Alessandro Gallo is a young Italian ceramic sculptor living and working in Genoa and London. Gallo produces anamorphic sculptures exploring humorously personal traits. The author first encountered the artist at La Meridiana, in Certaldo, Italy near Florence. The two sat down recently to discuss the artist's work.

Jayson Lawfer: What is your background?

Alessandro Gallo: I'm thirty four. I've always enjoyed drawing and painting and learned on my own. I went to art college quite late, when I moved to London. I was twenty four at the time. Before then I had been studying Law in Genoa, which is where I come from. In London, I studied at St. Martin's College of Art and Design and Chelsea college of Art and Design.

While I was studying in London, I worked as a painter and decorator. I think about that job as very educational, although informally. In the broader sense, I think my studying is still continuing and I don't see it stopping any time soon. I try to collaborate as much as I can with artists and craftsmen whose work I admire, to observe how they work, trying to learn a few tricks and improve my work.

JL: How long have you been working in clay? What attracted you to start working with the medium of clay?

AG: I started working in clay three years ago. I never had any experience in three-dimensional work before; I've always painted and graduated as a painter. While I was in college I started working with digitally manipulated images. I began inserting animals in familiar city settings through Photoshop - polar bears waiting for a train on the underground platform, walruses in Trafalgar Square, goats in South London and such. These images were trying to be humorous and nonsensical.

After that I started creating hybrids using heads of animals, adding them on human bodies. Animals create images in the viewer's imagination. They perfectly embody the fundamental character or disposition of a person, his or her nature. It was natural to take these characters out of my watercolors and prints and make them physically present, standing on their own. Clay seemed excellent. I loved it immediately.

My first piece was a donkey-man, wearing a grey suite, hands in his pockets. Ceramic is a very complex process. It's a versatile medium. I enjoy using my hands, getting them dirty, and then the firing and the surprise when you open the kiln. The final object is both solid and frail. I guess I enjoy the challenge.

Working clay requires different skills in different stages. It's a good field of applications for Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will".

It is vital to work with experts so as to minimize risks. I was blessed to start with one and I always try and work with them. The guy that taught me in the beginning is an Italian sculptor named Adriano Leverone, whose studio, where I still go to, is near Genoa, Italy. We fire stoneware at high temperatures. I study and work as well in an international clay center called La Meridiana, which is near Florence.

JL: Why animals?

AG: Animals create specific associations for those looking at them. This is probably why they are used to impersonate abstract qualities and traits in some religions or in fables and other narrations. For instance, a donkey is proverbially stupid, stubborn and works hard; horses are noble and elegant and so on.

JL: What other art mediums are you passionate about?

AG: Aside from clay, I still paint and draw. And still do my digital collages which I then have screen-printed on paper in a studio called La Fenice, in Genoa, and whose owner, Rinaldo Rossi, has been working with great contemporary artists for more than forty years and is a source of inspiration for his continuous ambition for excellence.

JL: When pricing your work for a gallery exhibition, what factors do you take into consideration to conclude a price?

AG: Pricing is still one of the most difficult things. After years, I still find the contemporary art market kind of puzzling. I guess the first thing we look at is the sales history record. The economic value depends on the buyers. A piece is worth what somebody is prepared to pay. So what's been paid already gives you an indication on how to price the new things. Expenses and risks in the making are important as well, though there's a part of the price that seems disconnected from the quality of the work and is therefore beyond my control. Guessing it right without stretching it too far asks for a difficult balancing, which I'll hopefully learn to master.

JL: What is the price range for your ceramic sculpture? How is the Italian art market for young artists such as yourself?

AG: Price range goes, roughly, from $2,000 to $15,000 for my work. As for the Italian market, having developed professionally in the U.K., I don't know it enough to make comments.

JL: What artists have been your most influential? What influences have you attributed to your work from growing up in Italy?

AG: Being Italian is part of my personality. It inevitably affects my work. I do enjoy my coffee breaks. The same goes for London where I've spent almost ten years. I enjoy a pint of beer after a day's work. As for visual artists, I find it difficult to isolate some. I look at a lot of things and enjoy a lot of works. My tastes and passions are varied and unsettled. As a friend would put it, when they ask him what kind of music does he like to listen to, he'd reply: 'good music,' meaning what's valid, across styles and ages and beyond definitions. Besides, I get influenced in what I do from different art forms. I enjoy reading, and movies. I love music.