A graduate of the Fine Arts program at Mount Allison University and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States, Susan Low-Beer is one of Canada’s pre-eminent ceramic artists. She has exhibited internationally, and is in the collections of the Museum of History in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Japan. In 1999 she received the Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in the Fine Crafts and is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
The Specimen works are elusive in their exact meaning and are rooted in abstraction. They read as organs of the body with tubes, veins and arteries that connect one form to another. Patchy and worn textured surfaces and precarious placements suggest both a vulnerability and a drollness to life passing. As metaphors, they create a narrative on the nuances and dynamics of human relationships.
Travelling exhibition curated by Sheila McMath.
Sheila McMath acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council (Arts Response Initiative) for supporting her independent curatorial practice.