I am Silvia Barrios, I began this crazy and so nice way in art, naturally, painting with a nice group, near my house in Adrogué.

I have always been a restless spirit. The time, the dedication that I put and still put to searching, is what makes the result be interesting to me. That’s how in a little time and without realizing, I was attending to eight different courses, and not to many more, just because I didn’t have any more time during the day. After some time, I chose my teachers. Today, I’m very happy to have met them.

First: Ernesto Pesce, a great drawer in my country, and Art College Teacher, excellent person, with whom I took drawing classes with live models at the Bellas Artes National Museum. Simultaneously, I began to study painting with plastic artist Jorge Gonzalez Perrin, also a teacher at the Art College in Buenos Aires, a great human being, in firt place. I have always been fascinated about his simplicity at the resolution of fantasy projects. His paintings are special, like having its own life, “very different to what is seen in the Art Circuit.” That’s what thrilled me. With him, I began to break off with the traditional and “rather academic” style. In that way, nursing from his experience and personality, I reinforced myself to begin walking along that magic route, full of fantasy and wonders, a route that is still alive these days.

Also, among other teachers, I attended classes with the outstanding Oscar Smoje, nowadays the Palais de Glace National Exhibition room Director, a person that marked my way of expression, since I began to show my feelings in a completely different way; it was the contrary to everything that I was doing at that moment, it was the “limit,” incorporated within the freedom of expression. In my first class, I showed him some photos of my previous works, and also what I had done when I was studying in Florence. At that moment, he advised me to stop attending classes and to begin working on my own. I was aware that I could be on my own, but still I needed to assure myself. That’s how I went on attending to his classes at his workshop in Palermo Soho, in Buenos Aires, but the demanding new projects I was carrying on, and the frequent trips, obliged me to stop attending to his classes, though his remembrance and teaching are alwys present in my work.

It was the moment when I needed to add something else to my knowledge: “Sculpture”

One day, as any other day, being at the Centro Cultural Borges, where I was attending a workart analysis seminar, and running over works of art, I knew about ceramist and sculptor, Vilma Villaverde’s work. It was like discovering “that something” so fascinating that I needed, just at the appropriate moment. Her work amazed me. It was the retrospective of her thirty years in Ceramics. I felt like being inside that world of characters, walking along different moments in history: monasteries, neighbourhoods, family, friend, tenement houses, “tango”, my country, past and present. I dreamed about being able to do, some day, a little of that whole, and identify myself with my work, as she does with hers. Vilma Villaverde, with her characteristic simplicity, was present at the show room, She was there everyday and she handed in catalogs herself, something that, in my country, artists do only the inauguration day. It was the moment where I realized the step I should take. I approached her to congratulate her on her work and I told her I would like to begin studying with her. At that moment she was too busy with trips abroad that required her presence, so she wasn’t accepting more pupils, but my insistence and reiterated phone calls to her, asking for some classes whenever and wherever she could, resulted in her accepting me to get classes twice a week. And that’s how I began this marvelous way to Ceramics. She, with her usual kindness, offers me all of her knowledge and experience, as tools to perform my work. To share so many hours working together was and is a pleasure. Time passed without me realizing about it.

One day she introduced me to his great teacher Leo Tavella, about whom she is very proud; she takes his work to any country or event she goes to. Leo Tavella, a wonderful person: he is experience, hi is generosity a Great Master of teachers, It is really fascinating to see this eighty-seven-year old ceramist and sculptor at work. He reaches me with clear solutions and he gave me the possibility to feel sure about the use of the materials, their combinations, where everything may be transformed and achieved. He also gave me the possibility to reach freedom and make use of it in my works.

My constant necessity to incorporate new experiences, to nurture from different thoughts, while being so near these great Masters of my country, enable me to grow not only as a human being but also as an artist. My works are based on the existence that surrounds me, on my background and on my own experiences.

The backing and affection from my family and my friends, since the very beginning, were and still are, the prime mover in this process, where I get the chance to express, freely, what I feel.

Being backed gives me an incredible impulse and strength to my feelings, and my works are coming out one after the other, and that turns to be a personal achievement since a part of me and moments of my life, will go on living in those works for ever. Today, I prefer abstract forms of expression seeking for harmony, and that is what gives me the possibility to communicate with nature and society in a spiritual way. Modeling with clay allows me to transform the elements; the strength of earth along with the magic of fire, makes my way to creation, easier. And that’s the point when clay becomes Ceramics, and it into……..whatever it might be! Ceramics provided me the wonderful possibility to rediscover myself; to go back to my childhood when I behaved just following my heart, when everything was a game, in the middle of made-up stories. It was then, when my first contact with mud took place: to model little things, like cookies, as part of a naïve game of freedom.

Nowadays, with this fascinating task, I recover that child that is still within me. Modeling is the moment in which I need silence and solitude, to keepthought- independence; it is the moment when I think that everything is clearer and more harmonious. It is the moment when I feel Bliss!!

Silvia Barrios
Buenos Aires, September 4th, 2007
Argentina