Raw Gallery

A narrow road through the architecturally rich Felanitx, Mallorca, leads me to a new space recently opened by two fascinating creatives.

As I walk along looking upwards, the town reminds me of a past romantic golden age when it was a thriving epicenter of the rural fortunes, mostly based on wine production decades ago.

I make my way up the road and through a typically Mallorcan thick wooden double front doors, and then through to a double glass interior door, where a rustic yet hyper-modern space reveals its magic to me. White-washed uneven walls converge with detailed moldings on ceilings; similarly, raw concrete floors meet century old tiles as the space opens to a sun-filled back patio on this crisp winter morning.

The creative couple behind these doors, Adriana and Jaume, have extracted the soul of the space to literally serve as a representation of their own story, and consequently transformed it into their gallery.

What strikes me is the common ground I find in both their disciplines. They might seem at opposite ends of the creative spectrum, one being a creator of ceramics, and the other of fabric art, but I cannot help not to see a clear meshing of their processes and skills, as they cohabit a space which itself couldn’t have a better name: RAW.

Adriana reveals a strong connection to nature through fabric, wool, and other raw materials from the land. She has learnt to extract and source in incredible ways, while Jaume experiments with clay concoctions, forming shapes that are closer to a world of dreams through his ceramics. More recently he has also been painting his tasteful aesthetic on canvas.

Their paths crossed intermittently for years before romance blossomed, and as they developed their creative visions, their work also grew and expanded.

Adriana, disenchanted by the fashion industry in which she worked for some years in Barcelona and Berlin, took to learning weaving from inspirational sources: a navajo native based in New Mexico, and a workshop in Barcelona allowing her to experiment in 'alto lizo' loom techniques.

Furthermore, to source her wool, she has learned how to shear sheep with a dear shepherd friend, the resulting materials of which have made their way graciously into her art.

Learning these techniques allows her to explore what she considers the basic foundation of all fabric design, namely the loom, where everything starts.

From that point on, she creates incredible wall hangings, incorporating raw wool and adding llata and esparto grass in between the threads, making voluminous art that doesn’t hang flat but appears to come out towards the viewer. Beyond her art, she has also dived into creating fashion, unique pieces with linens, silks and other materials. ODEMINUI is the name of her fashion project, pieces of which hang elegantly throughout the space.

Jaume comes from a ceramist family, and as I recall visiting his talented brother Joan some years earlier, I come to understand the inherited cycle through which their mother's craft has influenced them. Jaume wanted to reinterpret the traditional rigidity of a craft that seemed stagnant in Mallorca for years, and decided to take on self-learning the art of clay.

He gets involved with local artists for his ongoing inspiration, and learns from generations of painters who paved a genuine bohemian path on the island years before he was born. He greatly admires artists like Rafel Joan, Ferran Aguiló, Margalida Escalas, Andreu Maimo, but mostly because they inspire him to break free from the self-imposed limits of embracing a trade versus becoming an artist.

His ceramic shapes, made mostly of gres and mayolica, seem to exude the very nature of what the materials represent. From skulls to sea forms, to the most imaginative vessels which mix dark and light elements alike, Jaume interprets both old and new, allowing the pieces to float in an ethereal space somewhere between imagination and reality. He wanted to experiment with different media - and although the ceramic murals are what he would like to develop more of, the space imitations and the difficulties of such work, have inspired him to start painting canvas meanwhile.

As a result he now paints minimal brutalist shapes on textured canvas backgrounds, slightly trending towards abstract, and is respectfully represented by gallery owner Miquel Alzueta.

As we chat on the patio, the sun hits both their faces, and I can't resist capturing in photographs their enthusiasm and their good naturedness. Their paths are clear to me, and this couple will continue to evolve in their artistic endeavors. I also take a moment to reflect upon all the raw materials that will one day be incorporated into Adriana and Jaume's work, all of which will surely be put to the greatest of use.