Isabel Mattia
Isabel Mattia is an artist, fabricator, teacher, doula, and parent. She lives on a small sheep farm in rural Rhode Island, and works both at home and in her space within Smokestack Studios in Fall River, Massachusetts. Mattia teaches as a Critic in the RISD Sculpture Department, and in the Welding department at the Steel Yard in Providence, RI. She has also taught in Brown's Visual Art Department.
She received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2019 and studied at SAIC for a post-baccalaureate semester in 2016. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Brown University with a double concentration in Visual Art and Africana Studies in 2011. Her work has been featured by Artforum, exhibited at Heaven Gallery, the Hera Gallery, the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, New Bedford Art Museum, Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery, The Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Arts at Brown University, and the David Winton Bell Gallery. She is a recipient of the Marlene Malik Grant for Sculpture and the Roberta Joslin Award for Excellence in Art.
Artist Statement
My work celebrates the complicated emotions mixed up in life's biggest transitions: birth and death. My studio practice is inextricable from my roles as a caregiver, a griever, and a teacher. Although I identify first as a metalworker, I make work through a variety of means and mediums, always beginning with elemental and symbolic materials. I see the world through the lens of a queer Jewish parent, and my work reflects those positions. I live on a small sheep farm in rural Rhode Island, and the soil, salt air, and seasons certainly find their ways into my work. I embrace tension, unanswered questions, community building, quietness, and raw emotion.
Instagram: @IsabelMattia