About

Anne Tournelle

Between the Béarn and the Basque Country, tucked against the foothills of the Pyrenees, a vast stone workshop now stands where the old barn once sheltered cattle for two centuries. Beneath the enormous dark oak beams, red and black clays, coated in white slip, come alive between the fingers of Anne Tournelle, who kneads, spreads, turns, lifts an edge, tips it over, fires it to the point of scorching — until ridges, cracks, and craters begin to open up.

The ceramicist observes, listens to the responses of the material, guides and steers them. She captures the light that animates this living scene, dares to go further, to the point of rupture, letting herself be surprised, delighted by the random metamorphosis of the landscapes taking shape. Cracked earths of a planet in distress, the meeting of seas and rocks, of foam and sand, the creation of imagined shores where bubbling magma seems soothed by the vitality of water, the fascinating and fragile depths of the seabed at the heart of which the artist's imagination never stops renewing itself.

Agnès Galletier, editor and basket weaver, braiding words and reeds