Navigating Life's Ups and Downs Through Art
Initiated and organized by The Bridge Arts Foundation, the 'SOLILOQUY' Open Call Exhibition is currently being held at The Scholart Selection Gallery in San Gabriel, California, and will run until August 17th, 2024.
Bridge Arts Foundation's Art Director, Tia Xu, engaged in a conversation about the exhibition and art with several artists participating in this exhibition. In this interview, we have the pleasure of speaking with artist Deanna Dorangrichia.
—— Q&A ——
Tia Xu: Could you please share your background and what inspired you to pursue a career in art?
Deanna Dorangrichia: I grew up in New York right outside of New York City and I was an art major in college. After graduating from college, I moved to NYC and worked corporate office jobs for about ten years, which was a time when I rarely made any art. Pursuing art is difficult within a societal structure that values career titles, large salaries, and status over creative endeavors, which was what held me back during that period of my life and at times it is what drives me forward now. Making art is where I feel most at home, and it is where I turn and return to for comfort and nurturance. The act of creating art is inherent and involuntary, and choosing to not do it for so long was extrinsic effort.
Photo courtesy of artist.
Tia Xu: What does "SOLILOQUY" mean to you, and how does your artwork explore this theme? Can you tell us the story behind your artwork from the exhibition?
Deanna Dorangrichia, Build, Body and Bone: Vessel No. 14, 2022, Porcelain, 6.25 x 6 x 3.50 in (15.88 x 15.24 x 8.89 cm). Photo courtesy of artist.
Deanna Dorangrichia: Every artist’s work is a soliloquy. Thoughts, questions, and emotions are processed through creative purges, and often it is a solo endeavor. Art is first and foremost for the self as a means of preservation and a means to work through things that maybe we guard or just don’t have the tools to dig through outside of the making process. My Build, Body, and Bone series is about continuance and how we build upon and around loss. Loss can be a decision we make or one that is made for us or otherwise circumstantially out of our hands. Loss can be joy or grief or both. Either way, we build on change. We are often shortchanged the middle parts of stories. We get to know the event or beginning incident, and then narratives often fast-forward to an all-is-okay kind of conclusion. We’d learn so much about ourselves and others if we embraced the uncomfortable, messy bits that are required to get from point A to point B. I want my work to visually represent all our parts, including what we hide, lose, or don’t talk about out of fear, societal pressures, patriarchal influences, and the list goes on. We are the sum of all our parts and our whole narratives and whole selves are beautiful. This is the soliloquy of my Build, Body, and Bone sculptures.
Soliloquy also makes me think about something that Phyllida Barlow discussed in an interview with Art 21:
“There are plenty of artists that don’t have exhibitions. There’s plenty of art that’s never seen. Making work that does not have a destination has its loneliness and its sadness about it. And many artists endure that for their entire lives, and it's heroic. The novel that never gets published—should it never have been written? Of course it should be. It’s making a fantastic contribution to the culture of the moment because that individual has that huge urge to do that without any other qualifying pressures." ~Phyllida Barlow
Every artist before me paved the way. I want to honor and listen to all the soliloquies that came before me, the ones that I have had the privilege to see in person and the ones that no one has seen, read, or listened to.
Photo courtesy of artist.
Tia Xu: What materials and techniques do you prefer to use in your art, and could you explain your choices?
Deanna Dorangrichia: In my Build, Body, and Bone series, I’m predominately working with porcelain. There’s a dance to finding balance with porcelain as it’s a flexible and strong clay body, but it can be fussy and difficult to work with. The material is a great teacher and keeps me in conversation with what I’m trying to convey in my work. Don’t we so often find the balance of strength and durability amongst the lessons of weakness and breakage? My sculptures are purposely pared down, and I’m always curious how much I can do and say with the least amount of material. This series is comprised of a clay body and two different white glazes. What is left when color and ornateness are removed or omitted? How much can I show and reflect in something that is stripped down to the bone and may appear visually quiet? Is it still full of life and speaking?
Tia Xu: Are there any artists or art movements that have had a significant influence on your work? If so, why?
Photo courtesy of artist.
Deanna Dorangrichia: I was exposed to so few women artists in my younger years. I’m grateful for every woman artist that crossed my path. The rebellious paintings that Georgia O’Keeffe made; the honest and raw prints by Kathe Kollwitz; the intense, large murals of Kara Walker; the immersive installations by Yayoi Kusama; and the beautiful, layered movement within Jennifer Packer’s paintings. Seeing women artists take up space with their work and voices is pure inspiration. It used to be that we knew about things only by what others disclosed to us. This gave those before us a lot of power over what we were exposed to and influenced by. It used to be much harder to know and find what was out there in the world. This meant we’d be limited by the lens of those who taught us. While there is a downside to technology and the internet, they are a resource for so many more voices. Accessibility can be a battle, and I hope that younger generations of artists have more autonomy with finding artists’ work that represents something they identify within themselves.
Tia Xu: What emotions or ideas do you hope viewers will take away from experiencing your artwork?
Deanna Dorangrichia: Life isn’t linear—we have ups and downs and everything in between. We’re taught to be so much more comfortable in the upswing of things, whether we are experiencing it ourselves or watching people we know have great moments. It’s the flip side to this positivity that I hope people embrace more. The loss, failure, grief, mistakes, etc. We don’t grow without the hard moments, and it’s important to negate the stigmas associated with struggles. So many of us are taught to go through the hard things in life quietly and most certainly privately. When we experience something truly difficult, it means there’s an opportunity to grow. We shouldn’t go through this in a vacuum. We should have a safe, supportive, and emotionally intelligent community by our side. We need the support to assist us so that we have the capacity to process all the painful things in order to grow. And what I’m talking about does not mean oversharing on social media and getting support via likes or comments. We need more face-to-face human interaction where we begin to once again recognize that we’re all interconnected.
The Bridge Arts Foundation's "SOLILOQUY" Open Call Exhibition Installation View, Photo: ©The Bridge Arts Foundation / Luna Hao
ABOUT OPEN CALL EXHIBITION PROGRAM
The Bridge Arts Foundation's "SOLILOQUY" Open Call Exhibition Installation View, Photo: ©The Bridge Arts Foundation / Luna Hao
Bridge Arts Foundation's Open Call Exhibition Program is designed to provide support for early-career artists. The "SOLILOQUY" Open Call Exhibition has thoughtfully selected 18 talented artists from over 500 submissions, employing a selection process that involves art professionals. "SOLILOQUY" opens from July 13th to August 17th, 2024.
ABOUT ARTIST
Deanna Dorangrichia
Lives and Works in Chambersburg, PA
Deanna Dorangrichia is a ceramic artist creating sculptures through a combination of wheel throwing and hand-building techniques. Her work is an examination of self-exploration, self-reflection, and continuance. Through the application of negative and positive spaces, each ceramic vessel becomes a physical representation of both the experiences of loss and the process of rebuilding. The final pieces utilize glazed lines and glaze texture to represent life paths, wounds, growth, and repair.
A native New Yorker, Deanna Dorangrichia now lives in rural Pennsylvania where she has been making ceramics for the last eight years. Deanna graduated from Binghamton University, studying studio art with a concentration in drawing. Deanna Dorangrichia has participated in group exhibits & fine art shows nationally.