Ceramicist Sally Michener’s core artistic belief rested on the act of making – an openness to discovery and imperfection combined with the direct touch of her hands. She was interested in sculptural installations with multiple components echoing and riffing on themselves, creating spaces that invited entry – colonnades, arches, garden pathways and benches. The human figure was a basic subject of her work. Some of her collections focus on the entire figure or on particular body parts while others, in the absence of the figure, use columns and scale to create an awareness of how our own bodies occupy space.
Many of her early sculptures included naturalistic portraits press molded from life masks of friends, colleagues and her own face. She fixed these faces to columns, drawing connections between the figure and architecture. Later work incorporated casts of internal organs taken from scientific models, exploring the body as both a functional container of organs and as the origin of personhood and spirit. Molded eyes, mouths, noses, ears and hands reference the role of the senses in apprehending the world, while odd juxtapositions reflect the fragmentation of modern life. She enjoyed the process of working without knowing what the work would become at completion, and much of her work playfully subverts expectations with a refreshing sense of humour.
Michener was born in Minnesota. She graduated with a BA from Hamline University in 1957, then initially pursued a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University. It was during her time at Columbia that she changed course and began studying ceramics with Warren MacKenzie at the University of Minnesota. She completed a Master of Arts degree in 1973 at the University of Cincinnati, moving to Canada that same year to teach ceramics at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design). Her career there would span 25 years.
Beginning in 1970, Michener had 17 solo exhibitions and approximately 100 group exhibitions, spanning a more than 50-year career. Her art is in public collections primarily in Canada, but also the United States, China, Japan and Mexico.
She was one of the founders of the North-West Ceramics Foundation in 1993 and served on its board until 2015. She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1996, and in 2007, was one of ten Canadians participating in a month-long residency for an international ceramic museum in Fuping, China. Sally Michener died in 2023.
“I always hope that my conscious intentions will somehow be transcended and that the work will take on its own life and vitality beyond my expectations”. Quote from Remembering Sally Michener by Tam Irving, published June 23, 2023, Gallery of BC Ceramics/Potters Guild of BC: https://www.galleryofbcceramics.com/post/remembering-sally-michener
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