Under a Full Moon
on clay, pearls, and the quiet stubborn power of becoming
I started working with ceramics in October 2022. I had been dreaming about trying the pottery wheel for years and years, always delaying, always telling myself it wasn’t the right time, that I had more important things to focus on. In the autumn of 2022 I was going through an emotional turmoil: having come back to live with my parents in my hometown after six years on my own in Milan, navigating a new career path, the one of an artist, which came as a blessing and as a crux at the same time. Having difficulties navigating a lot of my feelings. Struggling on mental health levels. Somehow I discovered that 20 minutes by car from where I was living, some pottery courses were held. So I just enrolled.
I will never forget the first time I touched this material with my bare hands. Kneading it, feeling its wet weight on my skin. My mind could finally detach from its own line of thoughts and I could just be present, only me and the clay, this raw earth piece of miracles.
It was love at first touch.
And so I started a journey. Multiple courses over the following months and years, always exploring, always going deeper into this world that is so endless and always, always magical.
I had found something that was time for myself, but also a way to express myself with a different medium. Ceramic taught me the patience of doing things analogically, for me, so used to digital spaces and the Ctrl+Z command, clay was an incredible teacher. It taught me to trust my touch. To leave a mark and let it change form. To give shape to my visions. To understand the process of transformation.
Because that’s what clay is: a transformative material. You can recycle it over and over with water, until it is fired. This everchanging material can be crystallised only by heat, by the fire of a kiln. And fire is an incredible symbol of change, transformation, rebirth.
(For those very well informed about my work and art journey, you might already know about my unpublished poetry collection: Bonfire ;))
I made lots of objects in ceramic. Some I was very proud of, others not so much. But I kept trying, experimenting, exploring.
Around December 2024, after two years in this world, after finishing a ceramic jellyfish windbell and looking for new ideas I started thinking about shell-like forms.
To be completely honest, it came from something I had written a few months before that, for Bonfire itself:
“…on this fishnet, I’ve been caught for long, captive. Break the shell, take my pearl, wear it on your neck with pride. For I am nothing but a trophy to your power.”
It might sound harsh without context. But this is where it all started.
Oysters generate pearls as a defense mechanism. Their intention is never to create something beautiful, it’s to stay safe within their shells. That is how it felt: all the trauma, all the childhood sadness and pain. Layer by layer, coated and enclosed, until something that began as a wound became something you carried around without even recognising it anymore.
There's an old belief that under the full moon, oysters rise to the surface and open themselves. That pearls are born from that act of opening. Maybe that's what I was doing too.
That’s how I started imagining oyster necklaces. I made the first prototypes with the idea of gifting one to a dear friend, for the history we shared, for the common ground that connected us, it felt like a true calling. I made a few to see if I could make something I’d consider good enough.
And I made my first batch of oysters.
I got a little fixated, honestly. It was conceptually so close to finally bringing together my ceramic practice and my digital artist’s one, it felt like putting together two parts of the same world that had never actually been separate, but that in my mind were finally, visibly, meeting. I moved from necklaces to trays, to little sculptures to hang on the wall. Different clays, different decorations, different colors, different everything.
Am I an oyster boi now? Yes. I think I am, ahahah
But beside all of that, truly, it kept me going.
This became a project with a much deeper impact on me than just making cute necklaces to wear or gift my friends.
Still navigating the uncertain terrain of being a full-time artist, having this weekly appointment with my oysters at the ceramic lab was truly important. It gave me structure. It gave me joy. It gave me something to do in the time I would otherwise spend worrying too much about everything.
I surrendered myself to the process. To ceramic timing, to unpredictable outcomes. I learned how to let go, to not get attached too much to an idea, to a design, to a specific result. To slow down. To actually enjoy the time of creating instead of being fixated on the outcome. It focused me back on practice. On the action of making. On the quiet, stubborn power of becoming.
And then, slowly, I started to understand what I was actually making.
As an adult, I had to look back and see the shell I had so meticulously constructed around myself, preventing anyone from breaking in, trying to never lose the safety of my fort. But these architectures of the mind had to crumble, one by one, in the realization that seclusion is not real healing. It is just a very convincing imitation of safety.
In my life I’ve come to many turning points, many moments of awareness and breakthrough, epiphanies of logical response. But it was always, and only, through art, through making, that I could transform a revelation into reality and finally own it.
Turning clay into the shapes of oysters and pearls is a way to claim power over my own trauma and sadness. It is a way to show the raw version of myself: no walls, open shells, visible pearls. A mechanism of revelation.
In the original poem that inspired all of this: “break the shell, take my pearl”, I was giving my power away: I was the thing pried open, the trophy. By creating this art, I am revolutionizing, turning the whole narrative upside down.
To wear one of these oysters became, for me, a way to show myself. To call myself accountable. To be truthful. To stop hiding. To finally be an open oyster, with all my imperfections, with all my flaws, but ultimately, completely, myself.
If any part of this landed somewhere in you, come find your oyster.
Every piece is handmade, unique.
this is beautiful!! and i can see so many parallels between our journeys ✨ maybe we can collab someday on a special piece