Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Adrian Arleo’s Strange, Ceramic Creatures

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.

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.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
English artist Patrick Hughes' paintings make an object out of the world as we see it- a type of work that he calls "reverspective" painting or combining painting with making objects. In his reverspectives, interiors of art museums, houses, and multiple buildings under crystal blue skies, are broken apart and as one moves around the picture, they fold together into a solidified space. It is a trick of our own perceptions, as the pieces are actually an immobile, abstract sculpture. In essence, once could also call Hughes' work sculptural paintings.
Wesley T. Wright’s stoneware sculptures put surreal touches on the natural world. His new show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, titled “Ark of Man,” highlights the artist’s interest in folklore. The show runs April 5-28 at the Los Angeles venue. (Wright was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.)
Argentinian-born artist Nicola Constantino pushes the controversial issue of animal rights and the relationship between birth and mortality in her sometimes graphic, always peculiar sculptures of animals. Whether a pig hanging from a conveyor belt, or birds compressed into perfectly round balls, the sculpted animals in Constantino’s works are manipulated in ways that feel forced and staged for human needs.
Canadian artist Shane Wilson draws his inspiration from the nature surrounding him in north Ontario. In his artist statement, he writes, "I live through my hands and tools: transforming thick, heavy bone and bronze, meant for massive collisions, into ethereal, otherworldly creations; precious oases in the midst of life." Sourced ethically, his ornate carvings into animal antlers, particularly moose, are unreal. They balance the beauty of the animal with the severity and aggressive nature of the antlers' former life. With careful workmanship, Wilson summons tiny, peaceful scenes of Canada's wilderness, such as Grizzly bears fishing and wolves howling in the night.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List