Anna Westerlund

Being half Swedish and Portuguese, she spent her childhood in the countryside surrounded by the great nature in Sweden. Fortuitously, she began working as a model which led her to travel all over the world for fashion shows. The people in the creative business and the cultures in each country she encountered at that time formed her senses as an artist she later became. She originally had a desire to start her own business, hence majored economics at college. Wanting to do something creative, she got a job in the advertisement business. However, she quit her job and decided to study ceramics at ARCO because her passion for art and craft which she originally had grew stronger. Then in 2008, her career as a ceramist began when she was 30.

Anna’s work feature is the various combinations of different materials. The ideas out of the box, combining thread and beads with the ceramics come from her drawings. She always carries a notebook and sketches at the moment she gets an idea. The wares she creates with the bases of stoneware and ceramics are all handmade in every process. A plaster mold is made from the prototype hand build, and the clay is casted, high-fired, and then glazed. With the unperfected from and the watercolor-like shade, her art pieces are as if they came out of a sketchbook. These designs come from Anna’s innocent imaginations.

Presently, she is a working mother of 4 children. Treasuring the time with her family, she continues creating art pieces as a ceramist. Colorfulness, flower, daylight, reading, silence, children’s laughing, the smell after the rain, these are the simple things she loves. The career-changing from the nonstop world being a model and an advertising woman to the world where a ceramist faces herself and her lifestyle just happened very naturally.