NATALIE FLORES
The heart and soul behind LUXAT

I am the youngest daughter of a Venezuelan dad and a German mother. I discovered clay when I was just a child. It is a material that simply hypnotizes me and allows me to enjoy solitude the most.

I am fortunate that in my formative years, in the early nineties, there was a great boom in the visual arts in Caracas. In those days, there were great ceramists in Venezuela, an intense activity of galleries and museums and the permanent visit of some the most renowned masters in the world. At that time, I was studying graphic design and although I did not dedicate myself professionally to ceramics, I could feel how all that powerful environment was developing around me. Then I traveled to Germany, where I studied industrial design.

Upon returning to Caracas, a terrible political process had already settled in Venezuela, destroying everything in its path, including the conquests in the visual arts. It was time to migrate.

Destiny brought us to Miami, where there is no shortage of textures, colors and a cultural environment that gains complexity at an astonishing speed. It is here in Miami where I decide to rencounter the material of my childhood, a passion that inevitably is twisted together with my background as graphic and industrial designer. My work as a ceramicist is the crossing of all these forces.

Born 1976, Caracas - Venezuela
Graphic and Industrial Designer, graduate of the Instituto ProDiseño, Caracas, Venezuela.
(1999-2000) Graduate degree in Product Design from the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
(Grevener Designpreise 2000) Winner of first place in the Contest for Designing Children’s Parks, organized by the city of Greven, Germany.
Received the DAAD Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst grant for graduate studies in Germany.
(1998) Selected as exhibitor at the Centro de Arte La Estancia for her designs for the corporate images of Ipostel, the Venezuelan Postal System and the Taller Escuela Técnica de la Madera (2000).
More than twenty years of experience working with visual identity, editorial design, and product design.