STORY BY PAIGE GALEA
Professor Linda Sormin has a chance to win a $10,000 award and the Sheridan community can help her.
Sormin, Sheridan’s studio head of Ceramics, is one of five ceramic artists across Canada to be nominated for the RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award.
An exhibition at the Gardiner Museum has all five artists’ sculptures on display until Oct. 13.
Until then you can vote online at gardinermuseum.on.ca .
Sormin was nominated by Bruce Cochrane, a former professor at Sheridan, and is hoping to come out on top and win the $10,000 grand prize so she can make her garage into a studio.
“Now that winter is coming I can’t work in my garage. I need heat, insulation and electricity,” explains Sormin.
Sormin started working in her garage on Neverhole, the sculpture on display at the Gardiner, in May when the weather was still warm.
“Neverhole is a place, a collection of objects. It’s a bit like Peter Pan’s Neverland and Alice’s Rabbit Hole – a place for adventures and wonders,” says Sormin.
Sormin explains that while in Thailand and Laos for three and a half years working in community development, she would watch people making things by hand and she was inspired to tell stories in a whole new way.
“I am really interested in people’s lives. My work has an appetite for things, and the things that I collect indicate the lives of people who have used and owned them in the past. My work is roaming. It’s abstract and made up of little bits of clay that are pinched together into a larger aggressive sculpture. My sculptures are hungry for things, they archive objects and places in my past,” explains Sormin.
Whether it is in England, Denver or Toronto, Sormin finds herself rummaging through dumpsters, scrapyards and thrift shops to find unique objects.
Sormin intertwines and wraps those pieces in her sculptures. “It kind of eats them up and becomes the body of the art work.”
You can vote for Sormin at the exhibition or online at gardinermuseum.on.ca
Click here to listen to Sormin talk about her work
To see more of her work go to her website: lindasormin.com
