Elyse Pignolet

Elyse Pignolet is a visual artist living and working in Los Angeles, California.

Born in Oakland, CA, Elyse Pignolet is an American with Filipino heritage. She attended California State University, San Francisco, studying Fine Arts. She continued her studies at California State University, Long Beach, on a CSU exchange program. In 2001 she lived in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, studying arts and Spanish language. She completed her BFA degree at CSU Long Beach in 2007. Her studies included an intensive ceramics exchange through mainland China in 2007, and participation in the International Ceramics Biennal in Korea, in 2007. She has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America.

Elyse Pignolet works primarily in ceramics and her work has been inspired by and dealt with various themes including social issues and topics from contemporary news articles, as well as urban themes. Her works attempt to place the permanence and traditions of ceramics with the fleeting and transitory nature of the contemporary world. She 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 caligraphies of various cultures and the characters, combined with the lettering of contemporary urban writing. Other ceramics projects of hers have juxtaposed the brash nature of political news headlines with the subtle shapes of traditional ceramic forms. Her works have been featured in several contemporary arts publications including the LA Weekly, Juxtapoz Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times.

Pignolet has collaborated with other artists as studio assistant and in many public art projects. Working with Tom Barter, she has completed large scale public projects in Long Beach, CA, and Signal Hill, CA. She has also collaborated with Sandow Birk on three public projects in Los Angeles, CA, including the Tarzana Metro Station on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Orange Line, as well as the LAPD Hollenbeck Division Police Station murals in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles.

Elyse Pignolet was Art Director for Dante's Inferno, starring Dermot Mulroney and James Cromwell. The film was adapted from the book "Dante's Inferno" by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders (Chronicle Books, 2004) and was directed by Sean Meredith and co-written by legendary puppeteer Paul Zaloom. The film is told in "toy theatre" style puppetry and premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2007. It won the "Best Director" award at the Silverlake Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2007, and won the "Audience Favorite" award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2007. It has been featured in festivals in Boston, Atlanta, San Luis Obispo, London, Tel Aviv, and Budapest, among many others, and is scheduled to be released commercially in 2008.

Previously, Pignolet worked on the film "In Smog and Thunder" from Smart Art Press. She has also appeared in videos for Quiksilver clothing company. A book "The Depravities of War", featuring her work in printmaking, is scheduled for release in Sept. 2007 from Grand Central Publishing in Santa Ana, CA.

An exhibition of drawings of hers were exhibited at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco in June and July 2008.

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2074004 Elyse Pignolet] at Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.dantefilm.com/castandcrew.html#elyse Elyse Pignolet] at the Official Website for Dante's Inferno
* [http://www.kqed.org/arts/places/profile.jsp?id=9701 KQED (San Francisco) Television Clip showing her work in exhibition]
* [http://www.insmogandthunder.com/news.html Website for film "In Smog and Thunder" (2002)]
* [http://www.cclarkgallery.com San Francisco Gallery Representing Elyse Pignolet]
* [http://www.koplindelrio.com Los Angeles Gallery]
* [http://www.chelseaartgalleries.com/Jenkins+Johnson+Gallery/Represention+2007.html New York Gallery]
* [http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/sandows-inferno/187/ LA Weely Feature/Interview on Film Work]