'DROPS vase #02' — Elena Strohfeldt

Artist Statement

Elena Strohfeldt is a Naarm/Melbourne-based ceramicist exploring layered histories, rituals, and emotional reverence. Working with marbled clay and precious metals, Elena creates sculptural vessels that traverse a path of healing and storytelling.

Her forms are intimate and grounded, drawing inspiration from geology, memory, and the often-unspoken narratives held within the body. Guided by intuition and care, this body of work honours the strength and vulnerability of the female experience, inviting connection, conversation, and greater awareness around early pregnancy loss.

Echoing the Japanese tradition of kintsugi — where broken ceramics are mended with gold to illuminate rather than conceal their fractures — Elena’s vessels are not broken, but intentionally adorned with gold as a symbol of resilience. The glimmering details speak to the beauty found in darkness and the layered, imperfect process of self-repair — particularly in times of loss.

Elena’s hand-built works are tactile invitations to slow down — to reflect on our own hidden stories, and to find pockets of hope and light within the landscape of grief. Each piece holds space for what is fragile yet enduring in our human experience.

Exhibition Text: DROPS

Lander—Se presents DROPS — a tender solo exhibition from ceramic artist Elena Strohfeldt, presented as part of this year’s Melbourne Design Week. A meditation on grief, healing, and quiet resilience. DROPS seeps into our consciousness —intimate, reflective, and profoundly human.

DROPS brings the tender subject of early pregnancy loss into the light, gently inviting reflection, conversation, and care. Within these sculptural vessels, Elena offers a practice of repair —of witnessing and honouring what hurts, and of holding beauty and pain in the same breath. Her work reminds us that healing is not a closing but a deepening; that resilience is not rigid, but soft and glimmering at the edges.

Crafted from marbled, earthen-toned clay and delicately adorned with glimmers of gold, DROPS is a collection that gives form to the unseen —the soft fractures we carry, the tears unspoken and the silent strength of moving forward. Elena’s ceramic forms echo both the natural strata of the earth and the layered emotional depths of the human spirit. 

Inspired by Australia’s geological richness and the layered terrain of personal experience, the 22k gold that pools and traces the curves of each piece is not ornamental —it’s reverent. Each vessel holds a glistening tribute to a quiet sorrow often hidden, rarely spoken of, yet deeply felt.