Grace Nickel (born 1956) is a Canadian ceramic artist and art instructor in post-secondary education.
Early life Grace Nickel was born in 1956 in Altona, Manitoba, Canada. She earned her BFA in Ceramics from the University of Manitoba in 1980; Museology Studies certificate, University of Winnipeg in 1981; and MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2008. In the summer of 1999, she was invited to the 9th National Ceramic Conference in Perth, Australia. There she demonstrated her work in paper clay as well as presenting work of Manitoba's ceramic community.
Career In 1991, she discovered paper clay while at the Banff Centre. Since that time she has employed that material to create sculptural ceramics. She has developed a number of architectural installations, including the Meditation Window at the St. Norbert Arts Centre in Manitoba, and Sanctuary, NCECA in Minneapolis, USA, 1995. Nickel completed a number of site-specific commissions, including tile installations and sculptural lighting for public and private architectural spaces. In 1999, she created a tile triptych to honour of the hosting of the Pan Am Games that was subsequently exhibited at Winnipeg City Hall. She created a work for the entrance to the Beechwood National Cemetery in Ottawa, Ontario.Beechwood Commission
Nickel teaches ceramics full-time in the School of Art of the University of Manitoba.
Exhibitions Nickel's work has been exhibited in the United States and overseas in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan, including: Unity and Diversity Cheongju International Craft Biennale, Korea Northern Lights/Southern Exposure, Perth Galleries, Perth, Australia Inaugural Exhibition The Canadian Ceramic Museum, Fuping, China, 2007 Earth Matters NCECA Invitational Exhibition 2010, Philadelphia In Canada, solo exhibitions at: A Quiet Passage, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2002Delactretaz and Nickel (2002), Grace Nickel: A Quiet Passage Devastatus Rememorari, Mary E. Black Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2008; Gallery in the Park, Altona, Manitoba 2009 Arbor Vitae, Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON, 2015; Actual Contemporary, Winnipeg, MB, 2016; Disjecta Contemporary Art Centre, Portland, OR, 2017; the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery, 2018 Eruptions, Art Gallery of Burlington, 2019; Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg in 2022 Inter Artes et Naturam (Between Art and Nature), Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2023
Selected collections In Canada her work has been included in the collections of: The Claridge Collection, Montreal (1989 to 2015) Winnipeg Art Gallery Government of Manitoba art collection Art Gallery of Nova Scotia In addition her work has been acquired by: National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu, Japan New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan
Awards Bronze Award, 2nd International Ceramics Competition 1989, Mino, Japan Judge's Special Award, Sixth Taiwan Golden Ceramics Awards, Taipei, Taiwan Inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2007 Saidye Bronfman Award, 2023
Bibliography Glen R. Brown (2012), "Grace Nickel, Clay and Light", pp 47–52 in Anderson Turner ed., Ceramic Art: Innovative Techniques (Ceramic Arts Handbook series), The American Ceramic Society, 136 pp, . Patricia Bovey (2007), "Grace Nickel", in Ingeborg Boyens ed., Encyclopedia of Manitoba, pp 498–99. Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, . Helen Delacretaz and Grace Nickel (2002), Grace Nickel: A Quiet Passage, Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 32 pp, .
See also
List of Canadian artists
References
External links Official web site Grace Nickel, University of Manitoba faculty page