"Taking Shapes" Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, NY Opens Sept 9, 2023 (pictured: "Red Glyph" 2022 6.5 x 7.5 x 6 inches, glazed and hand-built ceramic). Catalog available with essay by Kay Whitney.

Catalogue CLICK here

 PRESS RELEASE CLICK here 



"Balancing Acts" solo at Pamela Salisbury Gallery Hudson, NY     July 29-August 27, 2023

I'm thrilled to announce this solo exhibition of my work at Pamela Salisbury Gallery. I'm excited to be showing concurrently with Elisa Jensen, Maud Bryt, Steve Bartlett and Rachel Schmidhof. The opening is Saturday July 29, 4-6PM. If you're nearby, please stop in! For more info, please click here

"Two Artists": Mildred Beltré and Elisa D'Arrigo at FiveMyles. I'm excited about showing  alongside  artist Mildred Beltré at FiveMyles! Many thanks to Hanne Tierney, director and founder of FiveMyles, for this opportunity to exhibit a selection of pieces from the 1990s, with one work from 2005. 

THIS EXHIBITION IS NOW CLOSED

More info here 

April 1-May 7 2023

FiveMyles:

558 ST JOHNS PLACE

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN
718-783-4438

Pictured above: "Above and Below" 1993 36 x 70 x 15 inches, cloth, wire, steel rod, acrylic paints and mediums, pigments


This exhibition presented Elisa D’Arrigo’s sculptural work from the 1990s and early 2000s, and recent prints by Mildred Beltré. Since 2010 D'Arrigo has made and exhibited ceramic work that explores improvisational process, thickly glazed surfaces, and animated sculptural form within the context of the ceramic vessel. A strong correlation exists between the earlier mixed media works in the exhibition at FiveMyles and the artist’s current ceramic sculptures. The most obvious continuance lies in the mysteries each one of D’Arrigo’s works implies. Are they artifacts left behind by an earlier, alien civilization? Are they emotions transformed into clay, rope, wire, cloth or stitches? These works very much engage us with the physical process of art making: the relationship between labor and time, the tension between weight and gravity.

The most recent of these works, the wall piece Time and Time Again (2005) takes its strength from the irregularity of the grid, the anxious restlessness of thousands of stitches and the soothing shades of the black and gray of the fabric, repurposed from clothing worn by D’Arrigo’s family over the years. It is the relentless action of the hand making these stitches that adds the weight of time to this work.

An earlier work, the floor sculpture First Frost 2 (1992), with its dense bud-like center and trailing stem approximates a botanical fragment lying on a field; something both from nature and hand-made. Its exposed ribbed structure of coated wire looks organic, like woven vines. But the mystery of its origin is lightened by the hand that lets you feel its work – patting the clay in place, entwining a part of the sculpture with rope. For each of the five sculptures in the exhibition the hand is their great collaborator.

Mildred Beltré produces prints and drawings using abstracted personal imagery. Coating paper with walnut ink that she makes herself, Beltre uses photographic information filtered through the language of the dot pattern. The artist explores questions of proximity and perception: the closer you are to the image, the more difficult it is to see it. And the further away you are from it, the more you can discern the details, and perhaps the identity of the image.

Beltré, a printmaker by training, also makes white line woodcuts. White line woodcuts are characterized by their white outlines around shapes, as well as their soft colors. To create a woodcut in this manner, Beltre hand-colors and prints each shape. It is an iterative on-going process of painting and printing, until the image is completed.

 Please email hanne@fivemyles.org, or call 718-783-4438.

"Absurd Petunias" at Patricia Sweetow Gallery                 

NOW CLOSED: This piece (Both Sides Now (2) 2021 8 x 9.5 x 7 in) was included in "Absurd Petunias", an 4 artist exhibition (Nov 5-Dec 31 2022), at the beautiful new LA location of Patricia Sweetow Gallery. Other participating artists: Cornelia Shulz, Joachim Bandau, and Monica Rezman. To read a review of the show by Julia Couzens please click here 


Two Coats Of Paint: conversation with Robin Hill 
"MATERIALIZING" solo show of recent ceramics at Elizabeth Harris Gallery June 12-July 31, 2021.   Catalogue available

Elizabeth Harris Gallery 529 west 20th St. NY NY 10011  hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-6PM  And by appointment.  For more information contact Miles Manning: 212-463-9666

info@ehgallery.com 

www.ehgallery.com

SHAPES FROM OUT OF NOWHERE: CERAMICS FROM THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT A. ELLISON JR. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, NY through August 2021

Thrilled and grateful to be included in this show, which marks the third major gift of ceramics to the museum from esteemed and visionary collector, Robert A. Ellison. Pictured is "Sidestepper", one of my works on view in the exhibition. 

Pleased to be included in this magnificent book : "Shapes From Out Of Nowhere : Ceramics From the Robert A. Ellison Collection". It accompanies an exhibition of the same name currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, through August 2021. Essays by Robert A. Ellison Jr., Glenn Adamson, Into by Adrienne Spinozzi, Artist bios by Elizabeth Essner. All pics by Robert A. Ellison himself. Book by August Editions
"In the Moment" at Elizabeth Harris Gallery (529 West 20 St. NYC) March 30 - May 11 2019

press release




elisa d’arrigo




in the moment




march 30-may 11, 2019


opening reception: sat, march 30, 3-6pm 




catalog available


with essay by Nancy Princenthal




Sat, April 13, 3:30-5pm: Conversation with Elisa D'Arrigo and Nancy Princenthal as one of the events celebrating the 25th anniversary of Civitella Ranieri -Civitella XXV #3




The Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to announce in the moment, a show of recent ceramics by Elisa D’Arrigo. In this exhibition, her 10th with the gallery, D’Arrigo continues to consider and expands upon the possibilities for integrating painting, drawing, improvisational process and animated sculptural form within the context of the ceramic vessel.




The works begin as variously sized hollow and hand-built cylindrical forms that the artist then manipulates and combines while wet, in a period of intense activity. The “postures” that result allude to the body in a gestural and even visceral manner. They exude a figural presence, and their hollowness evokes the notion of interiority, and animation from within. The artist has stated that she is 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 visa versa.




D’Arrigo’s penchant for in the moment decisions yields forms that seem surprising, yet oddly familiar. The works convey the intrinsic humor of unexpected asymmetries merged with densely glazed “surfaces that run with an impossible wealth of color, pattern and texture...Variously nubby and scaly, striated and pocked, the resulting surfaces evoke polished gemstones, luster glass, patterned knits and flesh both tender pink and charred, mineral black.” (Excerpted from accompanying catalog essay by Nancy Princenthal).


Princenthal describes the works as a “series of alarmingly potent little ceramic figures that engage our propensities for reverie, humor and, perhaps most satisfying, deep human recognition.”




D’Arrigo’s work is included in the collections of The Mead Art Museum, The High Museum of Art, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Mint Museum of Art and Design, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, and Dieu Donne Papermill. Reviews of her work have appeared in several publications including Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, Sculpture, Partisan Review, ArtPapers, and The New York Observer. Residencies include Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony.




The Gallery is located at 529 W 20th Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10011 and is open Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 6 pm.




For further information contact Miles Manning at 212-463-9666.




www.ehgallery.com


info@ehgallery.com





Photo credit: Adam Reich


JOHN YAU reviewed "vases and drawings" for HYPERALLERGIC. (click on image to read review)
"Embroidered Stories", Anthology published by University Press of Mississippi. My entry discusses a piece entitled "White Shadows (2)". http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1669

A THOROUGH EXPLORATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF A TRADITIONAL SKILL OF THE ITALIAN DIASPORA

For Italian immigrants and their descendants, needlework represents a marker of identity, a cultural touchstone as powerful as pasta and Neapolitan music. Out of the artifacts of their memory and imagination, Italian immigrants and their descendants used embroidering, sewing, knitting, and crocheting to help define who they were and who they have become. This book is an interdisciplinary collection of creative work by authors of Italian origin and academic essays. The creative works from thirty-seven contributors include memoir, poetry, and visual arts while the collection as a whole explores a multitude of experiences about and approaches to needlework and immigration from a transnational perspective, spanning the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.


At the center of the book, over thirty illustrations represent Italian immigrant women's needlework. The text reveals the many processes by which a simple object, or even the memory of that object, becomes something else through literary, visual, performance, ethnographic, or critical reimagining. While primarily concerned with interpretations of needlework rather than the needlework itself, the editors and contributors to Embroidered Stories remain mindful of its history and its associated cultural values, which Italian immigrants brought with them to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina and passed on to their descendants.


Contributions by B. Amore, Mary Jo Bona, Phyllis Capello, Rosette Capotorto, Jo Ann Cavallo, Hwei-Fe'n Cheah, Paola Corso, Peter Covino, Barbara Crooker, Elisa D'Arrigo, Louise DeSalvo, Bettina Favero, Marisa Frasca, Donna R. Gabaccia, Sandra M. Gilbert, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Lucia Grillo, Maria Grillo, Karen Guancione, Jennifer Guglielmo, Joanna Clapps Herman, Joseph Inguanti, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto, Anne Marie Macari, Giuliana Mammucari, Giovanna Miceli Jeffries, Denise Calvetti Michaels, Lia Ottaviano, Gianna Patriarca, Joan L. Saverino, Maria Terrone, Tiziana Rinaldi Castro, Angela Valeria, Ilaria Vann, Lisa Venditelli, Paul Zarzyski, Christine F. Zinni


EDVIGE GIUNTA, Teaneck, New Jersey, is professor of English at New Jersey City University. She is the author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors and coeditor of Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture and The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. JOSEPH SCIORRA, Brooklyn, New York, is the associate director for academic and cultural programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College. He is editor of the journal Italian American Review and the book Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives.


 


304 PAGES (APPROX.), 6 X 9 INCHES, 30 B&W PHOTOGRAPHS, INTRODUCTION, INDEX