¡Hola! I live in Los Angeles with my partner and Perla, the queen cat. This website collects my current explorations into shape and form through knitting and ceramic.
I make critical yet delightful civic performative designs among other things. However when I try to explain my day-to-day work I am often asked “but what do you actually make?” meaning “what objects do you make with your own hands” I am fundamentally interested in designing scenarios where objects bring people together and facilitate a physical and symbolic social action. Examples include multiple dozen hand-knit anthropomorphic pieces for people to build their own spirit vessels. The confusion some experience when I explain civic performative designs amuses me -yet I get it! Not a lot with my actual hands.
The projects on this website serve as conduits to explore broad questions of my creative identity including “But what do I actually make with my hands?”
The “Knits that shatter” and “Dinnerware for Cookie Monsters” collections are my current focus. “Knits that shatter” are my personal synthesis of knitting and ceramics. “Dinnerware for Cookie Monsters” reimagines what dinnerware would be if your main form of substance were cookies. These collections are meant for me to build skills as a knitter, ceramist and object maker. While the project is limited in its scope, I find knitting and ceramics an engaging medium and hope to incorporate it more into how I relate to people.
Really, they are an excuse to push my skills as a three-dimensional maker in a way that brings me joy.
With gratitude,
Maria del Carmen Lamadrid