Isabella Frascella

The known and unknown is at the center of my studio practice. Making use of what is familiar and subverting expectations of form, function, and imagery provides new information and experiences. Embracing and celebrating the baggage that porcelain brings, the historic and elitist qualities are what make it alluring. Technical challenges are inherent to working with porcelain, the makers mark is remembered by the clay even when removed, process is evident always evident. Vessels are intimate with the body: soft porcelain thrown with fingertips, delicate curves transform into rigid objects— suggesting all of our orifices.

The audience is provoked with provocative imagery, form created with intimate parts in an oscillating context of comfort and discomfort. Living within and trapped by our own bodies the irrational and contradictory festers.

Facilitating a dissonance in thought, revulsion, however strangely familiar and curiously fascinating evokes a child-like wonder. Multifarious reaction, that goes beyond the initial shock is curiosity, that pushes past the dialectical opposition between shame and liberation. The work deceives the viewer in terms of functionality, providing a normative facade of assumptions challenging and distorting them.