Let's Meet Elena S. Boiardi

Please meet my wonderful friend Elena S. Boiardi. I’m sure you’ve seen my beautiful pink shagreen box. It’s delicate and so special because Elena created it just for me!

Elena lives in Wellesley, MA with her husband and their three sons aged 8, 6 and 3. She grew up in Washington DC and spent every August on the Cape in Hyannisport with her mom’s side of the family, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The Cape, is her happy place so she and her husband decided to make a move to Massachusetts pre children so they could raise a family and summer there.

Different silhouettes

Can you share a bit about your youth: My parents Deborah and Mario are both creatives, he’s an architect and she is a former art teacher and all around I can do anything and make it look good while having fun person. Everything I am I owe to those two, because they saw what I just knew from the beginning, I’m an artist, that’s what I want to do and they fueled it wholeheartedly. We had an easel in the kitchen, markers, beads to string, glitter, I took ballet and learned to be inspired by music and dance, I had the tools available to me to constantly stoke the fire. I am the oldest of three my brother George and sister Caroline and I spent a lot of time outdoors in a dead end street where we could ride our bikes and not worry about traffic. The five of us love each other, are each others favorite people, I lived a blessing of a childhood, so very lucky.

What does being an Artist mean: I always wanted to be an artist, like they say “I was born to be” it’s that, I don’t remember a time where color and making things wasn’t what I felt I was blessed to do. Funny thing is I can be totally out to lunch at times but I remember every artwork I have ever made, as in standing there with it in the moment creating it, that painting mom saved from preschool, a vase of flowers, I remember the teacher coming to pick up the class but I hadn’t finished the work, the art teacher Mrs Dinsmore said “let her stay, she just needs a few more minutes, I will bring her back to the classroom” and I remember adding the purple details to the pink vase like it was yesterday.

“Art, it’s me at my absolute best, in fire with so much to give with complete clarity of mind and focus.”

— Elena Boiardi

Elena attended Miami University in Ohio, she was a studio art major with a focus in painting and minor in ceramics. She is passionate about art, children’s art and teachers. One of our first exchanges was regarding my sons art as part of large gallery wall here in the Chalet.

I have to take this opportunity to talk about teachers, because my art education started from the beginning and my art teachers were my champions. From preschool through high school I had a great number of art teachers, who saw me and made me feel like I could do anything. I wasn’t the best student in terms of math and grammar, it frustrated me but I didn’t feel stifled by it because I had that place to shine. My art teachers individually were amazing people and my most valued allies. Also worth noting that I decided to go to a liberal arts school instead of a designated art school because I wanted a variety of people around me. The most important thing Miami gave me was a year abroad in Florence Italy, THAT certainly shaped my love of color, and appreciation for art history. So yeah, Florence Italy actually happens to by my favorite place on earth, but the Cape is a close second and much closer to my family. Florence gave me a permanent sense of wonder, to live in a place so rooted in art history, to go to the art store and see fresh ground pigments and binders made and used in the same way as hundreds of years ago, Florence sort of developed an awe of color but children were really what taught me about color.

The Yellow Dress - an abstract Elena painted during college. The Yellow Chiffon dress belonged to her grandmother and Elena was wearing it the night she met her husband!

Enter the year after a post baccalaureate program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (now known as SMFA Tufts) and I’m back home in DC going, OK I’m an artist but where to apply this to a day job that will pay the rent. I phoned my elementary art teacher Pam Jones and asked if I could talk to her about teaching, showed up and Pam said we need a sub from time to time, I said “but I don’t have any experience teaching” and she said “but you LOVE art so it’s just going to happen organically” a month later I took over a maternity leave in the art department and taught right there next to Pam.

I kept up with painting upon graduation from undergrad, and teaching allowed me the summers to really focus and I would spend the time painting plein air on the banks of the Potomac River and August on the Cape, my Jeep was a moving studio, I always had paint ready and would often pull over to get a quick painting in.

After moving to Boston I had a shared studio space at Vernon Street Studios in Somerville. After having my first child making art in the traditional sense was put on the back burner. There was a period of about six years where I had to be comfortable with the notion that creativity takes on many forms. As a mother I no longer had the time or really the energy needed to make oil paintings but I learned not to let myself get discouraged by this and instead accept that the energy I had left to create art might find its way into an array of things like cooking, small watercolors, going on walks and observing color and making mandalas (transient natural installations) and taking visual notes. I felt a huge sense of relief when I embraced that life goes through seasons and the season of very young children meant adjusting my art-making to things that were accessible and viable, allowed me to feel success in small ways instead of overwhelmed by not making paintings. I have had this discussion with various mother/artists about “letting go” and setting yourself up for some success creatively while being a mother to young children who need so much of your energy and time. I didn’t truly get back into art until a year and a half ago when I stepped into that paint your own pottery studio and thought “I could make something here” and got bitten by the shagreen bug.

The first piece of Shagreen Elena created

Elena’s most used Hashtag on Insta is #ihavethisthingwithcolor and you will see the multitude of colors she creates in her work. She is constantly adding to her color repertoire.

Tell me how you moved into selling your work: Selling my work has largely taken place on Instagram. It’s no secret I love Instagram for a tool to connect and promote work. People direct message me with interest and I get back to them with images and pricing. I have sold pieces at the Wellesley Marketplace and last spring as a pop up at Wellesley Kitchen and Home Tour. Both events are through the the Wellesley Hills Junior Women’s Club. Elizabeth Benedict has carried a variety of pieces in her studio Elizabeth Home.

Elena jokes that she’s 40 going on 24! Look at her excitement during a photo shoot for Honey + Fitz Collection.

The largest selling experience has been my partnership with Dina Holland. I had long admired Dina’s work on Instagram and knew she was in the next town over Needham, I hoped to meet her and considered mailing her a piece but through the beauty of Instagram she contacted me with interest in carrying my work as part of an e-commerce shop. Dina is a savvy business woman and recognized that her large Instagram following wouldn’t be able to hire her - so she curated the Honey + Fitz Collection - making art and decor available to fans of her design work. Dina was also my first opportunity at professional documentation by photographer Jessica Delaney and the opportunity to talk about the work. I learned a lot and am so thankful to Dina for the opportunity.

In October of 2019 Elena collaborated with Kristen Rivoli on a Table Design for the Heading Home to Dinner event. The event is hosted by the Boston Design Community - participants design tablescapes or bar carts. Ticket sales for cocktails and dinner as well as the auction of the bar carts and sales of items from the tables all go to Heading Home which provides emergency, transitional and permanent housing and supportive services to homeless and formerly homeless families and individuals in Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, Quincy, Revere and Somerville MA. I had seen the event through Instagram and asked how to get involved and was told there would be a kick off meeting the next year, so when it came up I went. I went with the idea that I wanted to partner with someone to make a table setting, plates etc. in shagreen. So I showed up with a dish and lingered after the meeting asking if anyone knew of someone who might be interested in my work. I was blessed to meet with Kristen Rivoli who is one of the founding members of the event, she said she loved color, and would like to partner. Kristen had a concept to use boldly colored glass vases and goblets by an Italian designer, we talked about color, I made the plates and she gave me the liberty to make eggs for the the table in an array of colors. The table was called “To Italy with Love” the concept came together beautifully, not too many elements, just bold color, modern shape and ethereal wispy flowers to compliment. The event raised $177,000.00.

Elena and Nick and their boys

Getting back to art for me was about taking a look at the time I have as a mother and being honest about what it was I could do, i.e. setting myself up for success. The shagreen is ceramic, but for me it’s really another form of painting, I buy premise white forms, they are my canvases and I build color by brushing in layers of glaze, not the same color glaze but different colors that will ultimately meld together when heated in the kiln. The repetition of pattern and placing each dot is truly a meditation, it’s not like I can carry out a conversation while I’m doing it, I don’t use a stencil, everything is deliberate and I am focused but that’s an important part of the work because if it’s going to be the same pattern on everything I want it to be meticulous and deliberate. I have thoughts of where the pattern could go, ideas for drawing, sculpture and then eventually oil painting but that will come with time, or when there is a little more of it, my boys are all in an 8am-3pm time-frame and those are the hours I can count on to work but, right now there is A LOT of work being made after they go to bed, it’s quiet and they don’t need me.

Elena told me it is pure joy when unloading the kiln!

Elena recently held her first pop-up shop and it was brilliant success! She shared: I have a lot of questions I am tying to figure out about sales. I know I want to have a website as a landing page for contact info, pricing and images but I am more and more intrigued by the pop ups I see on Instagram, a short sale of a small body of work. I don’t have the time right now to handle a huge volume of work, the dots take a lot of time, so perhaps controlling the volume myself by only offering a set amount of pieces every month is the answer, it’s something I’m trying to figure out. And I will say I don’t think pop ups on Instagram devalue the integrity of art. There is a British ceramic artist I adore, Hannah Billingham, her pieces are high art and she has “curated online shows” every so often after she has completed a body of work it goes up for sale.

I love the amazing colors Elena captures and then replicates in her work: Color inspiration is largely from nature but also randomly from fashion, spray paint marking on the sidewalk, clouds, I like bright color, saturated color that makes you stop and look. In fact I truly believe wearing color can change your mood, I don’t believe there are “good or bad” colors for anyone, if you like yellow, wear yellow it will change how you look because it’s a color that makes you feel happy. Wear the colors you like. Also my color influence as said is largely due to spending time in the art room with children, learning to mix color from the beginning from primary color and importantly which I haven’t said, I don’t love black, a painting teacher early on said never to use black paint because it would muddy all of the other colors. Black has its place sure, it can be a chic monotone fashion look but put black with any bright color and I feel it kills the vibrancy. Color to me is intoxicating, can’t get enough, there are endless discoveries.

Visual Notes is what Elena calls all the magnificent images she captures and uses as inspirations for the many incredible colors she produces in her work. Her pieces are multi-functional - a lovely dish or tray is as pretty and useful (food safe) in the kitchen as on a coffee table.

Find Elena on Instagram or contact her via Email