The North West Ceramics Foundation is pleased to announce their next Speakers Series on Sunday, March 16, 2025, at 1pm PST featuring Montreal artist Linda Swanson. The presentation is free and open to all. It will take place on Zoom, and registration is required. Please see here or below for information as how to register.
While we measure time linearly, our experience of it is dense. Time is thick, embedded deep within things. In the landscape, we sense the accumulation of millions of years as mountains and valleys while a momentary breeze rises and passes away. I am interested in these different qualities of time, and how time can be experienced in the movement and formation of matter. Linda Swanson, from We are Time’s Subjects
Linda Swanson
Linda Swanson’s interests as an artist are grounded in the metamorphic nature of ceramic materials and processes. Her work engages the enigmatic properties of matter at an elemental level and the capacity of wonder to question how and what we know. Swanson’s raw clay installations and kiln-fired ceramics have been exhibited in North America, Europe and Asia. Recent exhibitions include RAW, at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto; La Débâcle, at Centre Materia in Quebec City; Design March, in Reykjavik, Iceland; Beautés Equivoques, at the Bernardaud Foundation in Limoges; and, this spring, at the Utah Museum of Art in Salt Lake City. She has been an artist-in-residence at the European Keramik Work Center, the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center, the Mid Atlantic Keramik Exchange in Iceland, and at Louisiana State University. Swanson earned her MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University in New York in 2005. She has taught at Alfred University and the Kansas City Art Institute. Currently, she teaches and coordinates the Ceramics Program at Concordia University in Montreal.
Templum of a Precious Thing of No Value, A Shapeless Thing of Many Shapes. 2020. 16′ x 16′ x 20′. duration 8 months. clay, metal, water, nylon, wood
In her talk, Momentum, Swanson will discuss her approach to matter and ceramic materials. She writes:
Because we know how to control matter to such an extent, we tend to forget that matter itself is powerful. I am interested in the ways that ceramic materials have an inherent ability to transform. Their processes of change, formation and dissolution are integral to my approach to ceramics. I work with installations of raw ceramic materials such as crystalline salts, metallic compounds, and expansive clay minerals that transform with water in cycles of absorption and desiccation, evaporation and precipitation. Through firing, I explore the interaction of molten colorants layered in crystalline glaze as temporal embedments of conflicting thermal processes.
Swanson’s talk will present aspects of materiality, time, perception and experience in her work, detailing how they inform and guide the development of her practice. She will also discuss the recent shift in her practice instigated by her participation in residencies in Europe and the US, and her work with other artists in three collectives–Collective Trace, Glaze Dialogue, and Goregama Kiln Crew.
Please join us for this exciting and important talk by Linda Swanson. The talk will take place on Sunday, March 16, 2025, at 1pm PST. All are welcome, but registration is required. To register, please see here. We look forward to seeing you there!
For more on Linda Swanson, please see her website here.
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