Local artisans | Clara Jorisch: the object of reflection

Quebec abounds with creators who make original, authentic, unique objects with their hands. The Press meet these craftsmen whose gestures and eyes give color to local design.

Isabelle Morin
The Press

Hands in the material, one foot in art and the other in design, Clara Jorisch shapes unique pieces halfway between sculpture and furniture. His creations revisit the object of function and are as many invitations to collect its decor.

As a graphic design student, Clara Jorisch knew that her professional career would take shape elsewhere than in the world of the mass object. As a graduation project, she presents broken mirrors with organic shapes, a nod to her generation, captivated by looks and images. These are the same creations that she will end up developing alongside her graphic design contracts, once she graduates.

One thing leading to another, the designer took a liking to working with glass, a complex and fragile material that has everything to ignite the curiosity of a meticulous person with a perfectionist tendency. As a good autodidact, she does her research to master the details and the technique. “I’m the type to be stubborn about things I don’t understand, to persist in materials and finishes to get exactly what I want,” says the designer who has become a craftswoman by force of circumstance. The gesture followed the creative ambition.

When she was younger, Clara already had a thousand and one furniture ideas to be born. Like father like daughter ? Illustrator Stéphane Jorisch makes furniture in his spare time. “My father had a workshop in the basement where I liked to hang out. I was not allowed to touch his tools, but I sometimes went to make some objects there. Faced with the evidence, the father ended up sharing his space, and even his tools, while his daughter moved into her own premises.

The challenge of creation

Clara Jorisch’s studio is fresh from paint applied the day before. First installed in a small studio, the designer has just migrated to the adjacent space, five times larger, where all her materials, canvases and tools are neatly stored.

“I just moved in,” apologizes the craftswoman, indicating that she feels really scattered these days. The space, filled with mirrors that reflect fragments of the decor and refract abundant natural light, seems to our eyes could not be more tidy. We remain on the lookout all the same: we will hold our breath as we pass in front of a workbench where a coffee table sits, waiting for its last leg of glass.

“I’m gradually adding layers of difficulty to the challenge,” explains the one who is currently dedicating herself to a new collection of furniture combining sheet glass and blown glass. This work succeeds the creation of pouffes resembling beach pebbles, structured by tensioned cords.

Create the single object

“Everything that is machined puts forward rounds or straight lines. Everything in town is at right angles, she notes. I like to cut myself off from the industrial world that shapes everyday objects and our environment. Clara Jorisch’s creative process is accompanied by drawings guided by gestures focused on fluidity and curves. “It wasn’t planned like that, but that’s what comes to me spontaneously. It may be me trying to get out of a graphic designer universe, but I have an affinity with all things organic”.

It is all the same premature to foresee the continuation of things, she qualifies in a refusal to partition herself. The designer is still in her infancy. “If there’s one thing that’s likely to stick around for the long haul, it’s the desire to be creative and bring all my technical knowledge to bear on new ideas. » Create… Above all, do not become a shopinsists the one who dreams of seeing her creations in museums, installations and unique settings.

“I imagine my pieces as collectibles. They aim to get us out of what is prescribed in the relationship to furniture. Take my pouf: it is possible that we choose not to sit on it, but next to it, and that we use it rather to lean on. The objects I try to get out of my head, I see as dreamy, playful and subject to interpretation. These are experiences,” she says.