Ilia Ramishvili is an artist who works in many different mediums, including drawing, illustration, tattoo art, ceramic sculptures, photography, and video art. He mainly centers his artistic production around ceramics and likes unconventional, eccentric, weird, and characteristic creatures or characters.
''Making pottery started as a hobby for me a while ago, which later turned into what I wanted to pursue in life and now is my profession. Since a young age, I always liked drawing and especially working with clay for fun, coming up with some creative artwork. As long as I can remember I went to my mother’s art school for many years and took all sorts of classes such as drawing, ceramics, history of art, photography, architecture, fashion design, book cover illustration, book writing, and creative thinking. However, the one subject that stood out to me the most was pottery. In a way I look at it as therapy, the thing I enjoy most. I try to express my personality with my work, I always come up with a story for my pieces to make them feel alive. Most of my inspiration comes from childhood cartoons and as well as my music taste, I take some of my favorite cartoons and sort of combine them into one with a touch of my style. From a young age, I typically didn’t like to fit in as much, and still to this day, in a way that’s how I try to portray my art, a bit unearthly and divergent. My main strategy with coming up with pieces is that I never plan an idea, I might be thinking about what to do but I never end up doing what I first had in mind, I add up details as I go and they always turn out to be something else instead of what I planned.
Since I was a kid I was always into creatures and funny-looking cartoon characters. I always used to draw them and I still do this day, especially weird abstract faces. So I took that concept and started remaking it with clay, over-time I realized I had a lot of fun making them and I got really into it by turning it into a big series of sculptures. I generally make crazy-looking creature faces that are functional, they can be used as an ashtray, keyholder perhaps a bowl for salt. I tend to mainly use big noses, weird mouths, and eyes, those became sort of my style or trademark. Although I’ve done other sorts of ceramics as well, also with a touch of my style.''
