New series of P.O.D.S are now on view at the Museum de Scheper in Eibergen up to October 2025.

The P.O.D.S is a ongoing series that started in September 2023. It has been exhibited at the Zutphen Art Fair in 2023, De Smidse Gallerie in Ruurlo 7 July- 24 August 2024 and at Clay Cafe Nederland in Haarlo, Wiijnhoeve Kunnenman, Geestern from the 15 September 2024. We are proud to announce that P.O.D.S: I, II, III 2024 have been selected to participate in the: South African Corobrik Ceramic Biennale in Johannesburg, that opens on the 14 September 2024.

“P.O.D.S: Primal Origins, Discovery, Serenity” reflects on natural cycles—growth, rest, and return. The cocoon becomes a form of shelter and transformation, shaped by quiet resilience rather than spectacle. These works speak not of escape, but of what it takes to endure.”

P.O.D.S explores cycles of withdrawal and transformation through stoneware forms inspired by the cocoon. For the artist, they are sites of survival—shaped during episodes of depression and formed as quiet shelters. Drawing on both natural and personal processes, each piece offers space to consider how growth can begin in darkness, and how matter remembers what it’s been through.

Title: P.O.D.S: Primal Origins, Discovery, Serenity

Artist: Carina Claassens

Medium: Stoneware, oxides, pigments, glaze

Year: Ongoing series

P.O.D.S is an ongoing body of sculptural work formed from stoneware and layered with oxides and pigment stains. Each pod-like form draws from the life cycle of the caterpillar—a process marked by vulnerability, enclosure, and emergence.

For the artist, the cocoon is not just biological—it is symbolic of a deeply personal need: a place to retreat during times of depression. Each form functions as a quiet shelter, shaped in moments when the outside world feels uninhabitable.

The surfaces echo geological formations—eroded, cracked, and altered by fire. They reference landscapes scarred and remade, much like volcanic terrain, where destruction makes space for renewal. These pods are not about beauty or perfection. They are about endurance.

Rather than present a fixed meaning, the series leaves space. The viewer is invited to sit with the tension between enclosure and opening, between decay and persistence. These works hold the fragile truth that transformation is rarely linear—and that survival often begins in silence.