Roseline Delisle, 50, Ceramic Artist
Hyfler/Rosner
Design
From an LA Times Staff Writer
November 15, 2003
Roseline Delisle, a Los Angeles-based ceramic artist known for her elegant
sculpture and strong geometric design, has died. She was 50.
Delisle died Wednesday morning at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica of
ovarian cancer, said Frank Lloyd, a gallery owner in Santa Monica's Bergamot
Station who represented Delisle.
With more than 20 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows to her credit,
Delisle developed an international reputation. Her works are in the
collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the
Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art.
Born in Rimouski, Quebec, Canada, Delisle studied art at the Institute of
Applied Arts in Montreal. She also apprenticed with the noted porcelain
artist Enid Sharon Legros.
She moved to Venice in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, and she developed a
ceramic style that was distinctive for its perfectly crafted forms and
geometric surface decorations.
Much of her early work was made in the medium of fired porcelain, but later
she turned to earthenware clay to realize her ambitious figurative pieces.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times about an exhibition of her work, critic
Kristine McKenna observed, "As aesthetic forms, they're structured around a
number of oppositions: profile versus surface; vertical thrust versus
horizontal stripe; order versus whimsy; color versus form. Perhaps most
important, what they do is take another opposition - art versus craft - and
skewer it with wit and shocking grace."
On another occasion, McKenna wrote that Delisle's art looked aristocratic.
"Delisle's work has the delicacy, intricate detail and impeccable
craftsmanship of a Faberge egg," she wrote. "Evocative of stylized harlequin
figures that threaten to morph into spinning tops, the work is at once
whimsical and austere, and it feels futuristic in an old-fashioned sense."
Delisle is survived by her husband, artist Bruce Cohen; a daughter, Lili
Celeste; her mother, Jaqueline Guindon-Delisle; and two sisters and two
brothers.
A memorial service is scheduled for 5 p.m. Sunday at Kehillat Israel
Synagogue, 16019 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades.
Instead of flowers, the family suggests that donations be made to the
Concern Foundation, 8383 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 337, Beverly Hills, CA 90211.