Stockton-based Ilena Finocchi remains curious by not sticking to one lane
Ilena Finocchi is a Stockton-based multidisciplinary artist who has called herself a designer, illustrator, sculptor, maker, educator, public artist and, of late, filmmaker. In her three-plus decades as a creative, her work has been shown nationwide, from Miami to New York to Michigan to Lodi.
“My art has been more places than me,” Finocchi says with a laugh as she sits in her garden studio, where she works on a new series of sculptures built from epoxy.
Finocchi has completed many public artworks in Sacramento in the last few years, including the utility box “Apparatus Naturalus” at 10th and O streets and “Out of Water,” a ground mural in front of the California Natural Resources Building.
“I started getting into public art, I want to say, like 10 years ago, and that has been really satisfying for me. I feel like art is not just for people in museums and galleries,” she says. “If you’re lucky enough to work on-site, public art is the kind of place where you can interact with people.”
A native of The Buckeye State, Finocchi holds a BFA in fine arts from Youngstown State University in Ohio and an MFA in ceramic sculpture from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. She says she knew she wanted to be an artist when she was 5 years old and worked with her first medium: mud.
“I played in the mud. I think that’s why I still love clay and ceramics. It really is just mud. It’s just like the earth,” she says.
At age 14, a trip to Italy, her father’s home country, solidified Finocchi’s commitment to a creative life.
“I think that’s probably what cemented me into being an artist — going and seeing all these epic sculptures that were monumental. I was afraid to move,” she says. “I think that’s why I’ve always loved sculpture.”
Finocchi is 55 but says she’s still 5 years old inside. Her child-like sense of curiosity and wonder is clear in two current film projects: a documentary on snails and a stop-motion project about the moon looking down on humanity. For the moon piece, she created 120 hand-sculpted mouths for her lunar hero, each with different expressions and emotions.
“If the moon could look at the Earth and see all the nonsense that we’re doing as humans, like, what would the moon say?” she says.
Finocchi says she feels more fragmented as she gets older and notices the difficulties of working simultaneously in many mediums and on many projects.
“It’s hard to keep hustling, but that’s the nature of being an artist. You can do all these things, and people will still say, ‘Well, what do I know you from?’” she says. “I just see myself as a creative person who likes making stuff. I have never been the kind of artist that just sticks in one lane.”
By Helen Harlan
