BIO
Delia Pelli-Walbert (b. 1999, New York, NY) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received a BFA from New York University and has exhibited at various galleries, including 81 Leonard Gallery, New York; 80 WSE, New York; ArtsClub DTLA, Los Angeles; Monira Gallery at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City; VSG Contemporary, Chicago, IL; Wirtz Properties, Chicago, IL; and Patient Info, Chicago, IL. She has lectured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and currently serves as the Assistant Studio Manager at The Digs Chicago (a nonprofit ceramics studio) as well as the Director and Co-Founder of Old Friends Gallery.
STATEMENT
I use ceramic sculpture to explore earth grief, seeking glimpses into displaced ecological systems through found images, environmental research, and the haptic material response of clay. I reference the salt marshes I grew up around as sites of perpetual change. Coastlines that shift overnight, sedimentary beds constantly moving marine minerals towards earthen soil. Skyscrapers, too, which encroach on this ever-moving landscape. Scaffolding rises and falls nearly with the tides, and the horseshoe crabs leave.
I often return to the idea of spolia, an architectural term that describes a relic from a previous building foundationally integrated into new construction. The poetic of spolia is in the implication of material memory: though the form and function of the structure may have drastically changed, the material remembers its history.
Researching invisible layers of ecology (geological deposits, migratory patterns, shifting tidelines), I pull images from scientific and social archives, printing them in metal oxides which fire into ceramic glaze and fuse with the clay surface. In clay, I seek to understand their earthen-ness, stretching my mind into the intuitive body of the material.