Exhibition News: Ali Della Bitta / strata · verse at Step Mother Nature, Thur Oct 31

Step Mother Nature
720 State Route 3
Bloomingdale, NY

Hours:
Wednesday - Friday 5pm-9pm
Saturday 3pm-9pm
Sunday 1pm-7pm

Instagram: @step_mother_nature

“It is a perplexing experience to dwell upon the divide between humanity and the environment. On one hand, we are arbiters of change, destruction, and alteration; the world bends to our whims on a daily basis. On the other hand, we are of the planet we seek to control. Everything we do, build, and maintain is born out of a slow evolution of forms dating back to the beginning of time. Organic materials and technological components merge into hybrid states while the chaos of nature breaks down even the most rigid man-made structure. Ali Della Bitta is a mixed media sculptor who explores this ongoing conversation, creating objects that investigate the touchpoints where fabrication and nature collide. In Strata | Verse, Della Bitta builds up arrangements of abstract items that elicit thoughts of cellular structures and deep-sea fauna pulled from their environs for our exploration. 

“Putting her conservationist predilections into practice, Della Bitta often upcycles and reuses the detritus of her craft to impose material limitations while also speaking to larger ideas. “By working with recycled and waste materials, I question systems of value, consumption, and sustainability, while emphasizing the fragile balance between humanity and the environment.” Like concrete ikebana, the artist’s arrangements exist in a frozen state where compositional tension invites further observation and exploration of the forms. Works like those in her landscaping memory series seem, at first, to be recognizable, but obfuscate any direct connections to reality upon closer investigation.

Della Bitta’s work can be approached from a broader, all-encompassing conversation about environmental and societal change, but it also speaks to a more intimate understanding of the world around us. In a gallery or studio, separated from the cacophony of existence, works like Lacco (2026) speak to our innate sense of wonder and abiding curiosity about the processes of nature. Lattices and layers begin to fuse in our imaginations, speaking to larger ideas of adaptation, manipulation, and entropy while also insisting upon careful viewing and minute exploration. In an effort to understand who we are and how we exist in the universe, the artist invites viewers to think about ecosystems and the effects of human activity.

As a sculptor, Della Bitta’s practice places her in dialogue with others infatuated by the intersection of natural processes, material specificity, and a quiet reverence for the constantly changing interactions between ourselves and our environment. Arlene Shechet’s myriad materials create a comparable juxtaposition of disparate items. In a similar vein, the Japanese artist Miho Dohi’s buttai constructions tread an analogous path by evoking bodily, cellular structures from mixed media. These creative corollaries prove that a wider curiosity about the connections between materials, their sources, and conceptual thought reaches beyond any one artist. In Strata | Verse, Della Bitta brings our attention not only to her adept handling of ceramics, but also to her ability to draw lively dialogues out of inanimate matter, each work becoming a building block within an expansive discussion about place, legacy, and the environment. 

This exhibition statement was written by Graham W. Bell.

Ali Della Bitta is a ceramicist and mixed media sculptor. Originally from Connecticut, received a BFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and an MFA from Purchase College in 2007. Della Bitta currently resides in the Adirondack Region of Upstate New York, where she is an Associate Professor of Ceramics and maintains a private studio.