Thursday, December 24, 2020

Artist of the Day, December 24, 2020: Martha Sturdy, a Canadian industrial designer, sculptor (#1180)

 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


 Martha Sturdy

2006, Steel “X”

2006, Thin Blue Line

2013,  Little People

2017,  Resin Red X

2017, Resin White X

2018, Mount Currie #1801

2018, Mount Currie #1802

2018, Ocean #1807

2018, Reflections

2019, Brass Landscape #1908

2019, Untitled #190213

2019, Untitled wall art #190212

2020, Assorted Totems

2020, Brass and Resin Landscape #200827

2020, Brass and Resin Landscape #200827

2020, Brass Landscape #200728

2020, Brass Landscape #200810

2020, Brass Landscape #200818

2020, Brass Sculpture #202012

2020, Brass Wall Sculpture #200311

2020, Totem #200901

2020, Totems: Blue Grey and White



 

 

 


 
Industrial design

Charge – Capilano Brass

 Floating Square & Rectangular Table

Lions Dining Table

Ontario Square Tray

Resin Flower Bowl

Resin geometric furniture primary colors

Resin steel round floating table

Steel Table and Resin Chairs

Sturdy bench

Boulevard Trays

Sturdy Console Table

Whistler Rectangular Vases

Whistler Round Lamp

Whistler Round Vases

Whistler Square Vases

 


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