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 holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Visual Arts from SUNY Potsdam and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Social Science from Lund University in Sweden. Her ceramics have been showcased in both solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Currently, she is participating in a summer exhibit at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden, where her ceramics are on display. Recently, she also presented an installation with the Millbrook Arts Group at the Millbrook Library in New York, featuring a combination of ceramic works and gel plate prints. Moreover, she was invited to create a solo viewing room titled "Hedgerow: Where Growth Resists" at Silvermine Galleries. This spring, her work was included in 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, New York, where she maintains an active studio practice.