Emily Franicola

Emily Franicola was born and raised in rural Western Pennsylvania. In 2014, she graduated from Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA with a BA in Studio Art. After completing her BA, she spent six months as a ceramics resident at Cub Creek Foundation, and worked as a technician for various studios in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Franicola received her MFA in Artisanry from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in spring of 2018, and is currently Gallery Director and Adjunct Instructor of Ceramics and at Seton Hill University.

"My ceramic objects and mixed media wall installations are quiet representations of moments and images from my past, growing up on a small family farm. Charged by site-dug clay, topographical undulations, and mechanical contraptions, the work acts as historical markers of both the land and the domestic space’s aging status. In other words, they are my desperate attempt to preserve a deteriorating rural environment and way of life. Over time and distance, memories become abstracted, and these tangible objects provide me with context to spaces that have disappeared or rotted away. The snapshots that emerge have a familiarity to not only myself, but to the people that understand this livelihood, the trials of coping with its changes, and the preciousness of family ground."