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Tale of a Porcelain Mud Spinner: Ludmila Evans Ceramicist

Updated: Jan 27, 2021

To spin a lump of mud, fine clay, into a vessel that is a work of art is no easy thing, but Ludmila creates just such exceptional pieces with ease.

Her color palette is delicate, subtle barely there greens or with brush strokes of brilliant blues, earthy red browns and splashes and dots of gleaming real gold. Combine this sublime use of color with the creative expert execution of a vessel and voila! Art in a ceramic vessel is born.


Ludmila was born in Czechoslovakia and emigrated with her family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when she was only 3 years of age. She recalls her family bringing, hidden in their luggage beautiful Czech glass pieces, leaving just before the country was closed by the Soviet regime. As a child she loved looking at the glowing colors and holding the elegantly shaped glass vessels.

Ludmila remembers the beautiful woods surrounding her home in Pennsylvania and developed a deep love of nature in all its forms, but especially an appreciation of flowers and birds which influences her art works today.

Her Uncle Stephan, a doctor of Philosophy and Economics, was a great influence on her development as an artist, having long conversations with her about art, Michelangelo, philosophy, politics and history. During these talks with her uncle she discovered an ancestor in Czechoslovakia had also been a ceramicist.

In high school Ludmila studied art at the Carnegie Mellon School of Art, where she was drawn to the paintings of the old European tradition, especially the Dutch Master paintings, and later the ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISTS. She went on to study in a 5 year program at the Cleveland Institute of Art, then was married and moved to Canada where she was accepted as a post graduate at the Alberta College of Art and the Banff School of Fine Arts. Her classes were intensive and taught her to have a disciplined approach to her art, not waiting for the mood to create, but to get in the studio every day and work at it.

Ludmila’s palette of colors for her ceramic vessels are influenced by the climates where she has lived. For years she was influenced by northern climes, living in Canada before moving to Florida. Her sensitivity to climate and color is expressed from the the palest of hues to the most brilliant and saturated of colors.

Ludmila’s love of “Ikebana”, a Japanese style of minimalist flower arranging is the inspiration for her current vessels. She grows many types of flowers in her Florida garden and using the aesthetic principles of Ikebana, she creates vessels to showcase that style and the tropical Florida flowers.


“As a Ceramicist, I like to thread through the world, in its cultures and archetypes as a context, reflected in expressions of mysticism, function, decoration and play and mix in some of my personal “mud” and “have at it”. Ludmila Evans


Ludmila Evans porcelain works of art are on view, for sale at the Tower Gallery on Sanibel Island. Her art is also available for purchase on the Tower Gallery web site towergallery.net

 


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