Summer Professional Development

2022 Summer Professional Development Residents

Beah Learn

Beah Learn (She/Her) is a primarily fibre-based artist pursuing a BFA, majoring in textile and fashion design, at NSCAD University. Born in London, Ontario and growing up with a home full of knit hats, mittens, and other handmade wears, Learn seeks to develop a reflective art practice that is soft, compassionate, and warm. Common themes within her work include consumerism, feminine experiences, and bodily awareness. With the intention of engaging the viewer into a safe enjoyable art experience, Learn creates interactive and humorous soft sculptures and woven tapestries that are meant to be shared.

Hannah Proctor

Born and raised in Nova Scotia, Hannah Proctor is a young aspiring artist and recent graduate of the NSCAD University Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing program. Having always been intrigued and influenced by the arts, Hannah spent the vast majority of her formative years exploring different mediums and creating work with the guidance of her mother. She began her post-secondary journey as an interdisciplinary sculpture student but after one holloware class, she quickly took to jewellery and began creating sculptural adornment. The artist finds inspiration in the intricacies of the natural world and the cold materiality of machinery both past and present, these fascinations work in tandem with Hannah’s knack for material exploration as she utilises and combines different materials to create complex pieces that push the bounds of what is considered jewellery.  

Jacey Byrne

Jacey Byrne(@jacey.bees) is an illustrator and sculptor from Labrador City, NL. They recently received their BFA from NSCAD university, majoring in Interdisciplinary Arts. Byrne spent the bulk of their time at NSCAD practicing narrative based illustration, incorporating more sculptural practices in their final year. Their sculpture work depends heavily on experimentation, trial and error and material exploration.

Byrne’s work explores their own experiences with fatphobia and attempts with self love in a society that has pathologized fatness with every intent to profit off of the hatred one holds for their own body. Their fat artworks act as a representation of how they are seen by others, as well as a venue for them to create a representation of themself with thorough care and love.

They hope to create works that both resonate with other fat people as well as encourage the viewer to consider and question the fatphobia our society has ingrained into all of us.

Jackie Toner

Jackie Toner, also known as Woods(wo)man Woodworking (@woodswoman.woodworking) is an emerging woodworking and turning artist based in Windsor, NS. She is a self-directed artist who also holds BSc & MSc in Kinesiology and is currently a PhD Candidate in the field of Health & Safety. It was through her academia lifestyle that she leaned into working with her hands as a creative outlet and form of meditation. Through her work, Jackie aspires to showcase the natural beauty of woods from around the world while infusing modern design elements and techniques. Her current work focuses on unlocking alternative uses of the lathe and stepping outside of its traditional practices.

Jiho Choi

Jiho Choi is a South Korean Jeweller and Metalsmith based in Halifax, Canada. His parents, who were a ceramist and a dentist, influenced his attention to detail in his work since a young age. He comes from an engineering background, studying at Hanyang University, creating inspiration for his meticulous pieces. He started Jewellery making as an apprentice in Korea, before coming to NSCAD. While in NSCAD, he have found his interest in kinetic objects. For his kinetic pieces, precision is an essential quality of his work. He strives to bring an interactive element, generating satisfaction and playfulness to the viewer. He has won the 18th Annual National Student Jewellery Competition and has been awarded numerous scholarships such as Scotia Bank Scholarship and SNAG Student Endowment Scholarship. His work was shown in the 19th Silver Triennial International in Germany, Korea Craft Week and various exhibitions globally.

Meichan (Amy) Yuan

Hi! I am Meichan (Amy) Yuan, I am a third-year student at the NSCAD jewelry department. After the first jewelry class at NSCAD, I found out I wanted to concentrate on jewelry rather then interdisciplinary fine art study. One of the reasons that I making this decision is my seven years fashion design background. Another thing that very impressed me is that one of the fountains/meanings about jewelry. Jewelry is wearable art that tells people stories and showcases ownership identity. All of the jewelry that I have been working on these two years are all about celebration, learning, memory and souvenir. I keep using violin and hydrangea as element on my work which are symbol of learning and religion. I currently living in Halifax, I love to spend time with illustration when I am not working on jewelry.

Noore Saleh

Noore Saleh (They/them), an Egyptian-Canadian artist, graduated with honors from the École de Joaillerie de Montréal in 2019 in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing. After serving as a teaching assistant in extended studies classes at the jewellery school while working on independent jewellery in their free hours, Noore has since enrolled at NSCAD University to major in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing to further their studies. They exhibited in galleries in Quebec with consistent themes revolving around fragility of mental and physical health with a focus on resilience facing those challenges.

2021 Summer Professional Development Residents

Hannah Craig

Hannah Craig is a jeweller and silversmith from rural Manitoba, currently pursuing her BFA at NSCAD University after previously studying philosophy and art history at the University of Winnipeg. As a jeweller, her academic background and love of history translates into a focus on traditional materials and techniques, and an artistic practice that is rooted in academic research. Her work is inspired by myth, magic, and mysticism, drawing on concepts from existentialism, occult traditions, and psychoanalysis to explore the human experience. Her pieces encourage the wearer or viewer to delight in both the spiritual and material joys of life.

Tongsheng Yang

I am a sculptural ceramic artist. Although the base of my works is in ceramics, I employ a vast arsenal of techniques and materials to narrate stories through my work. Clay is both the material I represent myself with and the vessel I tell my stories through, it is this passion for the earth and fire; rigidity and flexibility; heritage and innovation that fuels my creative soul.

Most of my work can be summed up with three descriptors: Figurative, Repetition, and Installation. The figure fascinates me with each expression and gestures: graceful, energetic, burdened, withered… They are the perfect vessel for narrative storytelling, they are the base of how we understand and communicate between cultures and through time. Repetitions are the base of patterns, society, and life, it is this through the repeating of the simple and mondain arose the complex system of life and society. I seek to capture this complicated relationship with my molds and bestow them to enrich the narratives of my work. Installation gives me the freedom to create a conversation between my works, outside of their physical forms. This ability to communicate within the gallery transforms the space into a story book, allowing the audience to walk through and around the cast and experience the play firsthand. Packed with these baggage’s, I seek to tell the stories of our generations through the vantage point of an Asian Canadian.

2020 Summer Professional Development Residents

Erin Wells

Originally from Hershey, Pennsylvania, Erin started her studies at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) where she fell in love with clay. Working with HACC she created an exchange program with the world renowned Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute and entered classes at JCI as their first western exchange student. From Jingdezhen she transferred to NSCAD University where she completed her BA in Fine Art: Ceramics. She worked in Montreal under figurative sculptor Joel A Prevost for 2 years while teaching classes and workshops. She continues to teach ceramics from the North Preston Community Center. Her works in this summer residency draw from florid Rococo and flower paintings to infuse femine mark-making into contemporary fine-craft.

Details and accents on each mug will be hard to notice at a fast glance; an intimate relationship with the cup you take home uncovers all of the hidden surprises over-time.

Eunji Shin

Eunji Shin is a Korean artist. She completed her Major in Jewellery and Metalsmithing in 2020 at Nscad University. “Oil and Water”, is a series of resin work, inspired by a common phenomenon that oil does not mix with water. This prompted her to create a series of works investigating the experience of being a foreign student in Canada; and the feeling of not being part of society. Currently, influenced by “Oil and Water”, she is working with “Iridescence”, exploring its color and reflection. It displays such a delightful dreamlike scene that its colors seem to change depending on angle of view.

Fern Pellerin

Fern Pellerin is a nonbinary lesbian interdisciplinary artist from McKinney Texas, land of the Wichita, Tawakoni and Kiikaapoi Indigenous peoples. They are currently based in K’jipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki (Halifax, Nova Scotia). They are a graduate of NSCAD University with a major in interdisciplinary arts and a minor in illustration and art history. Fern’s illustration and textile art practice is currently influenced by past experiences growing up LGBTQ+ and overcoming past hardships. They are inspired by comics and cartoons, nostalgia, dreams, memory and their own queer Romani identity.

Meggie Richards

Meggie Richards is an intermediate artist currently based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Richards’ main area of focus and interest for the past 3 years has been ceramics. Through the medium she utilizes both the words “Lift” and “Line” to express her emotions towards self-clarity. Drawing inspiration from her poetry, photography, and past experiences. Richards’ creates organic forms that unravel, intertwine, and flow around our environments as well as our minds.

Rosalind Hennenfent

Rosalind Hennenfent is a focused metalsmith and jewellery designer. She completed her BFA at the Nova Scotia Craft and Design (NSCAD) University in 2020. She creates jewellery using an array of traditional and alternative materials. Continuing with paper pulp in her current body of work, integrating native materials from her surroundings. Creating jewellery with organics from various locations important from growing up in Nova Scotia, as well as significant material that represents the natural beauty of her home. Attending NSCAD her work was featured in multiple group shows and a solo show at the Anna LeonOwens Gallery. Locally her work has been included in Nocturne Halifax 2018 and 2019 and Starfish 2019. Her work has been accepted in international and juried exhibitions, including the 2019 Silver Triennial International and Co-Adorn Placement 2020.

Sami Lemperger

Sami’s work in textiles derives from landscape and nature; focusing on the atmosphere of a location and channeling that feeling into the weaving. She works more texturally and with wool to sculpt a new landscape, one inspired from the mind, or her photographs. Her goal is to share with the viewer her perspective on the world and to bring forth the same feelings within yourself as she has when in the presence of nature. Originally from Ontario, Sami brings the beautiful inspiration of Ontario’s landscape to Nova Scotia through textiles, she continues to explore Canada as inspiration for the soul and her work.

Solskin Brask

Solskin Brask is a ceramicist and illustrator. Ze graduated from OCADU in 2019. Solskin combines elements of illustration, fiber, clay and other found materials to create a visual language exploring themes of identity and gender. Solskin is influenced by intersections of identity and shared memory.

Wenjing Yan / 燕文静

Wenjing Yan graduated in 2020 from Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design (NSCAD) University in Halifax with a BFA major in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing program. During her studies, she did an exchange in Germany at Pforzheim Hochschule.

Wenjing Yan jewelery usually reflects “stories” and “memories.” She was inspired by the Asian culture the most because she grew up in China. However, with the development of modernization and the Changes in people’s minds, some Chinese culture signs or skills is disappearing. A thing that disappears sounds sad which nobody wants to, but everything has two sides. The rise of one skill may represent the disappearance of another. So, she wants to keep those cultural things in her pieces, which create a new medium to carry those memories.

2019 Summer Professional Development Residents

Anna Ferguson

Anna Ferguson grew up in rural Ontario and moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2014 to attend NSCAD University where she majored in jewellery and metalsmithing. While studying at NSCAD, Anna produced a range of jewellery and holloware works demonstrating different skills and techniques. During the fall of 2017, Anna completed a semester abroad at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) in Oslo, Norway where she broadened her understanding of the metal arts and also the use of alternative materials in jewellery. This experience greatly influenced her practice. During her final semester at NSCAD, Anna became interested in combining textile and metal while experimenting with storytelling in her work, and developed a style she continues to work in. In December 2018 she graduated with a BFA degree majoring in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing.

Danielle Harris

Danielle Harris became interested in Ceramics and Textiles in her home town of London Ontario. While attending H.B Beal secondary school she began experimenting with large scale figurative sculptureusing a variety of materials and techniques. This experimentation led Harris to NSCAD University where she is pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Ceramics with a minor in Textiles. Harris has displayed her work in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. Focusing on feminist and environmentalist subject matter for several years, Harris’s textile work is made from recycled and environmentally conscious materials; while her subject matter is primarily feminist in nature.

Emily May

Emily May feels most at home when she is in the studio, a place where she often works until she is truly a starving artist. Originally from Vancouver, BC, May received a Fine Arts Diploma with accolades in ceramics from Langara College in 2016. She currently is pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in ceramics at NSCAD University in Halifax, NS. Although May primarily communicates her ideas through ceramics, her multidisciplinary practice includes painting, film, photography and performance. May has displayed work across Canada in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Alberta.

Kim Paquet

Few years ago, Kim Paquet working as a social worker for the Child Protection Services. In 2014, she took distance from her career and started a jewelry program at Ecole de Joaillerie de Montreal. Unable to stay away from these human contacts, she involved herself working with homeless drugs addicts. Confronting herself with this new profession while she engaged her thoughts in a first creative process was a fascinating way to express her concerns towards these wearable pieces of art. She received the Excellence Award 3 years in a row, the Janis Kerman Selection award and aspecial mention for the originality and quality technique of her work. Since, her jewelry has been exhibited in art galleries in France, Portugal, Italy and around Canada.

Kirsti Smith

Kirsti is originally from Ontario and received most of her education from Sheridan College, and is currently finishing her degree at NSCAD. She uses a series of different mediums including oil paint, ceramics and textiles to create compelling combinations of colours and textiles in her body of work. She has worked as a Studio Potter, Ceramic Instructor and Studio Technician. Kirsti uses the skills developed during these experiences to help design and build an artful body of functional ceramics.

Luke Mohan

Luke Mohan is an interdisciplinary artist and curator originally from Toronto. He is a graduate of NSCAD University with degrees in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts and Art History. While at NSCAD he was the recipient of the Creative Innovators of Tomorrow scholarship. He has curated multiple exhibitions and has exhibited his work at galleries in Canada and the United States. Mohan’s art practice is situated between ceramics and textiles, exploring domestic structures and objects that play with perception and familiarity. An interest in the sleight-of-hand involved in magic tricks, Mohan’s sculptures render everyday objects fantastical. His practice sits at the intersection of textiles and ceramics, relying on moments of visual magic that explore the tension between absence and presence. His main influences come from domesticity and illusion, blending these two sources to create sculptures and installations that explore theatricality, queerness and the body.

Michelle Plamondon

Michelle Plamondon, a French-Canadian Artist/Jeweler from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Received her BFA from University of Manitoba in 2015 focusing in installation art and sculpture. She actively volunteered in Studio Programs at the Winnipeg Art Gallery from 2006 -2009. She has displayed sculptures, paintings and jewelry at La Maison des Artistes, Ace Art Gallery and SOFA (2012-2015).  She participated in “Nuit Blanche” all night exploration of contemporary art in 2013 to 2015. In 2013, she was awarded third place in the “Emerging Voices”competition at Nuit Blanche for her work “Environment Revolt” examining nature reclaiming spaces. Michelle was strongly influenced by photographer David McMillan’s Exclusion Zone series. In 2015, she was awarded agrant with the Untitled Artist Collective from La Maison des Artistes Francophone during Nuit Blanche, to develop the public interactive installation “REST STOP”. Michelle is currently working on her second degree majoring in Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD). She has participated “All in NSCAD” group show in 2018 at the Anna Leowens Gallery. She is member Co-Adorn in Halifax and Vancouver Metal Arts Association and was selected to take part in exhibitions with both associations in 2019.  Her main influences in her current work is material play especially with industrial materials, exploring clean minimalist style and industrial architecture. The elegance of simple forms is prominent aesthetic to her work. Using enamel, metalwork, cement, resin and other found materials she incorporates them into wearable jewelry pieces.

Olivia (Liv) Mansveld

Olivia was born in Nelson, British Columbia. She received her diploma from the Kootenay School of the Arts (Selkirk College) Textile Department in British Columbia, as well as attended Concordia University in Montreal, before transferring to NSCAD for the final two years of her undergraduate degree. Olivia graduated from NSCAD in April, 2019 with a BFA in Fashion & Textiles. In other professional projects, she has exhibited work and participated in community workshops in both her home community of Nelson, as well as in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. She has drawn plenty of inspiration from her workplaces as a seamstress and in art facilitation. In her future work, she hopes to share the therapeutic nature of handwork in textiles.

Sorrel Van Allen

Sorrel Van Allenis a Canadian jeweller with a background in industrial welding and artist blacksmithing. She is currently studying Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Designin Halifax. During her time at NSCAD Sorrel Participated in an international exchange in Jewellery and Objects at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland.

Tamara Oake

Tamara Oake is a Nova Scotia-born artist living and working in Halifax. After completing her studies as an interior decorator, she focused her career in Fine Arts at NSCAD University. In 2017 she graduated with a major in Textiles. Her interest in creating natural/tactile art began with a passion for natural dyeing and eventually led her to flower and foliage pressing. Tamara’s work currently focuses on her connection to the Nova Scotia landscape. She aims to reconnect people with their natural surroundings by thoughtfully bringing the environment into our everyday lives.

Undine Foulds

Drawn to the spaces inbetween mediums, Undine is excitedby the potential for collaboration and strangeness that live in these undefined places. Recently, her work hasbeen focusedin creating multiples, and in understanding the larger sum of many parts.Ultimately trying to interpret and translate her relationships to people and place, this curious and stubborn ex-goth-hippie kid from the west coast has her work cut out for her.About to enter her fourth year at NSCAD with amajor in Intermedia, Undine works primarily in clay,integrating elements of drawing, video, performance, and installation.Before committing to this formal education, she enjoyed working with alternative education programs for children and youth, often held in remote locations and heavily centering arts-based programming.

2018 Summer Professional Development Residents

Annabel Biro

Annabel Biro is an emerging Artist residing in Canada. Her work explores themes surrounding function and material. She is fascinated with creating work that encourages participation through use. She is interested with challenging our perception of ceramics and functionality through her work. She likes to play with humour, trust and anticipation within her practice.

Annabel received a BFA with a Major in Ceramics and Minor in Art History at NSCAD University. During her time at NSCAD she was awarded the Professor David B. Smith Creative Innovators of Tomorrow Scholarship, the 2016 Medalta Student Residency Award and was the Ceramics Starfish finalist for 2017. Most recently, Annabel was the Nova Scotia regional winner for the BMO 1st Art Competition 2017.

Jiaqi Li

Jiaqi Li is a Chinese jeweler-metalsmith who is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She completed a BFA, majoring in Jewelry & Metalsmithing at the NSCAD University in 2018. During her studies at NSCAD University Jiaqi become interested in exploring resin as her main material for simple but intricate jewelry. In this summer residency, she is continuing to develop more resin jewelry pieces. Her love of colour have led her to experiment with resin. She aims create interesting and delicate visual texture in her work by combining clean resin with the color and texture of cotton threads.

Through this exploration, Jiaqi enjoys the process of resin casting that can’t control completely. For example, the visual texture and color of threads can be manipulated while resin is pouring. In her work, each pieces are unique, and cannot be duplicated.

Katja Spoerri

Katja was born in Switzerland and raised in Ontario, Canada, she recently graduated from Sheridan College in 2018 from their Craft and Design program – majoring in Furniture Design and minoring in Textiles. She is currently joyfully adjusting to her new life here, in Nova Scotia.

Her work so far has followed an aesthetic and emotional investigation of her personal history and growth, allowing each piece to embody a story or narrative from a memory in her life. As a maker, she tries to learn about, and incorporate, new materials and techniques to add to the originality of each piece. Overall, Katja aims to use honest design and manufacturing processes to create pieces that will touch the heart and showcase the material’s inherent energy.

Kelsey Borden

Kelsey Borden is a born and raised Haligonian who has been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil. Following a long line of textile traditions in her family, her mother and grandmother taught her many skills including embroidery, sewing, and knitting. She has recently graduated from NSCAD University with a BFA, Major in Textiles/Fashion.

Her work combines her love of illustrating with textiles and storytelling. The piece that she has created as part of this residency explores the narratives she has shared around the table, her grandmother, and craft.

Krista Grunsky

Halifax artist, Krista Grunsky, attended NSCAD University and received her BFA in April, 2018. Her work consists of ceramic forms inspired by objects observed in her daily surroundings. With consideration to form, line, and colour, Grunsky creates assemblages of these objects that prompt the viewer to appreciate the mundane.

This work titled Kitchen Cupboard is inspired by drawings of items in my kitchen. I was interested in the translation of object as a picture and object as a three-dimensional form. In the quasi kitchen installation, these objects exist as relics of my domestic living space.

NAT chantel

NAT chantel is a primarily self-taught interdisciplinary artist who engages subtle movements and repetitive processes to recall memory and personal history as a way of reclaiming the body and voice. Lineal disruption and displacement from land and home claim permanence in her art. NAT was selected into the 2017-2018 VANS Mentorship Program and the upcoming CFAT Media Scholarship (2018.) She is a Nova Scotia Talent Trust scholarship recipient (2017 & 2018) and an active member in Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia, Visual Arts Nova Scotia, and Nova Scotia Basketry Guild.

Shaya Ishaq

Shaya Ishaq is an interdisciplinary designer, craftswoman, and community organizer currently based in Halifax. Working with ceramics and textiles, she explores how these craft disciplines connect lives through culture, tradition, material and function. As a Kenyan-Canadian born into a legacy of weavers, Shaya is fascinated by fibre-based and ceramic techniques which enable storytelling in the craft traditions of her homeland.

Songhee Lee

Songhee Lee was born in Daegu South Korea in 1992. She is a jeweller/metal smith from Daegu, Korea. She graduated a B.F.A in 2014 majoring in the jewellery design program of industrial design, at the Catholic University of Daegu, South Korea and M.F.A in Craft Art. She studied at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, NS, Canada for the second semester as an exchange student with major of Jewelry Design & Metalsmithing. Now she is working for her works in summer residency program at Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design.

2017 Summer Professional Development Residents

Amanda Kopas

Euneon Park

Juliana Naccarato

Kaas Ghanie

Laura Horrocks-Denis

Nicolas Soni

2015 Summer Professional Development Residents

Andreea Murgu

Andreea Murgu holds a Jewelry and Textile major from NSCAD University.

Her work is an exploration of form, balance, and expression. She creates pieces that have elements of both harmony and tension. Andreea often incorporates tactile qualities in her jewelry, and enjoys working with fur, leather, hair, and other natural materials.

Anne-Sophie Vallée

Anne-Sophie Vallée works primarily with metal and ceramics to create pieces of jewellery. She first started her training as a goldsmith in Taxco, Mexico. She received a degree from Le Cégep du Vieux-Montréal in Jewellery in 2011, and is currently completing a BFA with a major in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing at NSCAD University.

Anne-Sophie is interested in the tension between organic and inorganic life in artificially built environments and how this conflict generates a struggle for space. She uses jewellery as a way to make connections between individual identity, society, and culture. Within her work she aims to question the human body acting as a support and notions of scale. Her work questions the possibility for small objects to call for distance and space while creating intimacy and strong psychological links. Anne-Sophie references architecture and landscape through a minimalist approach to form, as well as, human intervention and appropriation of technologies and material. Simple mark-making can proficiently change the meaning an object conveys. Do we have to stop, control, or free the sprawling of both natural and artificial growth in order to create balance?

Jennifer Maguire

Jennifer Maguire is originally a mixed media artist from St. Catharines, Ontario. She received her Fine Art Degree in 2012 from Fanshawe College, and went on to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the NSCAD University where she majored in ceramics.

Jenn’s work highlights an ongoing disconnect between humans and livestock. With industry taking over how animals are produced and raised, treatment and living conditions have declined as consumer demand has risen. Her work reflects an ongoing exploration of what has become known as factory farming, and highlights the mistreatment and flaws of a large industrial system.

Lux Habrich

Originally from Montréal, Quebec, Lux Habrich recently graduated with an Interdisciplinary BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University.

Lux employs the immensely meditative qualities in craft processes and  performative experimental mark making to record personal histories of inherited trauma. Her work involves investigations of temporality, subversive gender, concepts of family and the home, disability, and cultural hybridization – introducing an identity in all the complexities and contradictions that together formulate an individual. Committed to expressing social justice issues and participating in support work, Lux externalizes intense internal grievances, to open up collective issues and larger community struggles to receive moments of healing and empowerment.

Natalie Vanderzand

Natalie Vanderzand was born in Waterloo, Ontario. She lived on the West Coast of Canada before moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia to attend NSCAD University. She current lives in Halifax as a recent graduate and is continuing her practice as a studio jeweler.

Her solo exhibition titled MAKE CAMP, explores ideas of temporary shelter in an object base observation of the natural world. Natalie’s practice is shifting into wearable pieces that incorporate delicate beaded embroidery, colour, scale and form.

Nathalie Maiello

Nathalie Maiello is originally from Montreal, Quebec. She received her diploma from the Vancouver Community College Jewellery Art and Design program in 2008 and is currently living in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she is completing her BFA in Jewellery and Metalsmithing at NSCAD University.

Nathalie’s current work focuses on the connection between ceramic and metal. She uses traditional techniques to combine the two materials to create body adornments. Minimalist shapes and forms enable her to develop simple functional connections between materials to create a continuous disposition that showcases each component without creating discord between the two. Subtle nuances of the shapes create a morphing series that evoke mutation, transformation, and evolution.

Shelbey Dodds

Born and raised in the rural southern Ontario town of Erin, Shelbey Dodds has found a new home in Atlantic Canada’s hidden gem, Halifax. She recently received her Bachelor of Fine Art in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing from NSCAD University.

Shelbey creates contemporary jewellery objects exploring the concepts of discipline and fluidity and how these terms relate to identity, intimacy, and connection. The exhibited work examines the delicate balance one struggles to maintain upon the spectrum between discipline and rigidity, fluidity, and play.

Her time spent in the Nova Scotia Center for Craft and Design’s Residency program has presented a number of very welcome challenges. Dodds would like to thank her fellow residents and all the members of the NSCCD for their continued support.

Twyla Heuvel-Bernier

Born in Victoria, BC, Twyla Zoe studied art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and graduated with an Interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts.

As an interdisciplinary artist, Twyla works in a variety of media but has foundations in ceramics, drawing, and printmaking.  Her work is largely informed by an ever-changing relationship between psychology, fairytales, dreams, and personal narrative. Her objects and imagery frequently explore childhood memories, obsessions, and irrational fears, blurring the boundaries between real and imagined, dream and nightmare.

Meaning-making has long been a compulsion of our species, exercised through literature, art, and storytelling. We continually search to contextualize our identity and place in the world in an ever-widening diversity of expressive venues. In this series of work, meaning-making will take place through internal investigation. It explores an inner realm of dream, fears, anxieties and fractured narratives and attempts to express a fluid logic that references the beautiful and sometimes dark world of the unconscious.

2014 Summer Professional Development Residents

Alice Yujing Yan

Alice Yujing Yan is a Chinese based artist, who studied jewellery in Canada. She gained a BFA degree in animation in China, and began metalsmithing at NSCAD University in 2011 where she received a BFA majoring in jewellery design in 2014. Yan has extended her work in Canada and China during her studies and has become a member of the Society of North America Goldsmith since 2013.

Yan believes that art is very personal and emotional. Everything made out of the artists’ hands will represent the artists themselves. She also believes that there must be connections between the artist and the viewer through the art production.

Anne-Sophie Vallée

Anne-Sophie Vallée started her study of jewelry making in Mexico taking classes at a department of UNAM in Taxco in 2007. She later pursued her studies at the School of Jewelry of Montreal where she completed in 2011 a collegial diploma in craft. She has worked as an independent jeweler for two years and dedicated most of her time to the fabrication of one-of-a-kind pieces and limited series. She is being represented by Noël Guyomarc’h Gallery in Montreal and La Paï Gallery in Ottawa. She is now undertaking  Undergraduate Studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. Anne-Sophie Vallée makes contemporary jewelry pieces that intend to put in relation the wearer and his social and physical environment through the object created.

David Dupak

David is a Painter/Sculptor/Metalsmith and graduate of NSCAD university. David express peoples emotions and thoughts through abstraction of the figure. He started painting and a young age but as he got older his desire to create and express pushed him into other mediums to become multidisciplinary. David has no plans to stop creating and is making a huge effort to get out into the world to share his art with others.

Greg Bauer

Greg Bauer studied craft at Sir Sandford Fleming College in 2005 and specialized in artistic blacksmithing. He furthered his craft and design studies at Sheridan College’s Furniture program in 2008. Continuing his education in studio craft, he is now attending NSCAD for Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing where he brings the skill and knowledge he has gained to his current work with jewellery.

Greg Bauer’s work currently explores the integration of sculptural forms within functional jewellery. He looks to create jewellery whose function is disguised within its form until worn. He hopes to invoke the viewer’s curiosity and challenge their understanding of the piece’s function and form.

Jen Pilon

Jennifer was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She began her studies at NSCAD University in Halifax completing interdisciplinary courses in Ceramics, Photography, Jewelery and Surface Design. She recently graduated from NBCCD, Fredericton New Brunswick in full time studies in Ceramics. She draws inspiration from the nature of the scenery around her, both of the natural earth and the impact of human beings.

Jennifer would like to work towards a “know your neighbor” grass roots community movement by creating and bringing hand crafted pottery into your home to inspire everyday life.

Kate Hawkins

I am a current NSCAD student studying to earn my BFA in ceramics. The ceramic pieces I make stem from personal experience of my own or from my nearest and dearest. Most of my ceramics are inspired by negative experiences and it’s my goal to turn them into positives while simultaneously comparing and contrasting what is bad and good about them. The ceramic objects I make are abstract in order to reflect the multiple perceptions of the human experience. What we think and feel is subjective to our personal histories and therefore we become abstract to each other.

Mengnan Qu

Mengnan Qu is always a perceptual person with a sensitive eye and mind. In the art world today, there are many artists with great ideas. There are few like her, though, who have such great patience to achieve complicated skill. She can spend more than one hundred hours on one piece of enamel jewelry work. Meditation-like process brings her to think of the world in silence. Her mixed cultural and educational background provides her a unique outlook on the world. Reconsider the Western society through traditional Chinese culture; rethink the Chinese society by standing from an international perspective.

Yu Xia

Yu Xia is an artist who works in all kinds of mediums of art, such as ceramics, metalsmithing, woodworking, papermaking, painting and sculpture. Yu Xia studied in Beijing Capital Normal University, New York Academy of Art, NYC and NSCAD, Halifax. He likes collecting cultural shocks and inspirations from metropolitan life, but he wants to work on these collections in a silent environment, which helps him to think and rethink everything happened and happens.

Yu Zhang

Yu Zhang is a Chinese contemporary jewellery designer/maker studying at the NSCAD University in Canada. While still a student, Yu has a good record for showing her work, having participated in 6 exhibitions in Canada and the United States. Yu Zhang uses both metal and non-metallic materials to build a sense of narrative and meaning in her jewellery. She combines traditional metal craft and new material to make both vessels and wearable pieces, creating microcosmic depictions of environmental issues to express the severity of these problems and how she feels about them.

2013 Summer Professional Development Residents

Amy MacInnes

Raised in Cole Harbour Nova Scotia, Amy MacInnes is a large-scale jewellery artist. Recently graduated with a BA Major in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing  from NSCAD University, she was then accepted into the artists residency at NSCCD where she continues her exploration of materials and larger forms.  Her spontaneous creative processes flourish with the masses of her hand-fabricated components, together creating visually striking and textural pieces.

Angelena Kuhn

Angelena Kuhn is using her time at NSCCD to explore new materials and interests in modes of representation and soft sculpture through needle felting, weaving and embroidery. Kuhn’s work is driven by an interest in the sensory and performative elements inherent to craft process, as well as the role they have played in contemporary art history.
Angelena Kuhn is an emerging artist based in Halifax. She received her BFA from NSCAD University in 2013, graduating with a major in Textiles and a minor in Art History.   Her newest work explores personal anxieties around the every day through embroidery and needle felting.

Collinda Fahey

Collinda Fahey’s current body of work focuses on time, in the most practical sense, as a result of recent struggles with speed of production. She has committed to completing pieces rapidly while exploring the material limits of wood and paper in jewellery.
Collinda is a jewellery artist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, who is currently completing a BFA in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing at NSCAD University.

Karolina-Anna Hajna

Karolina-Anna Hajna is a ceramic artist who works with porcelain to make delicate pieces that are inspired by history, travel, pattern, light, and shapes. Over the course of the past year and the NSCCD residency, she has been exploring ceramics as a jewelry material. While working with the map of Paris, she has experimented with different sizes, shapes, thickness, and firings in order to make a jewelry line that would tell a story and be functional to wear.
Karolina-Anna chose the map of Paris because of its powerful, romantic, and inspiring history as well as the interesting shapes and curves. Each piece is carefully cut out, decorated, sanded, and fired multiple times. Some pieces are cutouts of one part of the city, while others are separate cutouts placed together, and others are a single cutout repeated.

Kate Ward

Kate Ward is exploring landscapes, ladies and literature in Nova Scotia. For Ward, the spoon has become a metaphor for the experiences and strength of pioneering women, symbolizing nurturing and refering to the hardships and lack of food the pioneers experienced during the early years of Canada’s history. Ward uses this domestic object to represent scenes sketched from historic houses of Nova Scotia combined with text by pioneer Canadian authoresses.

Kate Ward is an artist working across textiles, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture. She has a BaVa from the Australian National University and is represented in collections in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Kate has recently completed a residency at Hill End, a historic gold mining town in Australia where she investigated the lifestyle and hardships of pioneering women.

Kelly Grant

Kelly Grant used this residency to further her studies in weaving and produce an array of textiles that would be part of any traditional women’s household needs.  She will be stress testing them in real-life conditions during reenactments at various museum locations around Nova Scotia, documenting the time it takes to produce and then the time it takes to destroy these beautiful handmade textiles.
Kelly Grant began her studies in textiles in the Costume Studies at Dalhousie then continued with a BFA from NSCAD.    She has built historic reproductions for the  Halifax Citadel, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, L’anse Aux Meadows, Grand Pre, Port Royal and reenactors across North America.  Currently she is working on her MA in Women’s and Gender Studies.

Marie-Eve Castonguay

Strongly influenced by architecture and engineering, Marie-Eve Castonguay  playfully assembles geometrical forms and unveils the inherent structure of her pieces. Incorporating different mechanisms, her pieces show the dualistic tension between motion and stability.
Marie-Eve Castonguay is an emerging jewellery artist from Quebec City. After receiving three years of training as a goldsmith, she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a Major in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing at NSCAD University, in Halifax.

Ryan Tingley

Ryan Tingley is a potter from Halifax, Nova Scotia. After 10 years he finally received his BFA from NSCAD University in 2011.  Drawing influences from his life, Ryan  is currently exploring the use of slip and image transfers to enliven the surfaces of his utilitarian pottery.

Sarah Sears

Sarah Sears is a Nova Scotian jewellery designer and metalsmith artist. Sarah’s fascination with geometry and symmetry is what led her to use these particular shapes and patterns. Like many East Coaster’s, one of Sarah’s favorite past times is to escape the fray and scour the local beaches in search of interesting rocks and treasures. This collection is inspired by those adventures and will hopefully remind others of their moments by the sea.
Born and raised in Nova Scotia, Sarah Sears graduated from NSCAD University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, majoring in Jewellery Design/ Metalsmithing.  Currently she has adopted a more ‘freestyle approach’ to her work, which she hopes will infuse her jewellery with a new flavor and story.

Theresa Lee Capell

Following her instincts and love of oddities, Theresa Lee Capell infuses passion, adventure and excitement within each  creation she makes. Fond of anything eccentric, whimsical, and colorful, she creates bold sculptural pieces inspired by the living and fantastical world, and continuously explores the vast dynamics of her materials and techniques. She hopes to enhance the viewers’ and wearers’ sense of curiosity and fearlessness through her unique voice.
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Theresa Lee Capell studied a variety of Fine Arts such as Figure Drawing, Sculpture, and Photography in her foundation stages at NSCAD University. Further in her studies, Theresa found true passion within Jewelry design and Fashion. The creative versatility involved has challenged and rewarded her.