Cristina Salusti attended both Tufts University and Manhattanville College, where she received her B.F.A., as well as Columbia University where she received an M.F.A. in Art and Education. Her professional career as a sculptor and ceramist includes numerous exhibitions and awards, among them a Fulbright Fellowship in Italy, a Pollack-Krasner grant, a MacDowell residency, and a residency at the invitational Stone Carving Symposium in Iwate-ken, Japan.
For all of her life, stone has been the material that speaks to Salusti. She has always been attracted to the ancient silence trapped in the marble and granite works of Italy, where her family is from, and where she often searched the quarries for the perfect rock. Clay — stone’s malleable and less mysterious opposite — entered her artistic practice serendipitously. While Salusti was studying sculpture at Columbia University, she would take breaks from her stone to chat at the nearby ceramics studio, and so, when a back injury prevented her from lifting anything heavy, she was already immersed in the medium. Eventually, her passion for stonework resurfaced when she began recreating its appearance in clay by pressing chips of her sculptures into the soft surface.
Salusti has had work in a wide range of exhibitions throughout the U.S. as well as in Germany and Japan. Her first solo show with Valerie Goodman Gallery was held in 2013
