Rather than deciding on just one or two art forms, Christiane Casella has embraced a diverse mix of mediums, from 3D sculptures fashioned out of bronze, fiber, bonded felt and clay, to 2D works, including drawings, paintings and photography. In many cases, elements are combined.
“As I always say to people when they ask me about my work, I’m always willing to try and experiment; see if I can make it work for what I want to do with it. The only way I could pin myself is I’d say I’m definitely more of a 3D thinker,” says Casella.
“I’m a sculptor first, and then a 2D artist. More recently I’ve been exploring going into an encaustic painting: painting with wax. I’m reading about it in a sculptural format and it’s been one of those itches that I’m like, OK, I just need to try this. And how can I make it work with some of my other work?”
A selection of her artwork is on display at the Galleries at First Presbyterian Church in a show titled A Celebration of Women. The installation, which also features artists Sandy Johnson and Anne Whitney, is on view through March 31.
Raised in the New Jersey suburbs, Casella says her parents frequently took her into New York City to experience museums, theater and the ballet.
“My parents made it a point of instilling in me that the arts are important in your life, no matter what you end up doing.”
She recalls some artist friends of her parents telling them, “She’s creative. Don’t ever buy her coloring books or anything where you have to draw inside the lines. Only let her draw on paper.
“So that’s what they did.”
After studying liberal arts in college, Casella worked in the corporate world, married, had two children and became a full-time mother. She eventually went back to school, earned a master’s degree in teaching and became a K-12 special education art teacher.
“It wasn’t until I was teaching that it all gelled and came together. I learned so much from my students, questioning things and exploring avenues and how to think about art. Their questions raised questions in my own mind. It was a really positive experience and I really enjoyed it,” she says.
Upon retiring, Casella finally had time to concentrate on her own artwork, and began immersing herself in intensive workshops where she could interact with other artists and experiment with different mediums.
“It’s pretty isolating when you’re working as a solo artist at home, so it’s nice to bounce ideas off others and be in a group setting now and then,” says Casella, who today has studios in Bucks County, Pa., and Vero Beach.
Although much of her work can be considered abstract, she has studied classical drawing and human anatomy in workshops with live models, which she says fuels her abstract work.
“I don’t believe you can do non-objective work without having an understanding of the classics first. Having the classics under your belt, and knowing how to render something in an academic manner, is the foundation for going abstract and going non-representational or non-objective,” she explains.
Casella learned how to cast bronzes through a workshop at a foundry up north, and her interest in creating fiber sculptures was sparked by workshops at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Not wanting to take the wearables route with fiber, she began sculpting it.
Whether in bronze or fiber, many of her sculptures reflect the close mother-child relationship she had with her children, or even the human-animal interconnectedness.
“I love to create work that’s about bonds between beings,” says Casella, referencing, for example, such whimsical felt sculptures as Bonded, Primary Bond 1 and Bonded 2.0.
The sculptures have a core of polystyrene, which she carves into figurative shapes before wrapping them in wool. Some are mounted on mahogany and others are placed atop river jack stones, worn flat after years in the water.
“It was sort of an experiment where I could bring together this hard, impenetrable material of stone and mix it with this soft material. You can smell the lanolin in some of the wool. Your hands actually come away soft from working with wool, which is the opposite of what happens when you’re working in any of the process with bronze.”
A majestic relief sculpture, Ancient Bond, is completely constructed out of wool. She explains that the heads of two sea turtles that are seen popping out from the ocean are built up with needle felting.
The painstaking, months-long process involved stabbing the wool with spiney needles that tangle the fibers, creating clumps that she shapes into a rounded surface, up to 7 inches deep. Dyed wool is then layered on top in little bits to gradually build up the colors.
A more recent project involves the creation of a series of porcelain female figures, constructed of body pieces strung together like puppets.
“Written on the figures, on the front, are all the positive affirmations or ways women have been described through the ages,” Casella explains.
“I love the idea of a sculpture being able to be manipulated and posed. I was determined to create something that you could pose and maybe have it sit down, stand up, or pose differently to evoke a certain kind of attitude or mood.”
Another imaginative sculpture, So Much Alike, features a mix of fiber sculptures set on mahogany bases. On top, alpaca, in its natural state, looks very much like a head with a fuzzy hairdo, on figures made with vibrantly colored wool.
“I should say my idea was same thing; sort of a bond between these two characters. I had fun doing that one.
“That started as a drawing as well. Then I was like, this is too weird a drawing. I’ve got to make a sculpture out of it.”
Casella is affiliated with the American Artists Professional League, Salmagundi Club, New Hope Art League, Philadelphia Sketch Club, Vero Beach Art Club, Philadelphia Sculptors and Studio Art Quilt Associates.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
