ALEXANDRA MCCURDY

Title: RUNNING WILLETS

Dimensions: 36cm high by 49cm wide approx.

Medium: White stoneware

Date Made: 2019

Retail Price: $500

Artist’s Statement (meaning/inspiration, etc.): I spend my winters on a barrier island in Florida, and my summers on the south shore of Nova Scotia.  Willets are to be seen in both places and are quite fugitive.  I love their cry and the black and white plumage underneath their wings, as well as their long, elegant legs.

This piece is a ceramic monoprint, taken from photos of the birds seen on the beaches of Florida and Nova Scotia. I paint the image on to plexi-glass using ceramic pigment and printers’ oil. I then transfer it to rolled out clay and fill in the background with underglaze colours. After bisque firing, I spray a clear, transparent glaze on the birds only, and fire again to Cone 5.

Alexandra McCurdy, ceramist/printmaker/independent curator, and newly inducted member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, is a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (BFA) and the Cardiff Institute of Higher Learning in Wales (Masters in 3D Design-Ceramics). She was an Associate Curator of Ceramics at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia for six years, and has shown her work both nationally and internationally. Her most notable solo exhibitions include the The Ties That Bind at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario, and two solo traveling exhibitions; Mothers/Daughters, which originated at Halifax’s Mary E. Black Gallery, and S.O.S: Sources of Support, originating at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, which traveled to the Confederation Centrefor the Arts, PEI and to the Burlington Arts Centre, Ontario. She has just concluded a touring retrospective exhibition called The Fabric of Clay at the Burlington Art Centre in Ontario, travelling to Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Nova Scotia, and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick.

Alexandra ’s work is in the permanent collections of the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy; the Gardiner Museum, Ontario; the Burlington Art Centre, Ontario; the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick; the Victoria Art Gallery, British Columbia; Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Nova Scotia; the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Ontario; the Canadiana Fund and the Royal Ontario Museum; the Art Bank of Nova Scotia; the Nova Scotia Museum; the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and of the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council. As well, her work is in numerous private collections.

Reviews of her work and articles about her career have been included in ceramic-focused periodicals including Australia's prestigious Ceramics:Art and Perception, American Ceramics, Ceramics Monthly from the US, and Canada's Contact, Fusion, Arts Atlantic, Ontario Craft, and Visual Arts Nova Scotia.

This year she has been accepted to the 2019 Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Korea, and to the Marion McCain Exhibition of Contemporary Atlantic Art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick.