Štefan Oriško
Since its establishment, the specific factory environment has been the main characteristic of the ceramic symposium in Lučenec. While this certainly does not provide the comfort of a studio, it does allow for the use of industrial technological processes that would otherwise be difficult to achieve. Because of this, the Žiaromat factory in Kalinovo, close to Lučenec, provided participants its facilities for the symposium in summer 2005. This is the venue where the symposium has taken place for several seasons. The factory was established in 1890 as a traditional producer of heat resistant materials, mainly clay. These factors already suggest the characteristics of the work created at the symposium – the focus is on shape and structure rather than details, and the size of the ovens tends to produce larger works.
There is no specific task or topic for these symposia but rather the preparing committee tries to give a connective focus to individual symposia. This has been established since the symposium beginnings in Lučenec, and it is based on the idea of connecting as well as confronting domestic authors with foreign ones, presenting their work to the Slovak public, and enriching the collection with them. After the Slovak-Czech symposium or last year’s Slovak-Dutch symposium, this one could well be named the Central European one since the authors invited to this symposium were artists from the countries bordering Slovakia.