A passion for clay
Five Canadian women ceramic artists from the Toronto area
Can you name five women artists? Not everyone can. How about five Canadian women ceramic artists?
Toronto’s Gardiner Museum jumped on a challenge started by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., to name five women artists using the hashtag #5WomenArtists in an effort to raise awareness about inequalities in the art world. Last March during Women’s History Month, the Gardiner Museum published a post on its website highlighting five women ceramic artists in its collection. This year, the museum, which focuses on ceramics, has been putting the spotlight on women ceramic artists from their collection every Friday for the month of March.
The statistics around women in the arts are rather discouraging. According to a recent article on Forbes.com, a joint study conducted in 2017, by artnet Analytics and Maastricht University in 2017 found that just 13.7 per cent of living artists represented in galleries in Europe and North America are women.
“Ceramics has a long history of association with craft and the decorative arts, both of which have typically been gendered female. When the medium began moving into the mainstream as sculpture, it was often the work of men that people celebrated. Women artists are central to modern and contemporary ceramics, and we feel it is important to use our platform to highlight their incredible achievements … Many talented women have and continue to shape the field of ceramics, and we aim to share their work with the largest audience we can,” said Sequoia Miller chief curator of the Gardiner Museum in a written statement.
Here are five women ceramic artists from the Toronto area with a diversity in style, processes and perspectives on ceramics, but that all share one thing in common: their passion for clay.