Martha Sturdy (1942) is a Canadian artist and designer. Sturdy gained international attention for her wearable sculpture in the late 1970s, which evolved into further series of sculptural home furnishings using resin, steel, brass and salvaged cedar. Sturdy’s studio has since expanded to provide custom furniture, fixtures and artworks for fashion, retail and hospitality clients including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Louis Vuitton.
Martha Sturdy was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she has spent the extent of her life. This connection with the Pacific Northwest fostered the fundamental sensitivity towards the natural world, raw material explorations and formal expansiveness evident in her work.
She received her BFA at the Emily Carr University, where she was later granted an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2006. Since her emergence in the 1980s Martha has blended the concerns and methods of Conceptual sculpture with those of Suprematism to create her own unique iconography and often interstitial art + design practice. Her work explores contemporary interest in pure environments, by implying natural scale and economy to replicate the spatial experience of the untouched outdoors. Martha started STURDY in 1978, hiring artisans and technicians to allow her latitude. For her, the hand of the artist needs not to be seen, only their decisions, flaws experienced. By continuously stripping down forms and maintaining a dominant scale, her work approaches physical communication rather than a pedantic or rational communication.
Martha’s work rarely inspires moderate response, and this is one signal to the importance of her achievement. Her work re-evaluates the oldest subject in art – landscape; specifically nature’s ability to lure emotion and arts attempt to witness it. “By paring down to the most animal of basic shapes I ask if we can truly intellectualize the profound simplicity of our natural environment.”
Martha’s work spans wall, standing steel, salvaged wood and wearable sculpture featured in American, Italian and French Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Espana and Architectural Digest. Through the span of her career as a sculptor her work has remained focussed on natural monumentality and resolved, balanced composition to the intent of reflecting anew the proportions of our environment. Martha’s artwork has caught the appreciation of collectors, artists and designers internationally. In 2002 she was presented with a Golden Jubilee Award by the Governor General for her achievements internationally as a Canadian artist and in 2005 she was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA). In 2010 Martha was commissioned for a permanent installation in the Vancouver Olympic Village; followed in 2012 by a permanent installation in the heart of downtown Tokyo, Japan.
© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Martha Sturdy. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| Martha Sturdy |
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2006, Steel “X”
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2006, Thin Blue Line
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2013, Little People
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2017, Resin Red X
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2017, Resin White X
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2018, Mount Currie #1801
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2018, Mount Currie #1802
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2018, Ocean #1807
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2018, Reflections
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2019, Brass Landscape #1908
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| 2019, Untitled #190213 |
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| 2019, Untitled wall art #190212 |
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2020, Assorted Totems
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2020, Brass and Resin Landscape #200827
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| 2020, Brass and Resin Landscape #200827 |
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2020, Brass Landscape #200728
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| 2020, Brass Landscape #200810 |
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| 2020, Brass Landscape #200818 |
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2020, Brass Sculpture #202012
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| 2020, Brass Wall Sculpture #200311 |
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| 2020, Totem #200901 |
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2020, Totems: Blue Grey and White
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Industrial design
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| Charge – Capilano Brass |
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| Floating Square & Rectangular Table |
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| Lions Dining Table |
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| Ontario Square Tray |
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| Resin Flower Bowl |
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| Resin geometric furniture primary colors |
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| Resin steel round floating table |
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| Steel Table and Resin Chairs |
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| Sturdy bench |
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| Boulevard Trays |
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| Sturdy Console Table |
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| Whistler Rectangular Vases |
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| Whistler Round Lamp |
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| Whistler Round Vases |
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| Whistler Square Vases |
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