Island Sculpture

August 9, 1972 Lisbon native, daughter of a Portuguese mother and an Italian father, graduated in interior design from IADE in 1999, a field in which she was working when she had her first contact with ceramics. In 2002, at , she studied in evening classes and later, for two more years, at Escola Artística António Arroio, continuing her learning. She worked with plaster modeling, pottery, sculpture, tile painting, glazing, and porcelain. Throughout her career as a ceramist, she practiced art under the guidance of Helena Abrantes, Elsa Gonçalves, Paulo Oscar, Inês Diana Salgado, Alberto Lino, Fernando Sarmento, Helena Brízido, Alberto Bustos, Israel Kislansky, among others. While still considering ceramics as a hobby, between 2004 and 2006, she shared a studio with classmates in Alfama, where she organized her first exhibitions. In 2005, she was honored with an honorable mention in the Manuel Joaquim Afonso ceramics competition at the Sacavém Ceramics Museum, with the piece "O Cubo" ("The Cube"). In 2014, she left interior design and decided to dedicate herself exclusively to ceramics, initiating a project titled "Inspired by Arts," through which she explores her admiration for painting and her passion for ceramics. In this project, she aims to recreate objects present in paintings by Pablo Picasso, Amadeo Souza-Cardoso, Almada Negreiros, George Braque, among others, giving them a three-dimensional interpretation. During this phase, she actively collaborated with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which recognized the commercial value of the project and proposed the creation of a limited series of her interpretation of Amadeo Souza-Cardoso's painting "Natureza Viva dos Objetos - 1913" to be included in the museum store's portfolio. Starting in 2017, the Inspired by Arts project is exhibited on the Saatchi Art online gallery, and her work is sold worldwide. In Portugal, the project was presented in May 2018 at the collective exhibition Espaço Anahory. More recently, she has decided to expand her artistic universe through collaborations with other artists. In 2018, she started a partnership with the illustrator Dedo Mau, co-producing illustrated ceramics, a reversal of the Inspired by Arts project, now placing drawing at the center of her ceramics, using them as a canvas. She opens the doors of her studio to accommodate artistic residencies for illustration and sculpture projects, and she welcomes students who want to learn ceramics.