There\u2019s a multiplicity of layers to Grace Nickel<\/a>\u2019s work, literally and figuratively. Take, for instance, Arbor Vitae<\/a> (2015), a remarkable installation by this acclaimed Winnipeg- based ceramic artist and educator.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At first glance, you see a series of stark, yet striking, porcelain sculptures that resemble tree limbs while evoking ancient architecture, like the colossal columns of Parthenon, and serving as a metaphor for the human body.<\/p>\n Look a little deeper and you\u2019ll notice how the creations express Nickel\u2019s extraordinary technical talent, recognized when she garnered the 2023 Saidye Bronfman Award, the Governor General\u2019s Award for excellence in fine crafts<\/a>. For Arbor Vitae, Nickel went beyond conventional ceramic methods and immersed herself in the inventive, such as the use of high-tech fabric formwork, employing textiles to create shapes and bark-like markings.<\/p>\n Delve even further and you\u2019ll learn how the large-scale sculptures were built upon two years of rigorous study, experimentation, and travel (including an artist\u2019s residency in Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of China). For Nickel, whose also a professor at the University of Manitoba\u2019s School of Art,<\/a> such meticulousness is par for the course.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a cerebral foundation to these sculptures, which is true of Nickel\u2019s whole body of work, spanning roughly 40 years. \u201cOften people talk about hands when you\u2019re in a craft-related field, [but] there\u2019s a zone I enter where I don\u2019t think about my hands very much. So, in that sense, it\u2019s way more \u2018brain\u2019 than \u2018hands\u2019 in the studio for me,\u201d says Nickel, whose ceramics can be found in the permanent collections of institutions, like Taiwan\u2019s New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum and, in Japan, the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu.<\/p>\n For Tammy Sutherland, the Manitoba Craft Council<\/a>\u2019s executive director, what sets Nickel apart is not only her conceptually driven artistry but also her incredible stamina for detail. \u201cShe\u2019s a very unassuming kind of person, but she has a reputation for painstaking research and persistence in trying to explore new territory and techniques,\u201d notes Sutherland, who nominated Nickel for the Saidye Bronfman Award. \u201cThere\u2019s this exquisite level of craftsmanship that she brings to everything.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even some of Nickel\u2019s earliest vessels involved \u201cliterally hundreds of layers of work,\u201d Sutherland says \u2014 carving, drawing, painting, stippling, sandblasting, to name just a handful \u2014 and points to the Overlay series (1980s), which portrays moths and other forms of natural elements.Such diligence means that Nickel\u2019s process tends to be slow-paced, allowing room to mediate on the themes most meaningful to her. Trees comprise one of the central fascinations for Nickel, though they were scarce in the landscape of her childhood. She grew up on a farm in Plum Coulee, a tiny community in the bare prairies of southern Manitoba. It was her time in Halifax, where she moved in 2006 to pursue her Master of Fine Arts at NSCAD University, that imprinted the motif on her creative psyche.<\/p>\n At the southern tip of the Halifax Peninsula, there\u2019s a historic, beloved greenspace known as Point Pleasant Park. The 75-hectare wooded area, home to old-growth forest, was violently lashed by Hurricane Juan in 2003, with an estimated 70 percent of its trees destroyed. \u201cBefore I moved there, I had been told, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s all healed over. You won\u2019t really even notice the devastation anymore.\u2019 But I walked into it and I was overwhelmed,\u201d Nickel recalls.<\/p>\n Many of the downed trees hadn\u2019t been removed; rather, they were chopped up and left behind in a bid to help the forest regenerate. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t help but think of them as corpses,\u201d says Nickel. The scene was potent proof of nature\u2019s power to destroy and its ability to self-heal, slowly but surely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nickel was moved to create a tribute to Point Pleasant Park \u2014 Devastatus Rememorari (2008)<\/a>, her first large tree-inspired work. For the installation, she made casts of demolished tree remnants and transformed them into porcelain monuments. The slender trunks were embellished with text \u2014 with words like \u201cdevastated\u201d and \u201cremembered\u201d (in Latin, devastatus and rememorari) \u2014 repeatedly, then arranged on a surface representing a salt-bed peninsula. \u201cMy work has always been commemorative,\u201d Nickel explains. \u201cI don\u2019t think I knew that at first, but it\u2019s just been a thread running through.\u201d<\/p>\n To celebrate Nickel\u2019s Saidye Bronfman Award win, Winnipeg\u2019s WAG-Qaumajuq museum<\/a> put on a show last year \u2014 \u201cInter Artes et Naturam (Between Art and Nature)\u201d \u2014 as a small survey of the artist\u2019s career and recurring themes.<\/p>\n \u201cNickel often references textures drawn from nature, especially trees, as a visual representation of the cyclical nature of the human body and human existence. Growth, decomposition, regeneration, regrowth \u2014 in Nickel\u2019s work, this process is an aesthetic all its own and can be understood as a natural technology in itself,\u201d notes Riva Symko.<\/p>\n What also truly sets Nickel\u2019s studio practice apart, adds Symko, is her embrace of new technologies and methods to build on traditional and even ancient ceramic processes. \u201cWalking through Nickel\u2019s oeuvre, you can almost sense the clay dust of history from which her sculptural composites emerge like an innovative material force.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of Nickel\u2019s newer works were displayed from December 2023 until March 3rd of this year, at Ottawa\u2019s National Gallery of Canada<\/a>, as part of a showcase featuring artists who had won Governor General\u2019s Awards. The exhibition included Eruptions<\/a>, which Nickel debuted in 2019 but continues to evolve with added elements. The installation brings together contemplations of decay and regeneration, grief and hope.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sothebysrealty.ca\/insightblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/In-Conversation-Grace-Nickel-Canadas-Leading-Ceramic-Artist-2.jpg\")
<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sothebysrealty.ca\/insightblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/In-Conversation-Grace-Nickel-Canadas-Leading-Ceramic-Artist-1.jpg\")
<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sothebysrealty.ca\/insightblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/In-Conversation-Grace-Nickel-Canadas-Leading-Ceramic-Artist-3.jpg\")
<\/div>\n