We recently connected with Eric Serritella and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Eric thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
After a 16-year business career as a marketing executive I left the security of a paycheck, company car and air-conditioned office with a view to become a full-time artist working out of my basement. I had taken a pottery class as a creative outlet and fell in love with the material – although I never intended for it to be a career. I began selling at local craft fairs to make it a hobby that paid for itself, because after all, as a single guy, how many mugs do you really need? After buying a wheel and kiln, I donated the rest of what I earned to environmental causes.
The timing of selling my work also coincided with me wanting a change from corporate life while I decided what I wanted “to do” next. I’d still never intended to be a full-time artist – just sell some creations as a hold-over vocation to earn some money while I figured out my new path. Then in 2004 I met an internationally known Taiwanese ceramic artist named Ah Leon and we became fast friends. I asked him what was next for me as a potter and he said, “Eric, you need to make better pots.”
And so began two artist residencies in Taiwan studying with four different masters. I relied on my life savings to go and not be working on anything other than learning technique and aesthetic. I came back a better potter and a better artist as I was encouraged to think beyond technique once it was mastered and begin to “think like an artist.” The result is that over the next two decades I grew to become a successful ceramic sculptor with over two dozen sculptures in museums and pieces in collections on five continents.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Eric Serritella is a full-time artist known for specializing in hand-carved sculptures transforming clay into birch, charred and weathered logs. Clay found him in 1996 when he took a hobby pottery class to find a new creative outlet and bring more balance to a busy corporate career.
“I expected to simply discover an enjoyable pastime. Instead, creating art dug its way into my very core.”
He began a functional pottery production business in effort to follow clay’s calling and to bring a new spirit and satisfaction to his work life.
Serritella has a BA in Communication from Ithaca College. He also studied art history there and in London. His primary applied art training came in the form of two artist residencies studying with Ah Leon and masters in Taiwan. It was there that he was taken with the historic Yixing teapots, introduced to the Japanese wabi philosophy, and began his trompe l’oeil explorations.
As a result, Serritella’s one-of-a-kind sculptures are internationally recognized for their hyper-realism, and have been exhibited, awarded and collected on five continents for their exquisite organic design and incredibly lifelike textures. They are included in many permanent museum collections including among others The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Mint Museum.
Serritella has contributed to over 140 exhibitions and has been represented at some of the world’s top art and design shows including TEFAF Maastricht (Netherlands), Frieze NY, Design Miami/Basel (Switzerland), Design Miami (Florida), The Salon: Art + Design (NY), Masterpiece London, SOFA Chicago and The Smithsonian Craft Show.
A 2013 cataloged solo show at Jason Jacques Gallery in New York City led to additional international recognition. He was honored by the James Renwick Alliance as the 2016 Distinguished Artist in ceramics at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. And in 2017 was featured as the solo artist with Jason Jacques Gallery as the first ceramics gallery to be invited to the prestigious Frieze NY art fair.
His 2018 solo show at Jason Jacques Gallery was recommended in the NY Times and he has received positive acclaim by Architectural Digest and renowned art critic/historian Daniella Ohad. Works have appeared on the covers of AmericanStyle and Pottery Making Illustrated, and in the pages of Architectural Digest, Ceramics Monthly, American Art Collector, Art & Antiques, Modern, NICHE, American Craft, Clay Times, The Crafts Report, Design 360º (China), Ceramic Art (Taiwan), Lark Books’ 500 Teapots, Volume 2, as well as in several other books and calendars on ceramic art.
Each piece Serritella makes begins as a blank piece of clay where work begins spontaneously and intuitively without the use of wood samples or models. He uses wheel throwing, slab building and hand building techniques to create his expressive forms. All the texture and details are hand carved and no molds are used. After applying ceramic oxides for accent colors, the pieces are fired to over 2,100º F.
During the pandemic he added glass artwork to his repertoire. These colorful new works serve as conduits to emotion and connection through inquiry, recognition and familiarity. Vessels link humanity and nature as timelessly inseparable. They channel nature’s private stories so secluded voices and soul-singings are heard. Each is created first in clay then cast in glass, often using pate de verre for its alluring textures and depth.
He says, “The exploration of color and transparency of glass have opened an entirely new and exciting world to me after two decades of my primary works being created in clay. The blending of vibrant colors, distressed textures and transparencies into flowing lines and movement is where I am having the most fun.” While he still continues to work in clay, glass has become an exciting new focus within his repertoire and a material with years and years of creative exploration to be enjoyed and shared. This new body of work which he calls Nouveau Gothic Zen integrates a combination of his Eastern and Western influences.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me is when I am able to channel nature and express myself freely so that there is connection between the artwork, its message and the viewer. It is probably best explained in my artist statement, which I’ll share here.
Nature has always been at the core of my heart and my art. And it is in nature, in solitude, that I find grounding, focus and inspiration. And beyond earth’s visual grandeurs, it is the song within each subject that first and foremost sparks my creative tinder. Whether these subjects are sentient or not, my interpretations are about capturing their spirits, their breaths, their soul-singings. To live amongst these muses, as I have, is to become them. Like a sibling or a roommate, a connection and intimacy is formed when there is no escape but to share the space. And to share spaces is to bond with the environment’s flow of energies and vibrations. It is from this perspective that I channel and share their private stories so that their secluded voices can be heard.
As an artist, looking at pictures or watching nature documentaries can provide a wealth of influence. Yet this pales in comparison to experiencing nature with a full sensual immersion such as seeing the graceful flow of a manta’s wings, smelling the air as the sun coaxes a flower to bloom, feeling the air pressure change with the onset of an offshore thunderstorm, hearing the raindrops from leaves splash to the ground as a bird lifts off, and tasting the salted sea mist as the waves crash on the shore. To experience these things in books or on the Internet is to experience them as nouns. Living amongst them is to experience them interacting and existing together as verbs.
My sculptures translate these sensual experiences into a subconscious story that is told by my hands. I create each sculpture as a conduit to emotion through inquiry, recognition and familiarity. They serve as arenas for connection, resonance and reverberation. It is from this perspective that I channel and share their private stories so their secluded voices are heard.
Through aging and decay they challenge the viewer with both the nature of the material and the messages within. I unearth how nature maintains its splendors with tenacity and triumphs of existence, despite human disregard. I appreciate how ceramic and glass mirror the environment’s fragility and durability—easily damaged if disrespected and yet invincible in its inherent beauty and longevity.
Each organic creation is filled with metaphor, both literal and implied. Anthropomorphic elements link humanity as timelessly inseparable from its interactions and relationships to its natural surroundings. In this regard I am often guided by Asian tea culture and its influence on ceramics. My works shout out tea’s wabi sabi influences and are informed by the nature-inspired Chinese Yixing teapots of the 1600s.
Each sculpture fosters awareness to influence viewers’ behaviors toward the environment. Through this consciousness they acquire new appreciations and ways of seeing and can thus choose their actions for best sharing space on this planet.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
What I find many people fail to realize is that being a successful creative person requires not only imagination and skill and vision, but also all of those left-brained skills as well. There are very few true prodigies in this world that just make something and the rest falls into place. Most successful artists have savvy business skills, courage to put their emotions and talents out in front of an audience with the risk of rejection and critique. It takes thick skin, and tenacity, and grit, to keep going. There are a lot of failures and disappointments. That’s part of the risk taking needed to be a full-time creative.
One must treat their art, if in fact it is the way they make their living, as a business. To think otherwise is naïve and a recipe for failure. Sorry folks. That’s just the reality of it. Go to any craft show or art fair and ask an artist about the business side of their life and you’ll be surprised to learn that we don’t just get to sit around floating on hallucinogens and dream and make. We are salespeople, bookkeepers, marketers, travel planners, personnel managers, production schedulers and everything else that it takes to run a business. Are we experts at all of it? Of course not. And we all must have some elements of these skills – or know where to find resources to help – in order to succeed at selling the art that we love to make.
Contact Info:
- Website: ericserritella.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericserritella/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eric.serritella
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-serritella-13aa53a
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericserritella
Image Credits
Profile photo by Jerry Carr All product images by Jason Dowdle