Montana-based ceramic sculptor Adrian Arleo crafts surreal figures and hybrid creatures. Toying with scale and texture, Arleo subverts the nature of familiar beings from our world. The result are works that inspire both awe and uncomfortability. The artist says that the themes at play in her pieces are numerous.
“For over thirty years, my sculpture has combined human, animal and natural imagery to create a kind of emotional and poetic power,” the artist says, in a statement. “Often there’s a suggestion of a vital interconnection between the human and non-human realms; the imagery arises from associations, concerns and obsessions that are at once intimate and universal. The work frequently references mythology and archetypes in addressing our vulnerability amid changing personal, environmental and political realities. By focussing on older, more mysterious ways of seeing the world, edges of consciousness and deeper levels of awareness suggest themselves.”
Arleo’s work has been shown across the world, and her work is in collections at the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation in Korea, Museum of Arts and Scoeinces in Georgia, and Greenwich House Pottery in New York.
