I am a self-made man both in art and in life.

I have developed myself day after day.  

After half a century of activity in the visual, three dimensional arts and ceramic field I am still searching……

I am an artisan who takes, presses, condenses, develops, re-creates and re-arranges the memory, making it my own, bringing it to the present and pushing it to the future.

I alone face the empty space, the raw material which has to take shape, the mental vision that has to materialize.

I am the eye of the mind which through artistic activity produces the miracle, I am the shape, I am the colour, the working mind which materializes in the real unreality of the work of art in order to survive and be able to say………..”I create, so I am”

As Heidegger theorized, the being resides in the existence, in the essence in being there, therefore the works of art demonstrate the being.

My name is Pierre Luigi Vassura aka Pierre Vassura aka Igi Vassura.  I was born the son of an architect and a teacher in Romagna, Italy in 1935.  My home town, the city of Faenza which has been famous for its pottery since the 14th century, in the province of Ravenna which was at one time the capital of the Roman Empire.

When I was just thirteen my father died.  Shortly after, following my mother’s wishes I enrolled in agricultural studies but soon left without success in order to dedicate myself to art.

Between 1954 and 1955, I participated in exhibitions and artistic activities in Bologna and Ravenna, Italy.

At the age of twenty, a young artist, I decided to look for new opportunities and better economic conditions.  I moved to France where I found employment as a ceramic designer by the Faiencerie de St. Clement.  I kept this occupation for a short period of time before moving to Paris in order to seek a real artistic experience.  Unable to find work in the pottery field and having a shortage of funds I survived doing odd jobs.

In 1956 I moved to the Cote d’Azure (Vallauris-Juan les Pins) and worked in pottery until the summer of 1957.  I then returned to Italy where I worked in several pottery studios in the Republic of San Marino.  Uncertain economic conditions had me once more moving out of Italy and relocating to Switzerland to join a girlfriend who later became my wife.  I remained in Switzerland for four years and worked in several pottery studios and factories in Shaffhausen, Kreuzlingen and Zurich until the fallout of my marriage.

In 1961 I moved to Israel as a ceramics expert where I participated in the development of the ceramic industry (Palceramic, Haifa 1962 to 1965).  During my stay in Israel and with the sponsorship of the Beit-Hagefen Art Gallery I participated in several art exhibits both in Tel-Aviv and Haifa (1963 to 1965).  It was during this time that I met the love of my life, a girl of Greek origin, Fotiny, who later became my wife and the mother of my two daughters.

In 1965, one year after the birth of my first daughter, I returned to France to work in the Faienceries de Luneville, St. Clement and Badonviller where I was employed from 1965 to 1971.  It was during my employment in Luneville that my second daughter was born.

In 1972 I moved back to Haifa, Israel as a ceramics expert with Kadar Ceramics.  After a successful year I decided to return to France as a ceramics technical and production manager for the Faiencerie de Luneville (1972 to 1974).  In 1974, while continuing to collaborate with the Faiencerie de Luneville I returned to my native town of Faenza, Italy where I opened my own pottery and ceramics studio.  After years of hard work with little economic results I once again decided to leave Italy.

This time I moved to North America.  In 1981 I travelled to New York but later decided to settle down in Vancouver, Canada.  Moving to Canada came with a very difficult adjustment period due to a non-welcoming environment which did not appear to have any interest in European arts and culture as I had been used too.  In order to survive I again took on several odd jobs and finally obtained a comfortable enough economic situation to allow me to dedicate myself fully to my artistic activities. 

I feel I am a disappearing memory, in my world I am the imagination, the creativity, the visual force.  I am a citizen of the art world.  A citizen of anachronism a world for the non-initiated where a human being is still free of the technological and economic pressures of the new world.

My work is my life, my life is for my work. Creating is all I know. I have no purpose without creating.