Exhibition: June 3 to 25, 2011
Vernissage: Thursday,June 2 at 6 pm
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, June 7 at 7 pm
Exhibition Press Release:
The McClure Gallery is pleased to feature the work of ceramic artist Linda Swanson. In spite of our ability to explain the natural world, a certain mystery persists as to how matter takes form, seeming to be at first one thing, and then becoming another. Light things become dark, soft things become hard, solid things begin to flow. Such transformations open onto questions of our own being and becoming, and how we find ourselves in a world in flux. These questions are at play in the exhibition In Formation, a series of installations in which Linda Swanson explores the phenomenon of metamorphosis through both raw and kiln-fired ceramic materials. In retrieving a naturalness from industrially refined and even synthetic clays, salts, and mineral compounds, the artist reveals an ambiguous dimension of artifice that allows us to reflect upon both nature and ourselves.
Linda Swanson is an artist whose interests are grounded in the metamorphic nature of ceramic materials and processes. Her work engages the enigmatic properties of matter at an elemental level, and our capacity of wonder in order to question how and what we know.
Linda Swanson has lived in Montreal since 2008 and originally comes from California. Her work has been exhibited in Montreal, Paris, New York and across the United States receiving awards from the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the Cattaraugus Arts Council, and NCECA. Her work has been supported with grants by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation and Concordia University. Linda Swanson studied ceramics at Tekisui Museum in Japan and earned a BA in Art History from UCSB, a BFA in ceramics from CSULB and an MFA from Alfred University. Since graduating in 2005, she has taught ceramics at Alfred University, the Kansas City Art Institute and Concordia University.