Zo Ulibarri

Zo Ulibarri is a Colorado native who has spent most of his life in Denver, with deep family roots in the San Luis Valley. This geographic tension between urban and rural environments runs throughout his work, shaping how he thinks about landscape, memory, and scale. Raised in a household centered on domestic and physical labor rather than formal art-making, he developed an early awareness of how materials are used, reused, and repurposed, an understanding that continues to inform his approach to making.

Clay plays a central role in Ulibarri’s practice because of its capacity to retain history. He is drawn to the way it records pressure, time, and error, functioning as a material archive of labor. While formal training in ceramics provided technical foundation, his work shifted significantly once he began working beyond clay, incorporating precious metals, found objects, and industrial waste. Moving across materials allows him to place different histories in conversation, often through tension and contrast.

Landscape remains a persistent reference point, particularly the Front Range and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Ulibarri engages scale as a means of confrontation rather than monumentality, inviting bodily presence and reflection rather than spectacle. His work does not seek to overwhelm but to insist on attention, mirroring the way these landscapes assert themselves through proximity and endurance.

Periods of creative stagnation are met through intensified labor rather than retreat. Working through resistance often reveals direction, allowing the physical act of making to guide conceptual development. More recently, his work has become increasingly connected to his Chicano heritage. Using heavy, durable materials functions as a way to honor labor, transformation, and endurance, grounding personal and cultural history within physical form.

For Ulibarri, success is not defined by polish or completion. A work succeeds when it holds tension and leaves room for reflection. His practice is rooted in becoming, in remaining with uncertainty, and in allowing material and memory to shape one another over time, without forcing resolution.