Grace Nickel's Arbor Vitae installed at the Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR for the 2017 NCECA Annual Exhibition
Kudos: Arbor Vitae
Grace Nickel at the opening reception of the 2017 NCECA Annual Exhibition, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR, March 23, 2017
Assistant professor Grace Nickel recently travelled to Portland, Oregon, with several School of Art students to attend one of the largest exhibitions in ceramics in the world, the 2017 NCECA Annual Exhibition.
Nickel’s work, Arbor Vitae, was selected by the curator from over 900 works submitted from artists across the globe for this prestigious exhibition. Over 6,000 people attended the NCECA (National Council on the Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference and over 1,200 attended the opening night of the exhibition. Nickel’s work was displayed in the exhibition, The Evocative Garden, which represents some of the top artists in the field.
Arbor Vitae is a body of work resulting from an intense period of research over two years, including Nickel’s residencies in Jingdezhen, China, exploring fabric formwork at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology at the University of Manitoba (CAST, Faculty of Architecture), and experimenting with new fabrication technologies at AssentWorks, a fabrication lab associated with the North Forge Technology Exchange in the SmartPark at the University of Manitoba and Innovation Alley in Winnipeg’s Exchange District.
Her work and her participation in the 2017 NCECA Annual Exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.