ARTIST STATEMENT

My research considers the porous relationship between material and method. As a sculptor and maker, the exciting opportunities that occur while exploring connections between methodology and material drives my practice forward. Medium that retains touch and memory through various modes are employed when creating art that is instinctual and self-reflective. Exploring elemental entanglement, my work considers the potentialities of process, expressing an affinity between art and alchemy. We are surrounded by many ‘things’ in the world; how can sculpture endeavor to provide a divergent relation with objects and the material they are made from?

Materially, the resulting sculptural work investigates extracted elements, geological histories, and their use in world-building. Plaster, cement, ceramics, copper, glass, and stone, all materials employed when building infrastructures are employed throughout. Sculpture, whether monumental or intimate, operates on a metaphorical level as a convergent link to an elemental world.

Additionally, my research troubles itself to examine ways in which place is entwined with embedded lived histories as informed by matters of race, gender, capitalism, and settler colonization. From a grounded position as a mother, artist and human that consciously chooses to live on and with the earth, I approach my materials with respect and curiosity; through my labor and care, the work I make weaves a dialogue between material, place, and time.

ARTIST BIO

D’Andrea Bowie is an artist living and working in the rural outskirts of Toronto. Her current research investigates contemporary propositions when recontextualizing the monument, specifically through a feminist and materialistic lens that highlights reciprocity between maker, material and time. D’Andrea has recently completed a Master of Fine Arts from York University where she was awarded a SSHRC Research Scholarship, CGS Master’s Scholarship and the Susan Crocker and John Hunkin Award. As a mature student, D’Andrea completed her BFA at OCADU in Sculpture & Installation in 2017 where she was the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards. Her work has been included in multiple group shows as well as the solo exhibition, Affordance, at the Station Gallery in Whitby. Along with gallery exhibitions, her work has also been shown in community spaces and alternative outdoor spaces and is held in private collections internationally. 

As I live and love on this land and commit to caring for it, I acknowledge the people who have been stewards of it for time immemorial. We stand on the traditional lands of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples; the GTA  continues to be home to many diverse First Nations people. The area I reside in is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. We are also part of the Dish With One Spoon  Treaty, an agreement to share and protect the land so that no one’s dish is ever empty. As I continue to figure out how to be a good treaty person, learning and speaking of its history helps keep its inhabitants human and non in living memory. The land we stand on holds a deep geological history which bears acknowledging, I express gratitude to the rocks and minerals that remain beneath our feet and those extracted to build and power this crazy world around us and from which I make my art.

“I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors.” Carl Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflection.