FVCC Exhibition Showcases Ceramic Artist Adrian Arleo’s Blend of the Familiar and Uncanny
Prior to the exhibition's opening on Jan. 28, Arleo met with FVCC students and talked about her decades of work as an artist
By Mike Kordenbrock
Emerging from what she calls the upwelling of feelings and associations, and driven by the curiosity to see her ideas take form, the work of the ceramic artist Adrian Arleo seeks to evoke an emotional response by blending elements of the surreal, the mythological, and the natural world.
In the Wanda Hollensteiner Art Gallery at FVCC’s Wachholz College Center, Arleo’s work recently went on display in an exhibition that brings together creations like swans and lions covered in elliptical, open eyes, and large sculpted heads, including one with an intricate, almost latticework scalp with gaps providing glimpses of birds perched where a brain might otherwise reside.

From one wall the heads of green dogs with black eyes crane their necks protectively around the suspended form of a woman’s body, and nearby hovers another female figure made, from head to toe, entirely of ceramic leaves.
“[My] work frequently references mythology and archetypes in addressing our vulnerability amid changing personal, environmental and political realities,” Arleo said, in a statement included in a press release announcing the exhibition. “By focusing on older, more mysterious ways of seeing the world, edges of consciousness and deeper levels of awareness suggest themselves.”
Jennifer Li, the Wanda Hollensteiner Art Gallery’s manager, said the college is honored and grateful to have Arleo’s work on display. Showcasing the Lolo-based artist’s work at FVCC has long been an aspiration of David Regan, a ceramic artist who is an associate professor at FVCC and the art department chair.
Regan said he’s known Arleo for a long time. About nine years ago, she visited Regan at the college and spoke to his students, discussing with him the prospects of a show; however, without a bona fide gallery-style space at the college, it just wasn’t feasible. But Regan feels that identifying that particular need helped play a role in making the Wanda Hollensteiner Art Gallery a reality at the college.

In the intervening years, Regan has continued to feature Arleo’s work in lessons with his students, saying that she is a major, internationally known player in the world of contemporary ceramic art.
Arleo regularly shows work at Radius Gallery in Missoula, but over the course of her more than 30 years living outside of Missoula it’s been uncommon to find her work on display in the Flathead, although she said she believes some of her work has been on display at what was formerly the Hockaday Museum of Art.
For the FVCC exhibition, which opened Jan. 28, Arleo hauled the pieces herself up Highway 93 to Kalispell, and prior to the official opening celebration, she met with Regan’s students and talked about her work, and even shared pieces that she completed decades ago when she was still in grade school.
They were, in Arleo’s words, “some of the first, very first pieces where I could kind of feel just the power of the material and communication … what could be emoted.”
“You know, I was drawn to emotional content in art, really, from the beginning. That’s always been the driving force behind the work,” she said.

Regan said that he imagines for some of his students seeing Arleo’s work over the decades, and coming to better understand her success, they may find themselves realizing for the first time what’s truly feasible with ceramics.
In his view, part of what makes her work so impressive is her ability to match conceptual ideas with technical skills. “A lot of people have great conceptual ideas, but don’t have technical skills. And then there are people that have technical skill, but don’t have great conceptual ideas. Adrian is good at both,” Regan said. “And a lot of people don’t really realize about ceramics that there’s a lot of painting and surface design that goes into the making of a three-dimensional piece, like her surfaces.”

Most of the pieces included in the exhibition make use of white and a hue achieved through the use of copper carbonate that can go from a teal or turquoise to an almost grayish blue. In a few instances a reflective blue glaze has been applied to pieces to create the appearance of water. Of her use of figures nestled or hidden inside of other figures, Arleo said it traces back to the 90s when she was working on multiple wall pieces involving figures meant to appear as if they were made of twigs. The twigs presented a view inside the chest, where she decided to place a bird.
The idea of figures inside of figures continues to interest her, and it’s present in multiple pieces at the FVCC exhibition, including “Gestation I,” which is a blue-green clay dog figure with a white tendril-like design across its body. Viewed from above, the pattern has gaps which provide a glimpse of a small, gold female human figure curled inside.
“We have this exterior that looks a certain way, but there’s an interior experience that is totally different than what you see,” Arleo said. “And unless you take the time to be curious and engaged, you know, you could walk by any of these pieces and not even notice.”
One anomaly is a large, graphite-colored sculpture called “Dark Head,” which resembles a woman’s head with two small female figures perched atop it. The piece is completely opaque, and possessing what Arleo called a heavy feeling, almost like a kind of compression akin to a black hole, which stands in contrast to the lighter, airier, feel of some of the other pieces.

As for the figure made of leaves, a piece called “Flourish II,” Arleo said that it draws from a boddhisattva, or Buddhist deity, of compassion known as Guanyin. When she started the “Flourish” series, she referenced Chinese renderings of Guanyin where the figure could be seen standing on lotus blossoms and other flora. As she researched further, she learned of a female version of Guanyin depicted in some cases with porcelain white lotus leaves and flowers.

“And so I just started playing with that,” Arleo said, until the leaves started to consume the figure. “And then they became the figure.”
Adrian Arleo’s work will be on display at the Wanda Hollensteiner Art Gallery located in the Wachholz College Center through March 27. For those interested in purchasing her work, a price list is available by contacting art gallery manager Jennifer Li.