Creative experience

1. 2018 Gardiner Ceramics Museum – Toronto, Ontario, Canada – vitrine exhibition A Season for Everything.

2. 2018 Concordia University, Department of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada – gave a lecture on my ceramic work and practice.

3. 2017 CALQ Prize – Work of the Year in the Outaouais, Quebec – for my solo public exhibition Match at Gallery Art-image, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.

4. 2017 Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, Korea - Honorable Mention Prize and 4th Place Viewer’s Choice Award; attended Biennale conference.

5. 2016 Gallery Art-image, Gatineau, Quebec – solo public exhibition Match.

6. 2016 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, Yingge Ceramics Museum, New Taipei City, Taiwan – Recommendation Prize and attended the Concept Conference.

7. 2016 Craft Ontario Gallery, Toronto, Ontario – Solo Exhibition When Horses Walked on Water – created a new body of work in response to the location.

8. 2015 Residency at Blink Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario – Co-created an exhibition with an artist with Down’s Syndrome.

9. 2014 Concordia Continental Ceramics Competition 5 – Concordia University Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA – Honorable Mention prize, travelled to St Paul.

10. 2014 Espace Pierre-Debain Gallery, Gatineau, Quebec – Reviens-moi - Solo Public Exhibition – created a new body of work in response to the location.

Project proposal

Spirit Birds

As an island, Taiwan is an unique ecosystem that is ideal as a stop-over for migratory birds, along with its own unique resident bird populations. Imagery of birds is part of the culture, tied to spirituality and human emotion. Birds are a central theme in my work and I would like to create collaborative artwork and build connections with the community along this theme.

At the Rideau Canal Festival in Ottawa, Ontario in 2011, in celebration of the Rideau Canal Waterway gaining international status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I created an outdoor installation Rookery of ceramic Blue Herons with their nests and their young, depicting the drama of survival, symbolic of the history of the region and the location. During the Festival, I spent a week in the park with the installation interacting with the public, and was struck by how many people associated the birds with loved ones who had passed. People along the Rideau Waterway have had a particular attachment to the Blue Heron due to its abundance in the area and its unique physical characteristics and nesting habits.

I have since brought this installation Rookery to numerous gallery locations throughout my region, where I had the opportunity to interact with the public about their connection to geography and the natural habitat.

During my exhibition at the Craft Ontario Gallery in Toronto, Ontario in 2016, many people spoke to me about their personal connections to the ceramic birds that were presented. In my exhibition, I represented a number of birds that were part of the local community – cormorants, song birds, loons – and visitors to the gallery felt a strong personal resonance to them.

The microcosm of a community emotionally invests itself in birds that are specific to their locale and geography, and I wish to explore this further through building connections within the Yingge community.

I wish to make community-based sculptural vessels using bird imagery, collecting stories of significance of bird stories, imagery, to express the spirit of Yingge, past and present, using the local resident’s connection to the symbolic nature of their unique wildlife, as well as connections to poetry, art, and ceramics. I noticed that birds have a strong resonance with people and the human spirit, with childhood memories, with hopes and aspirations, so I would like to interact with people about their favorite birds and create work that would be informed by colour, pattern, nests. If anyone in the birding or ornithological society would be available during the residency, I would appreciate their input about the particularities about Taiwanese bird populations. I would like to have workshops with different age groups in the community (including children and the elderly) to create from clay – a feather – that would become part of a larger sculptural work. This would gain a deeper cross-generational perspective to the significance of birds in the physical environment and the spiritual and emotional lives of the local residents.

Contributions to Yingge local community

I would like to interact with the local community about their favourite birds and create work that would be informed by colour, pattern, nests. If anyone in the birding or ornithological society would also be available during the residency, I would appreciate their input about the particularities about Taiwanese bird populations. I would like to have workshops with different age groups in the community (including children and the elderly) to create from clay – a feather – that would become part of a larger sculptural work. This would gain a deeper cross-generational perspective to the significance of birds in the physical environment and the spiritual and emotional lives of the local residents.

Residency outcome