Elyse Pignolet

Elyse Pignolet was born
in Oakland, California in 1979.  She
attended California State University, San Francisco, and in 2001, lived and
studied in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain.  In
2007, Pignolet received a BFA in Ceramics from Cal State Long Beach.  Her studies included an intensive ceramics
tour through Mainland China and Korea in 2007. She was awarded a CSULB Travel
Scholarship for Art in 2008 and, traveled to Portugal to study traditional
Portuguese tile making. Pignolet currently lives and works in Los Angeles,
California.

Pignolet works primarily in ceramics, with a focus on social issues, urban
themes, and topics from contemporary news articles.  Her works demonstrate a contrast between the
permanence of traditional ceramics and the fleeting, transitory nature of the
contemporary world.  For example, Pignolet
has created several bodies of work that place the extensive history of ceramics
in contrast with the temporary nature of graffiti as a starting point to make
hand-built sculptures that draw from the traditional calligraphies of various
cultures, combined with the lettering of contemporary urban writing.  Other artistic projects and drawings reference
the world around us, dealing with formal concerns of art while blurring the
line between figuration and abstraction. Her drawings begin with the
deconstruction of city grids, maps, architectural plans, which are reorganized
in multilayered semi-abstract compositions. These drawings attempt to process
the many layers of information observed in her contemporary environment
compressing time, space, and place.

Pignolet’s works have
been featured in several publications including the LA Weekly, Juxtapoz Magazine,
and the Los Angeles Times.