[Image above] Credit: Art Insider, YouTube
When you mix science with art while embracing imperfection, beautiful things happen.
Sabri Ben-Achour, an artist who makes his living as a reporter, creates unusual ceramics inspired by the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi—finding beauty in imperfection.
He developed his own artistic method by mixing powerfully strong magnets into clay to create distinctive stalactite-looking “spindles.”
Credit: Art Insider, YouTube
Ben-Achour also uses electroforming to incorporate copper crystals into some of his works:
Credit: Art Insider, YouTube; Sabri Ben-Achour, Instagram
And he uses self-cracking clay to create irregular patterns in his other pieces:
Credit: Art Insider, YouTube
Ben-Achour also mixes gold into his glazes for some of his works:
Credit: Art Insider, YouTube
The artist says he is inspired by nature, like zoo animals, the outdoors, or through his travels.
“I see these things and they stick in my mind and I think, ‘how can I find that; how can I make that happen? Can I create the conditions in the clay, in this material, to replicate that?'” he asks in the video.
“I try and unlock what the natural world has to show us…I think people are primed to find beauty in the orderly disorder of nature.”
In other words—wabi-sabi.
Watch the video below to see the artist demonstrate his techniques.
Credit: Art Insider, YouTube
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