Danielle O’Malley

Danielle O’Malley is a Montana-based sculptor whose hand-built, large-scale ceramic work increase people’s environmental awareness. O’Malley received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in May 2021. In addition to an active studio practice; O’Malley teaches, exhibits nationally, and serves her community as Executive Director for the Art Mobile of Montana and Director for Montana Clay.

O’Malley’s work is monumental in both scale and symbolic message, and inventive in supportive materials (crocheted plastic bags; up-cycled fabric; natural dyes). Her surprising combinations of scavenged materials, re-contextualized via textile processes, in concert with her earthen forms are startling in scale so viewers feel an urgency about the eco-crisis. O’Malley’s forms are influenced by landscapes (exemplifying nature’s magnitude) and industrial objects (indicative of warning) she observes daily: traps, grids; smoke stacks; rolling prairie-scapes, endless water-scapes, vast mountain-scapes. The confrontational feeling of larger-than-life work in one’s space is unavoidable and instrumental in underscoring concepts of environmental concern and warning. Exaggerated scale increases artwork’s significance though unexpected surprise and challenges the viewer as they experience altered scales of familiar forms.

Most recently, O’Malley was juried into two NCECA Annual exhibitions (exhibited at the Crocker Museum of Art and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art) and is a part of the Montana Museum of Modern Art and Culture’s inaugural 19 under 39 emerging artist exhibition. She was interviewed on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler; Not Real Art Podcast; recognized and chosen for publication by: Ceramics Monthly; The Surface Design Association Quarterly Journal; The NCECA Annual Journal; and The Studio Potter Journal. She has received multiple local; state; and national grants. Her work is in permanent collections at the Northwest Art Gallery, the Taoxichuan Art Center, and numerous private collections.

Visit Danielle O’Malley’s website and Instagram page.