Eloise Stancioff

Volupte’s work is united by an underlying attention to detail, surface, and form. We research material and product much as we approach life. What makes us connect, what makes us feel good, what makes us feel alive? We work on a variety of scales from product to installation, always focusing on natural and recycled materials. We make products for that most intimate part of yourself. We research and test shape and form with a curious mind. We design spaces that fill our lives with sensuality. We are inspired by those in our life who love and live un-apologetically. We love celebrations and the good times, but Volupte is a tribute to the beauty and the poetry to the moments in between.

Q&A

Artist statement

A multidisciplinary ecosystem designer and researcher based in Madrid, Eloise (Phd in Ecosystem Services 2017) investigates participatory experiences at the intersection of technology, urban planning, and sustainable development. Her focus has alway been to understand concepts of well-being from an ecosystemic perspective, taking an ethnohistoric account of entangled situations, to tell alternative histories. She has worked in rural and agricultural landscapes researching the effects of land after monocultures and the stories we tell about cultural and land change. My exploration into biomaterials and bio-design started as I began researching different approaches to connect and incorporate into my ceramics practice. Developing these parallel disciplines is informed from my environmental background. Therefore, I am sensitive to the circular patterns of ecosystems, and well-attuned to the constant balance of resource use, destruction and creation among all living things. Yet, in the design world, we are constantly designing for one protagonist– humans. Using new materials represents different ways of experiencing my environment and its problems, which could not be perceived with the naked eye. I found it inspiring to include new materials to create a larger scope of included characters (humans, plants, microorganisms) to thereby narrate about non-human worlds while clearly coming from a human perspective. Very much connected to the life cycle in nature, I focus on the process as a tool to understand the final product. I use the term “co-creation” for the process where living beings or biotic elements participate. I rethink the works from that procedural, evolutionary, horizontal place, and how inter world links are generated/ interfields /interspecies. Co-creation between myself and place and material allows for the process to flow between living organisms. I live and work in Madrid. I am American/Bulgarian.

What craft do you work with?

Ceramic, biomaterials, metal, stone

What inspires you to work with this craft?

I like to connect with place.

How do you start your creative process?

Through research and investigation.

Are there new techniques you would like to try?

Product design with more biomaterials.