“There’s this element to the functional work that’s about how I grew up connecting with my family around the dinner table and food and that whole thing,” Marcello Andres Ortega says of his ceramics. “And then there’s this other aspect of the work, which is about the process and the material. Those pieces are more sculptural.” The child of Chilean immigrants first got his hands in the clay as a student at St. Mark’s. Now he’s making dinnerware for the top tables in town and sculptures inspired by the waves he surfs in Mexico. In between, he had a successful corporate finance career.
The Quonset hut in the Cedars that houses Marcello Andres Ortega’s ceramic studio was once used for the construction of Neiman Marcus floor displays. One of the store’s white script signs still hangs inside the rusting structure. The whole place has a bit of a Mad Max greenhouse vibe, with wild vines growing through the glass awning windows and up the galvanized steel walls.
Just inside the door, Ortega shows off his shiny new kiln, yet to be installed and named, although he’s leaning toward Big Girl. (His others are R2-D2 and Big Boy.) He hasn’t fired her yet, but he soon will. He’s already had to cut off orders because the kilns are at capacity.