EVERY DALB WOMAN HAS A UNIQUE STORY TO TELL
SUCCESS, CHALLENGES AND STYLE FROM REMARKABLE WOMEN
“Is the creative spirit an extension of the ephemeral and sensitive self or is it a separate body?” This and many other questions were tackled in our latest interview with Ana Gurduza, the founder of Ars Ana. We've got a glimpse into her life journey to becoming the artist that she is today, filled with memories and imagination.
''I am moulded to be a creator of images and stories''
ON HER FIRST STEPS IN PAINTING, GRAPHIC ART AND POTTERY
As a child, I'd dreamed of having a semi-obscure wooden attic with skylights facing green trees, a place filled with unusual objects, a museum-like collection between memory and dreaming, where I could paint. This place is now the studio, the dreamlike space of creation.
My grandfather was a wood craftsman, an art teacher, and an observer of the world. His children, including my father, drew, but for none of them did drawing become a life's pursuit. I want to believe that through me, that talent born generations ago flourishes, as I am moulded to be a creator of images and stories. My family supported me on this path and in the deviations from it.
As a child, I studied painting and literature in the privacy of my home in the Republic of Moldova, where my hand, eye, and sensitivity have grown. I was a reading child who loved to draw; this was my intimate refuge. I studied painting at the Valeriu Poliakov School of Arts in Chișinău, then almost completely stopped painting for ten years, a severe break that I couldn't understand at the time. It was the fear of the white.
The call to manual work and image never ceased to torment me, and I had to follow it eventually, like a lost paradise I longed for without even knowing it. When I founded my own studio, I felt peace, courage, faith, satisfaction, and restlessness to do and to be; I know I've found my place and purpose that I can carry for a lifetime.
''(re)shaping forms and words is more than a transformative act, it is a portal between the one who creates, me (through whom the gift of grace flows, as ancient Greeks thought), and the one who sees, who possesses an inner alphabet for decrypting to various extents mirrors of the reality of people who questioned the status quo of the world''
ON HER EMOTIONAL TOOLS FOR NAVIGATING THIS JOURNEY
In this journey I believe I’m taking the courage to leave the solid, safe ground, for an unknown one, from which I will come back as another person: through art, a person evolves into a new one.
I feel the urge to express myself and take on others with me in these weaving dreams of beauty, of play, of joy, of acknowledging life. I don't do it out of a need to express my emotions, even if what I do includes them, but as a gift to someone who can receive and recognize the beauty.
The emotions become the vehicle of creation, a language with its own vocabulary where letters are colours, shapes, proportions, framing, lines, dynamics, and depth. I am learning this alphabet so that I can speak the language of feelings, to convey them, not just to pour them out into the world. I wish that through this inward journey to purify its forms, to become more and more expressive, so that what I feel passes on from the individual level to one where it can speak to others.
ON HER IDENTITY AS AN ARTIST, BORN TO INTERPRET AND (RE)SHAPE FORMS AND WORDS
Thank you! I want to believe I am an artist. I think that only time can show if I am one. It is a privileged “name” one could earn in this life.
I question more the source of this identity, not my talent or my work-oriented manifestation of the artistical act, trying to get closer to understanding the divine source for all things taking shape, from the thought to the final piece. Is the creative spirit an extension of the ephemeral and sensitive self or is it a separate body activated by the act of creation? Here I am reminded of the nature of the first photographic images that were exposed as an art form, being categorized, phenomenologically speaking, as windows or mirrors. The window image is one oriented towards the outside, the seen world. The mirror is a reflection of the inner world put into image. I want to believe that I am one of those whose soul is a strainer through which, actions, glances, acts can reflect the inner reality.
People and objects are interpreted sensitively so that we can speak through them. It is an opportunity to play, to illuminate the dark nights, to transpose oneself into a story. That is to say, (re)shaping forms and words is more than a transformative act, it is a portal between the one who creates, me (through whom the gift of grace flows, as ancient Greeks thought), and the one who sees, who possesses an inner alphabet for decrypting to various extents mirrors of the reality of people who questioned the status quo of the world through colour, letters, notes, movements, materials, forms or ideas by reshaping the imaginary worlds we did not see before them.
ON WHY DID SHE CHOOSE TO CREATE IN ROMANIA AND WHAT DOES THE COUNTRY MEAN TO HER
I am as a tree, with the branches towards the sky and the roots anchored deep in the ground. I create objects being inspired by our culture, our words and images. The richness of one culture emerges from craftsmanship and tactile uniqueness. Inspiration from defining stories about humanity, with sensitivity to the intangible heritage and the Romanian cultural background. I want an object to be recognized at first glance as belonging here, to the oneiric space of enchantments, words, traditional femininity and stories.
All of this result in collections of projects around ceramics and illustration that carry a timeless dimension of space and time.
What I embroider surpasses me and exists in each of us; it’s the moment when you feel like remembering something you have never experienced before. Often I find myself going back to childhood, when things had no measure and time, our clocks ran backwards, we did not know that we had to be in a certain way, we enjoyed playing, we were authentic.
I look for these fragments of identity in the things I make. It is about our personal and collective intangible heritage, the stories we grew up with, the long family meals, the poems woven with memories, the symbolism of the old wooden house, the garden, the flying of the fish and birds, or my mother's face. I want to bring them outside, into the present, to transpose these images into the contemporary, updating them through a graphic style that is specific to me, which is related to the way the mind dictates the movements of the hand.
With this thought I developed a minimalist collection of postcards with Romanian sayings, started few years ago and still growing, today having around 50 illustrated expressions. The book Winged Words, Romanian illustrated proverbs, is the peak of this project, done in collaboration with architect Alexandra Mihailciuc.
The project starts from old thoughts around Romanian proverbs. Noting the bundle of truth contained in a few words, we wanted to put on paper ideas about the synthesis of the traditional spirit.
It is our formula for approaching the intangible heritage, which is the stake of the proposed book. In this sense, the project is a form of re-recovery of the traditional linguistic layer essential to be preserved in the process of transforming expressiveness.
''I cannot imagine a world without blue''
ON HER WHITE-BLUE-BLACK CHROMATIC
My heart loves blue.
This colour, which belongs to something volatile and unattainable like the sky and the sea, both unforgettable, revolves around my soul and shapes me. It influences and transmits the need for the invisible, for the etherical substance, for the desire to live and to create. Certainly, it is reflected in my identity, my home and my wardrobe:)
I cannot imagine a world without blue, in different gradients and shades. I bring the same eulogy to the symbol-colour, the sky-colours, walking upwards, especially through deep blue, the colour of the invisible.
ON WHERE DOES THE SOUL END AND THE ARTWORK STARTS
The relationship between thinking and making (creation), as a reformulation of soul and artwork, idea and execution is for me a continuum, or phases of the same circle. The imagination of the hand as an independent force, that it sometimes surpasses the one of the thoughts. It gains an independent life and submits to thinking. To speak the language of the matter you possess, to understand its character so that it flourishes in its most specific way. There is not a delimitation between the thought and the object as artwork. This does not mean that the thought will progress and aim to be a piece of artwork. In the discovery of matter and the idea, or the soul of the thought and emotion starts with the primordial intention of being on this earth. The life of the material, the hand and the idea of the soul are going together, in my understanding.
Working with the hands, and especially in art, teaches you to be to be introspective and to observe the multiple interrogations of your own self, which is then reflected in the art created. Intimacy with the matter, the attention paid to a fragile object, which depends on the play of hands, stimulates observation, attention and creativity. You catch yourself frolicking in the field of childhood with your grandmother who no longer exists or climbing a tree of the future that will never grow. The soul becomes the Object.
In this sense the artist has the mission of shovelling its soul. In the state of search, especially in an induced observation and non-thinking pulse, all outside and inside become generative. The objects become afterwards the wing of the soul, of the house, of existence, at least it has the potential to be, that is why, we, as humanity, value broken pieces of the past. They are not matter, they are pure essence.
ON WHO WOULD SHE HAVE LIKED TO PAINT HER PORTRAIT
I would have loved a portrait from Nichita Stănescu, a portrait in a poetry, for me to remain on the stones of the letters.
ON THE BEST ADVICE RECEIVED AND THAT SHE'D LIKE TO PAY FORWARD
You are an artist, others just don’t know it yet, but we know and you know.
(my friend, the poet, Laura Muruzuc)
ON A TIMELESS PIECE THAT SHE'D WEAR ON REPEAT
I believe a timeless piece is the underdress, the transparent, silky white night dress, the “ghostly” curve of a textile over a naked body.
ANA's OUTFIT PICKS