About
Irja Bodén is a ceramic artist whose sculptures rise as stacked, scarred forms, built from vessels that are cut and reassembled. Working from the language of containment and rupture, she reshapes familiar silhouettes into architectonic structures that hold memory, fracture, and repair. Embossed surfaces and layered glazes gather light and shadow, suggesting sediment, landscape, and the passage of time. Her prints on paper reference the internal and external landscape of the ceramic works.
Bodén has a BFA in Visual Arts from SUNY Potsda and a BA in social science from Lund University, Sweden. Her ceramics have been showcased in both solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. Recently, she displayed an installation featuring ceramic and gel plate prints with the Millbrook Arts Group at the Millbrook Library in New York. She was invited to present a solo viewing room titled “Hedgerow: Where Growth Resists” at Silvermine Galleries, her work also is included in the exhibit "A Nation of Vision" at Silvermine Galleries in New Canaan, CT. Earlier this spring, her work was also part of A.I.R.’s National Artists exhibit "Salt, Sulfur, Mercury" in Brooklyn, NY.
Her awards include a Puffin Foundation grant in 2024, an Artist Resource Trust Fund award from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation in 2020, and a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Public Fellowship in 2017. She resides in Columbia County, NY, where she maintains an active studio practice.