About Me

I am Neela Venkatraman, the hands behind Spinning Wheel Ceramics. While I learnt Ceramics a while ago, it wasn’t until I moved to a small village in Goa and set up my studio here, I realized how much I really love working with clay.

It can be heartbreaking and it can test your patience and yes, you are forever praying to the kiln gods or to your four legged family begging them not to walk on your unfired pieces and not to break them but the elemental strength of clay as it transforms into vitrified pieces, teaches you, makes you stronger.

I have been a documentary film maker for 25 years specializing in non fiction films predominantly on craft, art, culture, tangible and intangible heritage and traditions, music and travel. It has been an amazing rollercoaster of a journey. As a Ceramic artist now, I am exploring the storytelling via clay. Most days, each piece as it forms, narrates its own tale. Sometimes the story comes before and then the piece.

I like the idea of my pieces being used by friends and strangers- holding that mug of coffee in the morning, using a plate while eating a fav food, letting a vase brighten up a table or a wall or simply enjoying a piece as it rests on a table edge.

I enjoy working on the wheel and playing with more organic, free flowing forms which somehow decide their own shapes. Unlike machine made or made with moulds, handmade ceramics stay unique because of certain imperfections that invoke the sense of personal. They are not faults, they represent the maker's hands, they reflect the clay taking its own shape.

As a creator, I let the clay create its own story and let it invoke the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi.