NEW YORK, NY.- The Elizabeth Harris Gallery announces some vases, a show of recent ceramic works by Elisa D’Arrigo. This is the artist’s eighth exhibition at the gallery. The show is up through December 22.

In her new show, some vases, Elisa D’Arrigo returns to working with ceramics, a medium she explored some 30 years ago. With these recent pieces she also pursues a project she’s had in mind since childhood: to freely create a variety of vases conjured up at the moment rather than premeditated, with their configurations dictating what may be placed inside them--in the artist’s words, “function both following and trying to catch up with form.”

This improvisational approach to ceramics extends and expands into another medium the process D’Arrigo devised for her often intensely hued, hand- sewn constructions - a body of work she has developed over the past 20 years. Of that work she has said: “My objective is to stay in the moment, mindful of accident and chance, responding to what unfolds. The actual working with materials, and how that results in particulars of form and configuration, is what ultimately determines each piece…the desired working state is a call and response between that which is seemingly known and that which is yet to be discovered.”

Regarding the exhibition, D’Arrigo notes: “With this work, the vase is my muse. I have always been energized by the conflation and dissolving of categories: sculpture, drawing, painting. And in this case, adding to the mix: functionality. I seek the and, not the or. “

The pieces in some vases convey a subtle humor with their animated forms and textured, intensely worked glazing. Here the artist clearly revels in the characteristics of clay and glaze.

D’Arrigo’s work has been exhibited in various museums including The High Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Ashland Art Museum, and The Montclair Art Museum; her work is included in the collections of Dieu Donne Papermill, Mead Art Museum, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, and The New School for Social Research, among others. Reviews of her work have appeared in several publications including The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, Sculpture, Partisan Review, and The New York Observer.