Artist Eric Serritella, whose work is on display at Gravers Lane Gallery in Chestnut Hill, had a 16-year corporate career as a successful marketing and advertising executive. In 2001, he abandoned the security of a weekly paycheck, company car and air-conditioned office to jump over a cliff as a full-time artist working out of his basement with no promise of material success.

“In my 30s,” Serritella explained to the Local last week, “I took a pottery class, and I started to do some street fairs, just hoping to make it a hobby that paid for itself. I bought a wheel and a kiln … and after some time I decided to leave the corporate world after 16 years in it. I knew I didn’t have another 10 years in me for that life. I could see the burnout coming. So I gave six months’ notice and left on a high note and started selling $12 mugs, and it all took off from there.”

Serritella’s riches-to-rags story certainly has had a Cinderella ending. His works have been exhibited in 160 exhibitions and have been shown alongside artists including Willem de Kooning, Picasso, and master ceramicist Peter Voulkos.

At Gravers Lane, Serritella’s work is the subject of the solo exhibit “Sharing Spaces” and the artist will discuss his artistry at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, during an opening reception at the gallery at 8405 Germantown Ave. The reception starts at 5 p.m.The exhibit closes on Nov. 9.

Currently, two dozen of Serritella’s works are included in public collections in institutions around the world such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Mint Museum and Winterthur Museum.

“Eric Serritella’s astonishingly detailed sculptural work captures the spirit of nature and expresses ... a deep understanding of Asian philosophy and artistic traditions,” according to Leslie B. Grigsby, emerita senior curator of ceramics and glass at Winterthur Museum in Delaware, where Serritella’s Oishii teapot was acquired as the first contemporary ceramic work to join the collection.

One of Serritella’s innovations was to transform hand-carved ceramic sculptures into logs. “I did two artist residencies in Taiwan, and it was there that I studied Yixing teapots,” he explained. “In the 1600s in Yixing, which is considered the birthplace of the teapot, they carved them to look like pumpkins and gourds and tree trunks to integrate nature into the tea ceremony. My works are a contemporary interpretation of this historic art form.”

When asked which museum that has exhibited his works is his favorite, the artist, who graduated from Ithaca College in the mid-1980s with a bachelor’s degree in speech communication, replied, “That’s like picking your favorite child. Different museums stand out to me for different reasons. The Met is, of course, the hardest museum to be in as a living artist, so that one is special. The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s staff, patrons and Renwick Alliance organization have all been so supportive for many, many years.

“And then there’s the Everson Museum in Syracuse. They were the first to acquire a piece into their nationally acclaimed ceramic collection,” he continued. “They now have multiple works, and they are the only museum with a piece that represents each major stage of my career. And the Winterthur Museum is kind of special too.”

Serritella is originally from central New York State, about 90 minutes from Manhattan. He spent most of his adult life in the Finger Lakes region of New York but moved with his family to North Carolina over a decade ago “to get to warmer weather as the Ithaca winters got colder and my body got older,” he said.

Currently, his focus is on ceramic and glass sculpture. His influences include the historic Yixing teapots of the 1600s, Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy, Asian calligraphy and paintings, Tiffany glass windows and birch trees, which he calls the angels of the forest.

“Being in Taiwan helped me make up for not going to art school,” Serritella said. “My first time there I gained lots of clay skills and techniques and studied Asian ceramic art aesthetic. The second time I focused on trompe l’oeil sculptures and also really learned to start thinking like an artist.”

Serritella was also influenced by all the time he spent in the woods growing up in New York’s Hudson River Valley.

“I became an avid outdoors person and still spend as much time in the woods as I can,” he said. “I spend a lot of time in a kayak as well. I’ve backcountry paddled and camped in many remote wilderness areas including the Algonquin wilderness in Canada and the salt waters of both the Pacific and the Atlantic. I have had close encounters with wild wolves and orcas, and those experiences along with many others inform my work spiritually.”

Serritella is collaborating with the Pennsylvania Bonsai Society at the Oct. 2 opening reception and closing reception Nov. 6 to bring some trees and suiseki (unshaped stones) displays in conjunction with his pieces. For more information, visit ericserritella.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.