Elisa D'Arrigo

Elisa D'Arrigo was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Growing up in a family with a penchant for self-expression and a do-it-yourself mentality, she developed an early affinity for the creative potential of various materials including clay. In 1975, she earned a BFA in Ceramics from SUNY New Paltz. Over her long and dynamic artistic career, D'Arrigo has explored various mediums, spending her early years drawing and making ceramics, then shifting focus for three decades to processes and materials like hand-stitching, paper, wire, and fabric, before returning to clay in recent years. She continues to live and work in New York City. 

D'Arrigo's work reflects the animated and organic qualities she perceives in her materials. Under her hands, clay becomes imbued with possiblity and spontaneity, almost as if it were alive. D'Arrigo infuses individuality, eccentricity, and even humor into her pieces. Each work is hand-built allowing for improvisation that gives her sculptures personality and uniqueness. The tangible sense of their creation adds a visceral gesturality that embodies states of mind. Her clay forms, hunched and twisting as if frozen in motion, take on an almost anthropomorphic quality, highlighting the sculptures as vessels of life, and drawing attention to the often awkward way bodies inhabit space. 

In a review that appeared in Hyperallergic (April 21, 2019), John Yau noted: "...these works can be swollen or scrunched, ultimately becoming personifications of vulnerability, clumsiness, and inelegance – all the aspects of our body and behavior that call attention to our fallibilities. I think D'Arrigo's preternatural ability to invade that side of our consciousness – the one that is fearful of the gaze of others – imbues her pieces with their unaccountable presence" 

D'Arrigo's glazing technique further enhances this sense of personality and vitality, creating a skin for her pieces. She describes glazing as the birthing stage of her works, combining color, patterning and surface to bring each unique clay form to life. Life her molding process, her glazing practice embraces improvisation and the unexpected; she never knows exactly how a particular slip or glaze will affect a sculpture. This process involves continuous experimentation and layering until she feels she has achieved her desired result. "The piece leads the way, and I try to do what is needed..." D'Arrigo explains, describing how she intuitively recognizes when the glaze complements a sculpture. The outcome is ceramics that appear organic and alive, rich in surface detail, texture, and color, contorted and postured like living, weighted beings responding to gravity. Though small and seemingly humble, they command attention with their primal combination of beauty and grotesqueness. 

Throughout her career, D'Arrigo has exhibited extensively across the United States and her works are included in prestigious collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY, the Mint Museum of Craft and Design in Charlotte, NC, the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, among others. She has received grants from the Ariana Foundation for the Arts in 1984 and the NYFA in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists' Books in 2003. D'Arrigo has also held artistic residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbertide, Italy, in 2013; The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, in 1986 and 1987; and Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, in 1986. Additionally, she participated in the Workspace Program at Dieu Donné Papermill in New York in 1993.