Yves Celaire

The Foundry

Bronze sculpture, fused metal and the creative process fascinated me while working as an architect near Aix en Provence, France. After designing buildings for many years, I now design jewelry, sculpture and useful objects in wax — all one-of-a-kind. I then cast each piece into bronze or silver following with a patina or an inlay of fine gemstones.

It is this "process" of creation that prevails in my work, ultimately attaching myself as much to the journey as to the destination.  Indeed, the relationship to liquid metal during a bronze casting is powerful, violent and emotional and with a sense of connecting to an ancestral journey.  Several trainings with a Master Founder were necessary to allow me to perfect the sure and precise steps needed for bronze casting, from mastering the heating process to the alchemy of the patinas. Nevertheless, nothing is ever sure in the Foundry.

The Sculptor

I draw inspiration from my many distant observations and from an attraction to the indigenous arts, fetishes and artistic productions of traditional societies. Through my sculptures you will find First Art inspired bronzes, revisited to create characters expressing joy, softness, strength or serenity, mixing bronze with semi precious stones. It is the organic lines, linked to forms that nature knows so well to generate, that guide the creation of my jewelry and objects.  I let my thoughts wander; who knows where they will lead me?