CV – Born in Switzerland. Studios in Zurich and Soazza/GR.

2001-2006: Trained as a ceramist with Mathies Schwarze
1989-1995: University of Zurich: Art History/German Philology/Philosophy (MA)
1987-1989: ETH Zurich: Architecture Department (BA)

Working as an independent artist since 1998
Member of the Swiss Ceramics Association ‘swissceramics’

WORK – I work mainly with porcelain and stoneware and make hand thrown vessels for rooms and spaces. They should create a delicate atmosphere, an unsophisticated mood – an illusion: I try to give my surroundings a touch of beauty. Even if it is only for a tiny moment.

I found clay many decades ago – when I was 17 years old I made my first tea pot, my teacher at the time, Ms Liu, showed me how – and I still shapes it into vessels: This distracts me and helps to bear many things better.

Whether as an individual piece or as a group of works – I try to find shapes, details and surfaces that irritate, awake your imagination, sometimes enchant, also make you think and burn into your memory.

For this to hopefully succeed, I need most of my energy and time: I work slowly, destroy a lot, start all over again. Take breaks. Fractions belong to my path, as do the unexpected and the unconventional.

Anyone who can endure this is right with me.

THREAD – Many people ask about the meaning of the thread that I have been using for more than fifteen years. Dr. Ronnie Watt, art historian, Canada, wrote in 2017 (s. press): .

..‘A signature decorative element which she regularly applies is a length of cotton thread which is looped through a fine hole and over the rim. The red thread is a reference to the German expression ‘der rote Faden des Erzählens’ which can be translated as ‘following your destiny’. With this leitmotiv, explains Ritsch, she ‘brings things together’ and that ‘my works are different, but the red thread holds them together’. At the same time it ‘stitches’ her works to her personal life experiences and philosophy. As a powerful albeit fragile decorative element, the thread is a visual and intellectual accent for a work but is simultaneously integral to that form because it is anchored in it.

And in my words:

Irgendwie möchte ich meine Arbeiten zusammenhalten, daran erinnern, woher sie stammen, wer sie gemacht hat – sie sind ja weltweit verstreut, der Faden hält sie symbolisch zusammen, denke ich zumindest….. Das textile Element gibt meinen Werken auch etwas Unerwartetes, vielleicht Irritierendes und das gefällt mir. Nicht zuletzt kann mit dem Faden der Arbeit eine Richtung im Raum gegeben werden: Das Stück wirkt jedes Mal leicht anders, je nachdem wohin der Faden zeigt. Mit dem Faden ist es mir auch möglich, ganz am Ende des Prozesses, also nach dem letzten Brand, mein Werk endlich fertig in die Hand zu nehmen und eine letzte Geste zu platzieren, es für meine Begriffe vollendet zu machen – und dann zu entlassen. Und jetzt – nach mehr als fünfzehn Jahren – ist er wohl zu einer Art Markenzeichen geworden.

helga ritsch, zurich, 2018