Face to face with Jorge Hernandez

Interview by Roberto Costantino
Istituto Ligustico di Patafisica Contemporanea

We find ourselves here in an area steeped in ancient ceramic tradition, where the potter wasps still live.   It is thanks to you and your beautiful ceramic collection that I got to know about them.

When I came across the potter wasps and became aware of these clay nests, their habitat, I thought that it would be interesting to fire them. But I only took these nests away from their environment after the potter wasps had grown up and abandoned them. Only then did I put them in the kiln, firing them at a thousand degrees, as is customary with ceramics.

As art critics would say, what you did is similar to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades: however in your case it involves an object taken from nature and its subsequent transformation through firing.

The first time that I fired these nests, I was worried that they would break. Fortunately, however, these structures have been expertly put together, without a single air bubble between one clay coil and the other, which prevents them from exploding in the kiln. I fired these nests to preserve them and make them less fragile

Potter wasps build their clay nests in secluded and shady places like attics, but also in our bookshelves or cupboard drawers. They have to hide their architecture from our gaze in order to survive.

The last clay nests that I found were clinging to the inner lining of a winter jacket that I had left in the cellar.

Jorge Hernandez, Le vespe vasaie di Albisola. Terracotta. Photo: Fulvio Rosso. Courtesy Istituto Ligustico di Patafisica Contemporanea

To build nests to breed their young, the potter wasps of Albisola take their clay from our area. It is truly a pleasure to see a material that was once used by our ceramist forebears being put to use once more, thanks to these wasps. Where do your wasp friends find their clay?

I used to live in Albisola Superiore, near the River Sansobbia, where the wasps still go to harvest the clay from the river bank, in the very same clay pits where ceramists once went to find theirs. We share the use of this type of clay for construction with this type of wasp.

The potter wasps harvest the natural clay and use their saliva to make it malleable enough to make the slip, a liquid binder of creamy consistency that ceramists also make by mixing clay and water, and which is used to join separately-worked pieces of the same object. The potter wasps’ second step is the actual construction: they use a technique that is still taught today in ceramic schools: the coil technique. The method consists of modelling sausage-shaped rolls, the so-called coils, and placing them on top of each other while pressing and binding the clay. Thirdly, if you look closely, you can see that these nests also have barrel vaults: the same type of architecture that humans have used for millennia to make curved roofs. What else have you learned as a ceramist from your friends the wasps?

The potter wasp doesn’t mix the clay just with its saliva, because it would need an enormous quantity of saliva. The wasp chooses the clay, selecting a type that already has a very high degree of moisture, makes a ball using its legs, and then transports it to the nest site. It then begins to build nests adopting a modular shape. The shape formed is dictated by the possibilities of the material, as well as the particular places in which they are building the nest, and the shape is therefore pared down to its essentials. In addition, this modular shape is perfectly adapted for the larvae for whom the nests are made – these modules almost seem to be moulds for them. In any case, they are modular, and the potter wasps frequently create modular structures, comparable to our terraced houses.

Jorge Hernandez, Le vespe vasaie di Albisola. Terracotta. Photo: Fulvio Rosso. Courtesy Istituto Ligustico di Patafisica Contemporanea

These wasps undertake all the tasks required, they don’t apply the practice of the division of labour. On the contrary, the potter wasp resembles the artisan, as defined by historians of applied arts: a craftsman involved in each and every aspect of a project, making no distinction between manual and intellectual labour. These solitary wasps are both artisans and architects. This is what I admire most about the way they work. What do you think about it?

I was trying to think like a potter wasp: I am born and driven by the need to find the raw material to build new nests. That is my mission: to pass survival skills on to the next generation.

The potter wasps’ clay nests are made from a series of cells to form a structure that can reach up to the size of a fist. After building a cell, the female captures spiders, paralyses them by stinging them with her venom, and then places them in the nest. Then, she deposits a single larva into a cell and seals it with the slip. After filling the nests with these spiders, the wasp leaves and allows the larvae to grow independently by feeding off the spiders until the time comes for them to leave the cell. Once the wasps have left, you begin the process of preserving the nests.

In this case, like other artists, I feel like a collector. I liked the idea of preserving these nests knowing that they were built by the wasps. Collecting is a way of ordering and taking care of things that we love. The nests made a big impression on me and so I created a systematic and exclusive collection consisting only of nests.

Jorge Hernandez,Le vespe vasaie di Albisola. Terracotta. Photo: Fulvio Rosso. Courtesy Istituto Ligustico di Patafisica Contemporanea

You came from Colombia to Albisola to make ceramics and we have worked together for many years making prototypes for artists and architects like Andrea Branzi, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Franco Raggi, Giuseppe Chiari, Alberto Garutti, Loris Checchini, Martì Guixé, Florence Doleac and Corrado Levi. But now you have been working with the potter wasps for some time. Do you let the wasps make what they want, or have you ever altered the shape of their architecture?

I take the nests and use them just as they are. Another reason I wanted to fire the nests was so that others could find out about them too. The potter wasp forces us to reconsider our place in the world, view ourselves in a more realistic perspective, which is very healthy. I don’t think that the wasps have learned from us: it is far more likely that we humans have taken their architecture as an example. The potter wasps have helped me to better understand the different types of local clay. I have also found nests made with two or three different types of clay; amongst these I recognised a white clay which I had already worked on and which they decided to take advantage of and use. In other words, the potter wasps test the clay and choose the one with just the right amount of moisture for their needs.

Roberto Costantino, President of the Istituto Ligustico di Patafisica Contemporanea, is an art critic, curator and journalist

Take a look to the other interviews