[ Nadia Schwartzentruber ]

BIO:

NADIA SCHWARTZENTRUBER is a recent graduate of the University of Windsor's BFA Visual Arts program. Here interests lie in presenting sculpture in intimate 'installed' settings, semi-natural sites focusing on themes of reproduction, multiplicity and personal spirituality.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

As an artist, I am preoccupied with sculptural mediums and situations. I embrace a poetic and intuitive approach to artmaking. Throughout my sculpture installations, animal subject matter dominates, representing the instinctive emotional and sensual urges that we all naturally feel...we are all animals. Utilizing source materials borrowed from both wildlife and toy cultures, I manipulate animal form with fabric, sewing, motors and light. Once finished, the forms are then placed in narrative situations throughout the gallery space. This stratagem of surface and space transforms the animals into hybrids of my design, acting as an anthropomorphic autobiography of both my cultural and emotional environment.

CV:

PORTFOLIO:

CHEEPS (2001) is a soft-sculpture installation that uses toy-culture inspired materials to evoke a space that is both enigmatic and playful. The installation is composed of dozens of hand-stitched moldable bird icons (such as one might find in a storybook) carefully arranged in relationships amidst long rectangular structures and gleaming egg piles. Taking a theatrical approach to the lighting and presentation of the scenes, "Cheeps" has the capability to illicit emotional responses in onlookers because of it's ability to reconnect them to that special place inside where children go to make their toys come alive and help them sort out the complexities of the world.