Who am I?
My name is Deborah Seles Dayan, I was born in Brazil and I live in a beautiful kibbutz in the Upper Galilee. I have 3 amazing daughters ( I'm really objective here 🙂). We really like to travel together and have pretty much plowed the world. In the picture we are walking in Bali.
In my profession, I am engaged in marketing and business development in all its various shades, but at the same time I have always engaged in some artistic field: painting, design, sculpture and more.
From a very young age I loved experimenting with different materials, I would find a branch in the field near the school and build a mobile from it combining acorns, leaves, sun-dried fruit - then, with the mobile hanging above my bed, I imagined worlds, plants and fruits from distant lands and sailed on to the next treasures. From materials that I found or recycled I made dishes, clothes, decorations and what not;
After the military service I became familiar with clay and its endless possibilities. I learned hand work techniques, created pieces of different sizes and a lot of sculptures.
Later we moved to live in Singapore and there I studied with a local ceramic artist master potter Lim Kim Hoi, who refined the techniques of building in blocks and strived to reach the perfection of the form (you could be confused and think that the vessel was made of pebbles) only to later tear a piece from the vessel or throw it on a surface and distort its perfect shape.
The process with Master Lim taught me modesty and defined quite a bit my artistic ways later on.
In the last few years, I have been working on the wheel integrating all the knowledge I have accumulated over the years.
In the tradition of Japanese aesthetics, Wabi Sabi, It is a worldview that focuses on accepting the impermanence and imperfection of situations, tools, events and life in general. The aesthetic is sometimes described as beauty that is imperfect, ephemeral, and lacking; so that the flawed thing becomes perfect because it is imperfect, innocence and natural honesty in objects and processes.
It is true that my pieces are connected to the sources I grew up with, the places I visited, the teachers I learned from, but I try to escape from perfection, and from clean lines. I will always find beuty were the glaze allow us to see the raw material under it and where the piece is curved in an unexpected way.
My pieces are useful but can also stand on their own as a special design item.
I don't work in series, so there is almost no similar piece. Even if I have made similar bowls, I will not make another set with the same glaze or engraving - so the dishes are unique.