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Info
Mini introduction on who you are, where you are from and what you do.
I am Pedro Matos Fortuna (Setúbal 1962), PhD in Fine Arts, Painting, from Faculty of Fine Artes, University of Lisbon, Portugal, where I teach. I am a co-founder of Vicarte – glass and ceramics for the arts, a research unit developing materials and speaches on art and science meeting. I live in Palmela, where I also have my studio. My time is therefore divided between teaching and creating ceramics, which is simultaneously a form of research.
What makes you passionate about your craft/profession?
Ceramics is a material associated with a vast technology that continually challenges us through an open door to materials and the world, and another, to material construction and personal expression. However, artistic authorship and teaching are different ways of putting this technology into the field.
When a piece of mine expresses what I feel, or I identify myself with what the piece seems to say, I feel the great pleasure of identity. When I reach an understanding with the people I teach and feel their interest and commitment, I feel the great pleasure of belonging to a community.
Why does craft matter?
Craft matters because it traces the great connection between materials, not only natural, but also created, and the existence of produced object – an object that satisfies a basic or mental need. It is the form of the work, however, that elevates the satisfaction of this basic need to a “higher” level, through a generous or surplus provision, giving more than what is strictly necessary to protect ourselves from the cold, drink and eat, rest, or travel.
I simultaneously understand the craft as essential for the construction of the discourse/artistic work. It is what gives shape to a thought or feeling, and distinguishes the writer from the musician, the dancer, the photographer, the painter… and adapts to the needs of individual expression, allowing for difference. This knowledge is a corpus, open, but defined in each cultural moment, which must be defended, preserved, and communicated. We cannot stop knowing how to make a boat, a bowl, or a bed.