Featured Artist: Susan Day
Visit the Craft Ontario Shop and explore Susan Day's collection "In The Wild" on display in the Feature Window from February 2 - March 2, 2024.
"I have created a body of work titled 'In The Wild' in which I recreated my drawings into 3 dimensional vignettes. I let myself freely interpret the drawings in a style influenced by the work of Japanese neurodivergent artist Shinichi Sawada. These artworks illustrate a world of my inner life, outside the history of and learned experience of art. The surfaces of these components are drawn upon, scratched, painted and pinched clay. I take a drawing, make it into 3 dimensions and build upon that surface with self made tools. I wanted to experiment in this intuitive way to work my ideas out."
See the whole collection available on the Online Shop!
"This work and the style of working is inspired, as I have been, by the work of Shinichi Sawada. Their work is presumably born outside the history of art and without knowledge of art history and what has gone before or is currently being created. This untaught work demonstrates a richness of information and knowledge about art traditions and literature that is somehow universal. It questions how even in isolation we somehow connect to other humans and we are aware of our history. What is knowledge when it comes to art? What is art history? What is our history? It speaks to intergenerational learning and knowledge and a universal language of images."
"In The Wild" is composed of individual pieces forming environments or vignettes reminiscent of dioramas found in a natural history museum. I am endeavouring to combine two of my ways of working in a greatly reduced scale - mosaic environments and highly textured fictional creatures, existing 'In the Wild'. I created both 3 dimensional and framed pieces with handmade mosaic tiles and ribbons of tiny hand cut mirror pieces as environments for my fictional bird inspired creatures etc., inspired creatures made in a style influenced by the work of Shinichi Sawada."
"As a visual artist whose work is predominately constructed of ceramic, I have a long exhibiting history where I have successfully straddled the worlds of contemporary craft and fine art. This work documents my interest in the body and its relationship with the natural world of flora and fauna."
Day has been represented in numerous national and international exhibits including The Body in Society, and The Embassy Cultural House Revisited, and is in numerous corporate and private collections. Her work has been shown at the DIA Art Foundation in New York City, New York, The Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta, and La Chambre Blanche in Quebec City, Quebec.
"In 2017 I designed, built, and oversaw the installation of London's “Celebrate CANADA 150” mosaic. This work was titled 'Because We Come From Everything', and was an homage to the First Nation’s sharing of this vast land with new Canadians who come here for a brighter future. Over a period of eight months, I led a team to design, create, and install a 1000 square foot, hand-made tile mosaic; the mosaic is made up of six tonnes of clay, two tonnes of mortar, and 18,000 tiles."
Day has been commissioned to produce and install other mosaics in London’s Old East Village as a positive model of a neighbourhood on the way up, as well as other original large scale public mosaics nationally. In 2021 she created a large-scale ceramic tile mosaic on the street facing exterior of an infill house. In the summer of 2022 she was commissioned by the City of Lethbridge Alberta to create a large mosaic titled 'The New Nature'. In 2023, coinciding with International Overdose Awareness Day unveiled a huge biophilic community engaged tile mural for the new safe injection site, Carepoint, with many of the tiles being made by clients who access services and the community that supports them. This community engaged work is being presented in a 3 person exhibition at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery opening Feb 4, 2024.
Susan Day is represented by Van Der Plas Gallery in New York City's Lower East Side and Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario.
Make sure to visit the Online Shop or head over to the Craft Ontario Shop at 1106 Queen St W to check out Susan Day's Featured work!