try to replicate the expression of an object.