Craft Awards - Eiko Emori Glass

Saydee Chandler
DOROTHY ELAINE MCPHERSON MEMORIAL AWARD IN MIXED MEDIA

Saydee Chandler is a multidisciplinary maker living and working in Toronto. She specialized in textile design and sculpture, obtaining her BDes from the Material Art & Design program at OCAD University. She is also a recent graduate of the Jewellery Arts program at George Brown College. During her studies, she completed an internship in Sicily studying under a team of artisanal goldsmiths at Malafimmina Gioielli. Her work has been featured in shows and exhibitions across Canada, as well as the United States, Austria, and Romania. Saydee was accepted as an Artist-in-Residence (Metal) at Harbourfront Centre in 2021.

Through the use of a wide range of subject matter and mixed media, Saydee aims to create a palpable narrative shared between material, process, and personal artifact. Inspired by a cacophonous array of symbology, sentiment, and the mercurial nature of identity, she utilizes precious metals, organic matter, textiles, plastics, reclaimed materials and repurposed objects in order to create pieces that ruminate on myth, human refuse, temporality and the fetish of preciousness. She is fascinated with the idea of impermanence, and the lifecycle of objects. The majority of her current work is purposefully non-archival and meant to evolve and erode over time.

https://www.saydeechandler.com/

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Sami Tsang
THE POTTERY SUPPLY HOUSE CLAY OR GLASS SUPPLY GRANT

I am a Canadian-born Chinese woman ceramic artist whose work explores domestic encounters and private narratives borne out of the flux amidst two cultures ‒ Chinese and Western. I use a vocabulary of images to express my hopes and fears about my life. Growing up as the youngest child of a conservative Hong Kong family, my voice was not welcomed. When my heart allows, I find relationships between these stories and the materials I use in my practice, such as clay, resin, rice paper, and ballpoint pen, and work them into sculptural ceramics using cartoonist-like gestures to confront the raw emotional experiences we share.

I studied traditional Chinese painting for 7 years in Hong Kong, which had a profound effect on my pursuing an arts career. Returning to Canada, I first studied ceramics at H.B. Secondary School in London, ON, renowned for its arts program, then earned my BA Craft & Design from Sheridan College (2019) and my MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University, NY (2021). I have exhibited my work in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Canada, including the ClayAkar Gallery, Iowa City, IA, the Gardiner Museum and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, ON.

https://samitsangceramics.com/

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Kim Ross
FUSION: ONTARIO CLAY AND GLASS DESIGN AWARD

The desire to make a mark on some unembellished surface - like a freshly painted wall or just poured concrete sidewalk–is within all of us. This desire compelled me to first take a class in pottery at the local community center and then to eventually enroll in the Craft and Design Ceramics program at Sheridan College. Making functional and sculptural objects out of clay fulfills that desire, and I hope my work reminds the viewer of his or her own innate desire to touch and mark something. The work can be thrown and altered, molded or hand-crafted, but I am always incorporating tactility and the idea of movement into the piece.

https://kjrossceramics.wordpress.com/

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Nurielle Stern
HELEN COPELAND MEMORIAL AWARD IN CERAMICS

Nurielle Stern is a Toronto-based sculpture and installation artist and a graduate of Alfred University's MFA program in Ceramic Art (2014). Her large-scale installation, Fable, was commissioned by the Gardiner Museum in 2019, and is currently on view at the Park-Hyatt, Toronto. Stern is the 2019 recipient of the Winifred Shantz Award, and a 2020 recipient of the NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of the Gardiner Museum, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery , the Art Gallery of Burlington, and the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art (Alfred, NY).
Stern has been a visiting artist at California State University, Long Beach Center for Contemporary Ceramics (2020). Her duo exhibition, Petrichor, with Nicholas Crombach and curated by Sheila McMath will open at the MacLaren Arts Centre (Barrie, ON) in June, 2023.

Stern works sculpturally, creating objects and immersive installations that often combine ceramics and other media. Her innovative use of ceramic materials evokes an archeological imaginary while imbuing her pieces with a heightened materiality and preternatural quality. Her work navigates the malleability of language and materials, the historic role of maker as storyteller, and the dialectics of inside and outside—the tamed and the wilderness.

http://www.deepbreathely.com/

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Juliana Scherzer
SHANKS MEMORIAL AWARD IN TEXTILES

Juliana Scherzer is a textile artist working with preserved leaves and ecoprinting. Her work explores the role of humanity in the natural world through the subtle repetition of structures and patterns in deciduous trees, craft, the human body, and city environments. Similarities between the seemingly opposite ideas of natural and artificial are highlighted through manipulation of organic materials with textile techniques, drawing upon repeating organic imagery of pathways, roots, veins, and woven structures.

Juliana creates quilts with fallen leaves and ecoprinted fabric, collecting and preserving leaves keeping them indefinitely flexible. The leaves are cut, sewn, and woven like fabric into modern, asymmetrical botanical quilts. These quilts bring about reflection on the process of creation, humanity's interaction with its environment, confronting one's own individualism outside of nature and contemplation of one's sense of place in relation to nature.

After graduating from Sheridan College with a Bachelor of Craft and Design (2018), Juliana spent three years as an artist-in-residence at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design where she continued to build her practice while branching out into production work and teaching textile and art courses in the community. In 2021 Juliana relocated to Toronto to join Harbourfront Centre's Artist-in-Residence Program.

https://www.julianascherzer.com/

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Subcategories

Green on Green
Glass (pâte de verre); Left, 46 cm x 91 cm x 13 cm; Right, 43 cm x 61 cm x 10 cm; 2020

Green on Green
Glass (pâte de verre); 46 cm x 91 cm x 13 cm; 2020

Green on Green
Glass (pâte de verre); 43 cm x 61 cm x 10 cm; 2020

Green on Green
Glass (pâte de verre); 46 cm x 91 cm x 13 cm; 2020

Ocean Waves
Glass (pâte de verre); Seven panels of about 31 x 41 x 8 (cm) each; Total, about 31 x 183 x 64 (cm); 2020

Wave
Glass (pâte de verre); Six pieces of about 18 cm x 15 cm x 20 cm each; 2018 to 2020

Movements in Blue Green
Glass (pâte de verre); 36 cm x 28 cm x 8 cm; 2020

Little Woods
Glass (pâte de verre); About 25 cm x 41 cm x 25 cm; 2019

Green Flow
Glass (pâte de verre); 36 cm x 28 cm x 8 cm; 2020

Green and Green
Glass (pâte de verre); 46 cm x 31 cm x 5 cm; 2020

Who We Are

Formerly the Ontario Crafts Council, Craft Ontario is a not-for-profit service organization that works to have craft recognized as a valuable part of life. We promote and celebrate professional craft through providing member opportunities, and advocate for craft practice by educating and empowering diverse audiences.