Alice Damiens Romie Objetti

Hello Alice, could you tell us a little more about yourself and what made you want to work with wood?

My name is Alice Damiens, I am a wood sculptor and founder of Romie Objetti. After nearly 10 years in the fashion world as a stylist, I realized 3 years ago that I didn't feel exactly in the right place. I loved my job, but I missed the direct contact with the material(s). In fact, I grew up in the workshop of my father, who is a cabinetmaker and sculptor and who instilled in me the love of wood. I learned and am still learning from him. What I love is the fact of being able to create from A to Z what I have in mind. Wood is a material that always remains alive, and I love the sensuality and warmth that it gives off.

Your work seems to straddle the line between the useful and the sensitive/artistic. How do these two aspects intersect in your practice?

Yes, it's true that the line between the useful and the artistic is very thin. I like to surround myself with beautiful objects and I don't make a distinction between the importance of beauty for the useful or the "useless." For me, everything has the merit of being beautiful.

How do you source the material you are working on?

I'm lucky enough to work mainly with wood that my father has stored throughout his career. This allows me to have superb species. I also buy wood from sawmills and I also try to buy up stocks from carpenters or cabinetmakers who are retiring. What I like about wood is the fact that it's a material that is full of history - sometimes I carve wood that was cut more than a century ago and it fascinates me to know that now I'm giving it another life.

Our spring selection, in which you're participating, pays homage to the chromatic variations of wood. What's your relationship to this theme?

Color is very important in my daily life. Through my training as a stylist, I've always loved working with shades of color, looking for the right shades that will enhance each other. With wood, it's a bit the same. Each species is unique and has its own unique color. And yet... there are sometimes dozens of different tones in a piece of wood from the same tree. It's truly magical!

What does a fruit bowl represent for you – technically, but also symbolically?

The fruit bowl is rich in symbolism. In art, especially classical paintings, it is used to symbolize abundance, prosperity, but also the ephemeral beauty of life through its "perishable" content. The bowl remains, the content evolves, changes, with the seasons and desires. I find that beautiful. I like to give a multitude of uses to objects. The fruit bowl is a good example. It can be a fruit bowl, but also a jewelry bowl, a pocket emptier, a cookie bowl... We always need this type of object, and beyond the need, I find that these are volumes that can be placed anywhere and ultimately become a kind of sculpture.

Can you tell us about the three pieces that will be included in this selection?

When Laure contacted me to design fruit bowls, I immediately loved the project. Because, as I said above, it's a bowl, but it's also so many other things. I also designed three pieces with very different types of wood.

The smallest is made of ash burl. I wanted to imagine a small format, a gri-gri bowl. A small bowl that we will always keep in a corner of our house. I imagined this bowl as an object that we acquire at the beginning of our independence. The fruit bowl that does not take up too much space, that adapts to small spaces, that lasts through the years and that can change function depending on where we live. Whether it becomes a jewelry bowl later, or simply placed on a shelf like an amulet.

The other two are more imposing in terms of size. I didn't want to work on a large container in any case, because I didn't see this project as the creation of an object where storage capacity is the most important characteristic, but rather as a showcase of the contents. No matter what will be placed inside, the idea is to put it on a pedestal. I like to work with vertical shapes, which take height. This gives a totemic, almost mystical aspect.

For the bubinga wood bowl, I wanted to give it a stele/pillar feel, something solid and robust to counterbalance the warm and sensual color of the bubinga. For the wenge bowl, I wanted to play more on a spirit of balance, of superimposing ovoid shapes.