Taking The Leap | Lysanne Larose | Episode 782

Lysanne Larose| Episode 782

A fully bilingual shameless punster who lives in Montreal / Tiohtià:ke, Lysanne Larose handbuilds ceramics in her tiny home studio. Lysanne likes bright colours, patterns, and textures, which she tries to translate into bowls, cups, and other wares. Lysanne describes her style as Maximalist with a side of Mother Earth.

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How did you know that you were actually ready to go full time?

I don’t know. I just was ready. With a flower the bud needs to open. It just knows the right time so I don’t have a definitive answer but it was just something that I deeply, deeply, need to do. I looked at my options at work and I said to my boss, Well, I kinda need to do this. While it is not convenient for them it just comes from something deep within. I need to make art after making science for 25 years.

Do you see yourself bringing some of that scientific technique into ceramics?

No, that’s the funny part. I tend to be a very systematic. I am good at the minutia but for ceramics it’s like I am using another part of my brain. I am much more intuitive. It’s a very different part of me some how.

When you plan out a year like this is it important to have a plan?

Well, I don’t have a big one right now. Basically I have been so busy with work that when I get off my desk at the end of my day I am tired and my brain is fried. So I would like to take the first month that is coming up and just sit down and think and not react. I have been reacting for the last 18 months at work and I just don’t have time to think. So I want to sit down and write for myself and not for someone else. And write out what I am going to do. And obviously, residencies, it’s a number’s game someone told me. A friend told me basically you have to apply to a lot of them and hope that you get one or two.

In regard to your work how do you define its own voice?

How do I define my voice? Well in another interview I once described my work as maximalist with a side order of nature. So I think that is the voice of my work. Right now I am doing small objects that are very colorful and textured and I have some ideas for some other objects that will be more natural actually but I don’t know. I want to make these really large vessels, like rocks. I don’t know how to define my work yet because I have not been long enough at it.

You have a safety net but how much of this is a sheer leap of faith?

It is a leap of faith. It’s just that I know if I really splat I can go back. As I said earlier I have imposter syndrome, so here I am a person, a middle aged woman who leaving every thing behind and doing something she is not trained in aside from my own self education. I’m self-taught. I’ve got my own studio. I can explore.

What do you do in your down time when you haven’t got clay or you haven’t got work?

Aside from scrolling too much on Instagram, going for bike rides, which I hope to resume soon because some how the pandemic was not so good for bike rides, but I am an avid cyclist. For my fiftieth birthday I decided I needed to do what’s called an imperial century. An imperial century is 100 miles. So I trained up for that.

Wow.

Yeah, so I did my imperial century and my butt was indescribably sore. But I did it!