From Point to Dot, 2021, glazed ceramic, 5 x 9 x 6½ in. Private Collection
Stancer 2, 2020, glazed ceramic, 10½ x 11 x 7 in. Private Collection 
Do Look Back, 2021, glazed ceramic, 7 x 6½ x 5½ in 
Feeler, 2019, glazed ceramic, 9½ x 6 x 8 in. Collection Everson Museum of Art 
Edge Of My Seat 1, 2020, glazed ceramic 5½ x 7 x 6 in. Private Collection 
Edge Of My Seat 1, 2020, glazed ceramic 5½ x 7 x 6 in. Private Collection 
Poiser 2, 2020, glazed ceramic, 7 x 5½ x 6 in 
Spotificationization, 2020, glazed ceramic, 7 x 5 x 6 in. Private Collection 
Spotificationization, 2020, glazed ceramic, 7 x 5 x 6 in. Private Collection 
RoundOut, 2020, glazed ceramic, 6½ x 5 x 5 in 
Stancer 3, 2020, glazed ceramic, 10½ x 11 x 7 in 
Bud Noir, 2019, glazed ceramic, 8 x 8½ x 5½ in 
Holier Than, 2019, glazed ceramic, 6 x 10 x 6 in
Elisa D’Arrigo: Selected works, 2019-2021
My work has evolved in a circular manner, with an ongoing re-working, re-visiting and re-imagining of forms and processes. I am using clay now, after a hiatus of nearly 30 years, because I still have unfinished business with ceramics and what it elicits from me. Although I’ve varied processes and materials over the years, there’s a recurrence of concerns and images, such as references to the body, nature, and the expression of states of mind through abstract form.
My ceramic works conflate color, surface and animated form within the context of the glazed ceramic vessel. I am intrigued by the magic of the ceramic process, including how glaze alchemically fuses color to surface, radically transforming the character of a piece.
The pieces begin as variously sized hollow and hand-built cylindrical forms which I manipulate while wet in a period of intense improvisation. The “postures” that result allude to the body in a gestural and visceral manner. My penchant for in-the-moment decisions yields forms that surprise me yet seem oddly familiar as well. Unexpected asymmetries generate an intrinsic humor. I am compelled by the way we inhabit and imagine our bodies from the inside out, and by the psychological and corporeal aspects of containment. The inside creates the outside, and vice versa. My intent is to project a physicality that also embodies states of mind.
Many of these pieces were made in the midst of the lockdown, and I often reflected on how an improvisational approach seemed well suited to working in such an unprecedented time. Improvisation is like non-verbal introspection. It also allowed what was around me to come into the work, finding expression in the ways I manipulated, assembled, and often took apart the pieces, as the forms materialized and sometimes dematerialized on my table. Forms I did not know I was thinking about were revealed. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, but doing it anyway reflected and felt in sync with what was happening in the world.
In a catalogue essay for my 2019 exhibition “In The Moment” at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery, writer Nancy Princenthal described my works as “incorrigibly unconforming sculpture”, and “…a series of alarmingly potent little ceramic figures that engage our propensities for reverie, humor and perhaps most satisfying, deep human recognition….”.
Photos courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Harris Gallery
