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Biography

Thivô was born in Vietnam of Chinese and Vietnamese parents.  From her earliest years she found herself fascinated by art in all forms, an interest her parents nurtured.   Later, she moved to France for more formal and professional training, including  attending  the world-famous  Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Her early artistic efforts were split between painting and ceramics.  But shortly after moving to New York City in the 1970s,  Thivô realized that her true calling was in ceramics, to which she thereafter devoted nearly all her time.  In particular, she came to focus on a very special art form that requires great skill in hand building ceramics from colored layers of clay.  This complicated and demanding technique is called Nerikomi.  

Today, Thivô is one of just a very few artists primarily building Nerikomi vessels.  It is a very time consuming technique, being quite labor intensive.  But the results can be both particularly beautiful and unique.  Her subject matter incorporates a host of multicolored themes:  flowers, landscapes, dancers and abstract designs.  Many of her works are inspired by lands she has visited, and animal and marine life she has observed.   Her work has been featured at many prestigious art shows and galleries, and her  ceramic studio is currently located in the Wynwood Art District of Miami, Florida.  

 

  

Nerikomi Technique

The word Nerikomi is Japanese in origin.  However the art of making fired vessels from myriad pieces of colored and stained clays has been practiced more broadly, and for far longer, than this  accepted name would imply.  In fact, Nerikomi of a sort was practiced by Egyptian, Roman and early French potters. And as an independent art form it probably reached its zenith during the Tang Dynasty in the 7^th and 8^th Centuries.

To create Nerikomi ware, clay is mixed with ceramic stains and metal oxides.  The colored clays are rolled into slabs, then stacked, folded and pressed to form a log.  Slices of the log are cut, stretched, twisted and arranged in a mold to form a vessel.

This technique allows the pattern to penetrate through the vessel wall so that the identical pattern is visible on both inside and outside the vessel.  The formed vessel is allowed to dry to leather hard consistency when both the internal and external walls are painstakingly scraped to a uniform thickness.  Forming, trimming and smoothing the vessel’s edges and any piercing of the walls of the vessel are also completed prior to bisque firing.  Once fired,  the vessel is carefully cleaned and inspected.  Those vessels which pass this inspection are given a coat of transparent glaze and refired to provide a uniform and smooth transparent surface.

Nerikomi is a true thief of the artist’s time.  Of all ceramic  techniques, it is perhaps the most time consuming.  Yet it offers  limitless opportunities to create distinctive colored designs and patterns within each piece of work.  For example, traditionally Nerikomi has been limited to the creation of functional objects.  But Thivô has expanded its application to many beautiful sculptural forms and vessels.

Every piece is one-of-a-kind artwork.  In some of Thivô’s work, holes of varying sizes and shapes, random or in patterned series, pierce the surfaces.  She calls them “windows”.  She compares them to the “windows” in the landscapes, the hollows and gaps in trees, clefts in rocks,  and cavities under big tree roots.

About Nerikomi, Thivô says, “Working with colored clays is a challenge and always difficult.  Nevertheless, this technique allows me to uniquely integrate forms, surfaces, colors and contrasts.  The translations of color and texture, and of light and shadow, literally move and change through the wall of each vessel.”

 

     

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