I'm Veronica, a ceramist on a journey through clay and alchemy.
I grew up between Montelupo Fiorentino and Prague, two places that have deeply shaped the way I create and experience the world. Montelupo taught me the ancient knowledge of clay and fire: since I was a child, my hands have played with “mota,” as clay is called here. Prague has nourished another part of me: a sensitivity to symbols, mystery, and metamorphosis.
For thirty years I have been working with clay, exploring the intimate relationship between the hands and the material, between making and feeling. What began as a family tradition has gradually become my language, my profession, and a way of understanding the human experience.
My studies have accompanied and deepened this journey. After earning my degree in Political Science, my interest in the inner and symbolic dimensions of the human being led me to Jungian studies and, later, to art therapy.
Through art therapy, I found a deeper understanding of something I had long experienced through clay: that the creative act can become a space for listening and transformation, where gesture, material, and image give form to what cannot always be expressed in words.
This awareness also permeates my teaching approach. Technique and knowledge remain essential, but they become part of a broader experience: an encounter with the material, with the creative process, and, at the same time, with something within ourselves.
Ars Melusina was born from this journey. It is my philosophy of creation: a way of experiencing the creative act as a space for listening, transformation, and awareness.
Melusina, the two-tailed mermaid and archetype of the threshold, embodies this vision. She belongs to different worlds, inhabits multiple dimensions, and embraces transformation, giving it form.
In Lucca, where a special light shines on the ancient stones and narrow streets and reveals hidden gardens, this vision has found a home. Here, the two-tailed mermaid appears as a secret sign that passes through the history and places of the city.
My practice inhabits this threshold: between matter and symbol, gesture and inner experience, tradition and transformation.
Ars Melusina is a practice, a way of being and creating that can be everywhere — within and beyond us, in clay as in life.
