Janet Orselli is a multidisciplinary artist who creates sculpture, drawings and site-specific installations. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Clemson University and has been chosen for artist residencies at Anderson Ranch, Colorado, Spring Island, SC and Kaiserslautern, Germany. She has received three Regional Artist Project Grants from the NC Arts Council and was awarded a national Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship in 2005. Orselli has had over a dozen solo exhibitions including OK Harris Works of Art, NYC and the Gibbes Museum, Charleston, SC. Her work is featured in the book, 100 Southern Artists. Orselli was the fall 2018 Artist-in-Residence at 701 Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Columbia, SC. where she presented her new body of work in a solo exhibition in 2019.

As a child, some of my “friends” were the wooden toys and games my mother saved from her childhood. With their chipped paint and worn edges they were treasured family relics and getting to play with them felt like a sacred experience. As a child it seemed these objects had power. When my mother and I played with them alongside each other we became children together in a world filled with possibilities. Often we used objects such as chess pieces in games created from our imagination.
Through this body of work I hope the viewer will have an experience of the wonder and whimsy of childhood. It is my way to inspire imagination and give the past a future life filled with meaning. If old things can be transformed then so can we!