Isabelle Balabis: It Sits On Her Vainity

For NCECA’s 2023 convening in Cincinnati, Ohio, BasketShop presents Isabelle Balabis: It Sits On Her Vanity. Balabis, a second generation potter, will explore the notion of “current” in her work through reflections on lineage in craft, resilience and bodily experience through work in porcelain.

Balabis uses taboo and subversion through her object’s intended function to alter the personal experience of perception. Her porcelain sculptures tilt toward the alluring and perverse by exploring the relationship between body and object, a vessel’s form, and its functionality in space.

Utilizing her sense of internal and external bodily experience, Balabis creates a revealing world where expectations are directed into an idiosyncratic new logic and perception of the past, current and future. Using mirrors lined with porcelain figures, flowers and frames, she uses both the functional and aesthetic properties of the reflection to cast these perspectives.

Born in Philadelphia, Balabis received her BFA from University of the Arts Philadelphia in 2020 and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Sculpture in 2022. From 2018-19, she was a Windgate Fellowship Award Nominee, received the Haystack Art School Collaborative Award, The David Gibson Ceramics Award, Hompe Foundation Award, Standard Ceramic Supply Company Award and the Liz Stewart Special Award for Ceramics. She currently lives and works in New Jersey.