February 27 – April 10, 2010
Exhibition Reception: Saturday, February 27 from 2-4 pm
Mariko McCrae is part renegade, part court jester, part activist and community builder, but indeed – all artist. Her work is founded on historical ceramic tradition, but consciously subverts away from the norm of form and function, which is an important critical practice in establishing a contemporary way of working with clay.
McCrae completed her BFA at ACAD in 1995 where she was the recipient of the Board of Governor’s Award and the Governor General’s Award conjunctly. In 1998 McCrae graduated with her MFA in Ceramics from Kent State University, Ohio. She has taught at the Red Deer College Summer SERIES program, University of Manitoba, Ohio University, University of Michigan and been a guest lecturer at the Emily Carr College of Art & Design, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and New York University to name a few. McCrae has participated in artist’s residency programs at the Banff Center for the Arts and the International Ceramic Center at Grimmerhus, Skaelskor, Denmark.
“An Affair to Remember” is based on a story written by McCrae. Through Duncan Gare, the second character that she has created during her career as a ceramicist, she comments on the lofty topic of mass production, consumerism and recycling. Duncan Gare (a combination of two hobby glaze manufacturers) personifies the struggle between good taste and bad, manufactured versus handmade, craft versus art, and in turn the battle between high art versus low.
