Artist Lily Lanfermeijer (NL) is at the EKWC to produce a series of works for Biotoop, a temporary outdoors exhibition in Amstelveen. She’s making five large spinning tops from various eras, decorated with different 20-century patterns and matching colours. Some pressed into Styrofoam moulds, others built by hand, the tops are about ten times larger than life. Designed to be shown  on the lawn opposite a retirement home, they are likely to evoke nostalgia in the elderly. But the spinning tops – a toy children would typically play with in the streets – also reflect on the way people view their surroundings.

“At EKWC I took the freedom to pursue my studio practice in an unconstrained way, to experience what could unfold in the midst of this amply facilitated context. Although clay played a role in my practice early on, this was my first elaborate acquaintance with the ceramic process. Something that initially meant a case of adjustment.

“But as soon as I really began to understand the characteristics of clay, also regarding drying and firing; once I learned to respond to its workings, its own pace, its many possibilities, and many more limits, I was sold. It was like a loving, careful kind of engendering something completely earthy and natural, in which I could lose myself entirely at the same time.

“More than with other techniques, the art turned out to lie in working through what clay needs as a material, what it is willing and able to do. Much less in terms of what I had in store with it. Until the clay and I really aligned, we achieved our first successes dancingly, and I was kindly requested, after three months of blissful courtship, to leave the building.”