Bowling Balls as Pearls? This Artist Finds Beauty in the Discarded.

Kiah Celeste started college studying photography, but quickly ditched it. Too many rules, too much fuss. Instead, she found her true calling in sculpture — specifically, in making you look at a bowling ball and suddenly think "pearl." And maybe also, "How did she do that?"

Her time as an art handler, carting around masterpieces in New York and at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, apparently taught her more than just how to properly hoist a canvas. While in Abu Dhabi, she wanted to join a pop-up show but was short on resources. So, like any resourceful artist (or particularly chic dumpster diver), she started collecting discarded items. The result? A marble tub that became her sculpture, Balance Bath (2019).

Finding Art in the Afterlife of Objects

Ever since, Celeste has been "foraging" for materials, transforming everyday cast-offs into objects that are both strangely familiar and utterly new. She can take a pile of old CDs and string them into something mesmerizing called Ouroboros (2025). Your dusty CD collection, suddenly art.

Her "Dream of Pearl" series (2023) is where the bowling balls come in. What look like delicate pearls resting on soft pillows are actually heavy acrylic skylight domes and, yes, bowling balls. In her hands, these chunky items manage to appear weightless, which, if you think about it, is both impressive and slightly terrifying.

Celeste has a few guidelines for her work. She avoids altering objects too much, but also doesn't want them to be simple "readymades." She also avoids new materials. This isn't just about being eco-conscious; it's also about giving used objects a second life, recognizing their "history, [their] character." And, let's be honest, it makes good financial sense for an artist.

Knowing the original objects completely changes how you see her sculptures. That floating pearl? Suddenly it's a cleverly engineered bowling ball, and you're left wondering how she pulled it off. Celeste's abstract works often explore tension — between the abstract and the recognizable, between different art movements, and sometimes, purely physical.

Take Pending Mobile (2024), where a round ball is stretched through a gridded cube, looking as if it's about to burst. Her sculptures are often described with active verbs: stretched, pierced, bent, suspended. They always seem on the edge of movement, just about to do something unexpected.

Celeste sees her sculptures as a form of self-portrait, a reflection of her own "tumultuous" inner world and her feelings of belonging to different worlds — Black and Jewish, feminine and masculine. It's a lot of push-pull, a lot of tension. But for Celeste, it's "almost romantic." She manages to bring all these disparate things together into a beautiful, harmonious whole. Which, if you ask us, is a pretty neat trick.