Ceramicist Bryan Omar Juarez started out working with architecture firms, designing furniture and textiles, but he always wanted to work for himself.
When the Los Angeles wildfires burned across the city in January, he took it as an opportunity to finally do it, and he began by creating tiles.
He produced some of these tiles last month as an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center.
Every year, the ranch welcomes artists from around the world for its artists-in-residence program in Snowmass Village.
Artists are typically expected to front some of the costs of the program, but in October and November, the ranch hosted 15 artists affected by the wildfires for free.
Aspen Public Radio’s Regan Mertz spoke with Omar Juarez in his makeshift studio about the tiles he worked on while at the ranch, and how he’s had to pivot since the wildfires broke out.
The transcript below has been edited for clarity and length.
Bryan Omar Juarez: Kansas City is among the chief technical schools for ceramics. They have this incredible legacy.
I was there for seven years, and I moved to St. Louis for a year. I didn't really like it as much. Then, I went back home to L.A., and then the pandemic happened right away.
I had a hard time afterwards, because the jobs are smaller. I kind of decided to pivot.
So, I guess the pandemic is kind of the start of this, and then the houses started burning.
We couldn't even exercise. There's some camping sites that I've been to that are burn scars.
I lost all of my open contracts. Everyone just said, “We're gonna fold.” It sucked.
Everything shut down.
There was nothing I could do that didn't rely on anybody else. I needed to do something, and so I was like, ‘I'm gonna go in the studio.’
I think that if I make compelling artwork, perhaps my own ideas are strong enough to stand by themselves. And I might have a personal legacy that's based on my ideas, thoughts and actions, rather than working for a marketing firm.
I was thinking a lot about the Manzanita. It's like a very specific scrubby desert plant. Things go well when it catches fire.
My focus here has been to try and build a body of work very specifically related to tile. It aligns with me.
I am deeply affected by interior spaces. I've always been interested in the beingness of a place and inviting people into the beingness of a place. And I think that tile does that really successfully.
I've developed six separate tiles. They all tile differently. So some of them are six sided, some of them are four sided. Most are five.
It speaks to order, right?
If I can start with this pretty Neanderthal-level technology — press molds — putting clay in the molds and firing it, and I like that.
I like that my hands are touching every single piece. And I like that, even though they are kind of damaged, or have a little juzz on them, that when you get them in a symphony all that disappears.
And the reason that I'm here is because tragedy befell a city that I love, and the people here decided, ‘Hey, we should do something about that.’
The imagery is so whack, but it's like [a] phoenix rising from ashes. Just generally, it wouldn’t be such a powerful historical archetype if it wasn’t a powerful historical archetype, like it obviously carries some sort of weight.
And on the other hand, what's a better creative force than sheer destruction, right?
Clay specifically is something like that. We're taking mud and turning it into pretty much glass with science and fire.
There is something alchemical that we're doing here, and I think that the ranch is an excellent opportunity to share that with people.
Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation.
