As someone with a sun in Capricorn, Analuisa Corrigan is used to working hard and getting her hands dirty in the process. This is now quite literal with her self-taught sculpture practice. While the artist has spent nearly a decade making art out of paint, clay, and printed matter, it was only in 2019 that she started traversing the realm of spatial design. In conversation on Zoom (she prefers the camera turned on), Ana describes her practice as an intersection between fine art and function through organic and figurative shapes.
It all began after graduating from Parsons School of Design, where she studied communication design. Ana found herself at a bit of a career crossroads and couldn’t ignore the pull toward a different direction than she had planned. “I immediately was like ‘I hate this, I’m unhappy, I want to make lamps,” she recalls. “Once I decided I didn’t want to work on a screen all day, I went to clay. The fact that it was something that I was going to be creating with my hands that had function was amazing to me. I found it to be such a complicated and beautiful material.”
Ana reveals that she initially went to school for oil painting, but panicked when she realized how hard it was to be a professional painter. So, she switched to graphic design, a happy medium that was artistic enough but profitable and stable. Her biggest takeaway from it was “how you could actually communicate something, change someone’s opinion about something, or sell something; you had an actual function to it,” she explains.
Then, the pandemic happened in the midst of visiting her boyfriend, the actor known as Logan Lerman, from New York, so she wound up staying with him in Los Angeles. She then started experimenting with ceramic lamps, even learning the backside of the wiring by cold-calling and emailing other artists and electricians for information.
“It’s all just a constant of trial and error, that’s the best way for me to put my process,” she explains. “Half of the time with ceramics you make something and it doesn’t even come out the way you wanted it to because you’re dealing with such high temperatures that you don’t really have control over. It doesn’t matter how precise you are with your calculations; the second you put something in a kiln that’s going up to 2,000 degrees, it’s kind of up to the placement.”
While growing up surrounded by the gated communities in San Diego, Ana got a taste of culture from frequent road trips down to Mexico with her mother. Ana was also exposed to the multidimensionality of New York City’s theater world through her father. She views the Alvin Ailey dance company that he toured with as “a window to real people in real life” that simply didn’t exist on the West Coast. Being around the crew would leave a lasting impression on her, though. She adds, “Seeing people have such a deep craft with so many different materials that could be made functional but were still artistic was so inspiring to me.”
Ana credits many of these factors for expanding her worldview and informing her future as a more artistically inclined being. Fortunately, both of her parents were always supportive in the sense that “they always made sure I knew that being an artist was a career, that it was a real job.” Having that understanding early on really made her see the value in pursuing the arts. “My brain was overwhelmed with ideas and options at a very young age,” she says.
Though all roads were steering Ana down this path, making the choice to be an artist full-time came with its baggage. More than anything, she felt the pressure of being active on Instagram, where there’s the hurdle of comparison and competition. But the platform remains crucial for business—especially when the new standard for clients is reviewing your account instead of your professional website. “I was so scared of growing to hate it,” Ana admits. “When it becomes a job, it’s like ‘Okay, I have to do these things.’ Sometimes I don’t even necessarily love the pieces that I’m making, but it’s my job to create digestible art for people’s homes.”
Ana is usually in the studio at least once a day working on a number of pieces that are rotating on a schedule. She often considers how each object is going to fit into someone’s home and change the mood of the space. Along with the made-to-order lighting designs that range from $1,750 to $2,400, another portion of Ana’s income is supported through orders of more affordable mugs and jewelry saucers. (Note that this selection of ceramics is currently sold out.) When Ana isn’t showcasing her latest work, every so often Logan will make a casual cameo on the ‘gram, much to the delight of his fan base. Most of the time, she gives him a shoutout for assisting her with mundane tasks in the studio, from lifting heavy pieces to steaming photoshoot props.
Even though Ana is still relatively new to this side of the industry, she has already produced custom pieces for the Aritzia flagship in Los Angeles and displayed her work in an installation at Tase Gallery. Toward the end of 2021, she finally unveiled a small series called “My Secret Garden” that incorporates more floral and feminine elements that come off as fantastical. Ana notes how there are so many parallels between gardens and ceramics, from their delicate nature to “the patience that’s required to make both of these materials.”
The inspiration came from a desire to bring more color into her work and to “make something without the intention of just selling it.” So, she seized the opportunity to rewrite the narrative within her practice and took the risk of playing around with different glazes and fabrics. Much to her relief, she’s received interest in these pieces recently and remarks how “it’s been nice to see it all finally come full circle and stick to my integrity of what I wanted to make.”
“I feel like what people respond to is so reflective of what’s going on in the world,” Ana says. “People are leaning into wanting to have things in their home that make them happy now.”
This year, Ana is looking forward to working in more public spaces, like restaurants and bars, and contributing to social experiences that are meant to be short-term. At the moment, her muse is free-flowing materials like tablecloths and curtains. She’s also eager to flirt with ceramic furniture and is still hoping that Seth Rogen will respond to her DMs so they can link and build something together.
“I still feel so lucky to be doing this for a living,” Ana says. “It’s a very special thing for me to know that in someone’s most intimate space, their home, they would be willing to have something that I created in there.”