OUR STORY

Studio FraJas is a ceramic design collaboration between artists Francisco Rocha Salazar and Jasper Isaac Johns.

Coming from San Luis Potosí (México) and Ann Arbor (Michigan),the two met as undergraduates at RISD. Francisco earned a degree in Painting and Jasper in Ceramics.

Their dual roles reflect the two stages inherent to the ceramic process, combining sculpture and painting to create lyrical vessels. First, Jasper sculpts the form in clay and fires it. He throws geometric shapes such as domes, cylinders, and spheres, assembling them to build graceful vessels. His potter’s touch softens the geometric profile with gentle concavities, flared rims, and rounded foot rings. Then, Francisco draws patterns on the surface and paints them with glaze. These start as small motifs inspired by the vessel’s architecture and are multiplied, interlocked, and often distorted to create an illusion of movement across the vessel surface.