
OJEA
Eyes wide-open
OJEA comes from the Spanish verb OJEAR and means to take a look, to scan, to skim through. Glances, no matter how brief, can lead to huge discoveries.
OJEA is also Paula’s last name. She is a ceramic artist and civil engineer. At the age of four, with her eyes wide-open, she discovered the art of ceramics. She started attending the ceramics school in her hometown, Nigrán, on the Atlantic Coast of Spain.
She developed her love for physics and geometry watching the sea, cargo ships and cranes, and fishing boats in her port town.
She studied Civil Engineering in A Coruña, Paris and London and worked as a structural designer in both New York City and Barcelona.
She continued to see the world with eyes wide-open and in 2015 she founded OJEA STUDIO, combining her two passions of engineering and ceramics. She uses both to design and create her contemporary work. Artistic ceramics with engineering at heart.
The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds
Theo Jansen
The process
Engineering Clay
The objects created in OJEA STUDIO are proudly handcrafted. Each object is handled manually at every stage, from clay shaping to glazing. Some pieces are designed with computer aided design programs to make paper templates to cut clay forms with accuracy. Due to the hand-made nature of this process, the pieces have slight irregularities, which are deliberate and make the pieces unique, combining precision and imperfection, exactitude and singularity.