Elisa Soliven is drawn to clay for the immediacy with which it conveys the working process, and for how it captures a sense of the talismanic in the ordinary. Her sculptures record her material inquiries and capture her subjects through an archaeological accumulation of modeled layers of clay and embedded ceramic. Working with constructed forms in clay and found materials, she reworks the familiarity of the everyday object of the vessel into idiosyncratic inventions.
Elisa Soliven was born in New York City and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has had exhibitions at Nudashank, Baltimore; Daily Operation at Bull & Ram, New York; Sardine, Brooklyn; Present Company, Brooklyn, among others. Her work has been reviewed by Two Coats of Paint, Art Critical, and Hyperallergic. Soliven is co-founder of the Bushwick-based artist collective Underdonk. She received a BA from Bryn Mawr College and an MFA from Hunter College.