There is a house in Agirdag hidden by beautiful old trees and protected by three playful lovely dogs, and in this house a big family lives, a group of people of all ages, but they are silent, they don't talk and they don't move, otherwise they are all like you and me. When you come into the house invited in by Sevcan Cerkez, who also lives here with her husband, you want to go towards these people distributed over the large open plan hall, kitchen and living room and shake hands with them, give a hug to old grandmother and stroke over the child's head. They are made of clay, human body size figures so lively designed that you want to answer that smile in the one or other face.

            They look like the people in fairy tales where through a witch's spell people are turned into stone and now they wait in that very position caught, wait for the one person to come and wake them up. And then I turn around and regard that petite slender person called Sevcan Serkez who has created this family group. I touch her hands and they are soft not rough from all the work with clay but she says that she constantly applies cream to them. I know from the many clay I have worked with what hands feel like when you have worked the clay mass through in order to make it soft and workable. Sevcan Cerkez has her show room “Hanay” in the Büyük Han in Lefkosa on the upper floor where, I am sure, you have already seen her droll figures of village people but there they come in a size of 30 to 50 cm. Sevcan is interested in people, the peoples' true face, without a mask, the way you see them in a public bus or behind a green market stall, or you go to your neighbour's house for a cup of tea, and this vivid expression of body language and mimicry Sevcan has succeeded in seizing. This interest of hers and the wish to show her experiences in an artistic way has always been there from her childhood on.

            “In my parents house in Kücük Kaymakli of Lefkosa, where I was born in 1961 together with my twin sister, there was not much to draw with, as there was no money for these things when we were young girls, there was the war and the poverty that went with it. But my sister and myself we used pieces of charred wood from a room in our house which had burnt out during the attacks, and painted on any piece of paper we could find. We collected all waste paper we found on the streets and drew on them, or also on walls, or we used plaster on the asphalt of the roads. Through our life, my sister and I, we helped each other, critizised each other to the present day.”

           Somewhere along their way the twin sisters' interests went slightly separate ways, the one went into painting and does illustrations today and Sevcan has become a ceramic artist. “I had come to a point when I became interested in a three-dimensional presentation of what I saw and I participated in plate making classes at the Technical Lycee and there I learnt how to work with clay and from there on I taught myself and I started to form and create the beings I had met in the streets.”How had she known about anatomy, I asked her. “My sister and I had already as kids found out the secret of the human body, that there is a natural law of relation in the composition.

It is for example widely known that a face is divided up into three equal parts and that the ears are set at the heigt of the nose, etc. And when you move and dance you will experience the collaboration of all parts, even the tiniest link piece of the skelleton.” Yes, I acknowledged, when you create, you become the part itself, you become the shoulder or the hand and actually the creation then just happens by itself. I watch her as she works on the face of the present sculpture, she uses all kind of tools, a modelling knife to form the eyeball, a toothbrush to soften the skin and later when the figure is dry further smoothing rough edges with sandpaper. “I begin with sketching of what I want to do, then I build up the figure with bands of rolled-out clay...” Where does she get the clay from? ...”I buy large quantities of fire clay from Dizayn 74 in Kyrenia and prepare it for modelling..The bands of clay must be properly rolled out otherwise the whole structure cracks when in the kiln.

For the same reason the figure must be hollow and the walls may not be thicker than 1 cm, so I have to work slowly, always properly connecting the one band with the next. Usually I build the figure up in two parts, the base with the body up to the waist and then the upper part of the body, That is due to the size of my kiln, but one day my husband will build me a new kiln for whole body size firing. How long I work on one figure of this size? Building up time is one week, then one month drying.” We go over to a young girl lying in an armchair, you know one of the modern types, and her form is covered with mould which has developed during this month of waiting. She will be next for the kiln. In the middle of the room a ready husband with a drink in his hand sits straight up on a dining room chair and opposite against the walls the upper body of a young woman throwing her arms full of joy towards somebody she is expecting. Three figures are still sitting in Sevcan's head to come to life, then the family is complete. I want to see her kiln now.

The kiln is outside in the garden, 1800 x 600 and made of ytong stones, lined out with glass wool and the whole affair is fired with gas at 1100°C for six hours, but the cooked form can only be taken out after a cooling time of one day. What a long procedure of creation. “When the two body parts are cooked, I put them together and use a special glue. Then comes the final touch with a special liquid I have created myself made from natural rock and then they are ready to go out into the world.”

Where is that world I ask. “I have a renovated old house ready near the Büyük Han waiting for them to move in for an exhibition in the early summer 2007 still. And then my “family” will invite everybody to come and greet them, they will talk to you and the house will be furnished in the old traditional way.” I look from Sevcan to the not far away place of her birth out of the large panaromic window of her house and think that from there to here she has found all that strength and the will to create her kind of world for us to see. She stands next to me and says: “One day I will have my own museum, my house of body size figures with my people of Cyprus, and perhaps of plaster and wax. That is my dream and I will make it come true.”