Ciara Isabel Neufeldt German, b. 1994

Ciara Neufeldt (b.1994, Düsseldorf) is an artist, craftsperson and educator, receiving her MA Ceramic from Konstfack, Stockholm in 2023. 

 She uses techniques such as Nerikomi to create her striking works, building up heavily patterned, ornamental and adorned surfaces. 

Somatic understanding provides a theoretical framework within her practice, as she seeks to use the body as a tool both in making, but also in how we perceive the objects and environments surrounding us.

Using craft as a catalyst for joy, she explores a reimagining of ordinary public spaces and objects. She seeks to create more inclusion and accessibility to art. This also extends to her work as an educator; she has significant experience facilitating community-outreach workshops, to create more accessibility to art and ceramics in daily life.

This series of ceramic paintings explore a somatic response to new surroundings, translated into clay. 

These paintings were made during residency at Villa Lena, Italy, in June of 2024. A departure from the usual structures of my practice, I experimented with a heavily grogged black clay, as a backdrop to thickly applied layers of coloured clay slip. They explore a softer palette, combined with heavy texture. Sodium silicate was added, to change the viscosity of the clay, resulting in a thick glossy application and crackles over the surface. 

While there are hints at Nerikomi pattern making, a technique affiliated with my practice, these paintings are a tactile and expressive outpouring of feeling. They hold the experience of my time in Italy; the landscape, colours and movement of my experience are embodied within the paintings themselves.