Biography

Nancy Chiasson returned to Cape Breton in 2000 after 13 years in Ontario where she attended Dundas Valley School of the Arts studying pottery, life drawing and painting. She established a pottery studio where she teaches classes and creates work both commercial and artistic. While setting up her studio (took a couple of years) she began to explore collage and handmade paper to explore experiences with psychology (her first area of study) and the subconscious, meditation and the natural world. The industrial areas of Cape Breton were undergoing great changes upon her return to the island. Watching the steel plant blast furnaces were literally blown up in a symbolic ending and carboniferous fossils littering coastal coal seams seemed the beginning. Investigating fossils she ended up venturing to the floor of a strip mine where 2 storey high petrified trees were being knocked down by backhoes. Her mind began to wander in time producing preliminary photo based collages and clay vessels as a response. Her work deals with unseen forces, scale and the subconscious.

Nancy is currently working on the Transitions Project through the Shubenacadie Canal Commission conducting research and developing visual imagery in clay based on the lives of the Acadians along the waterway. Her working title is Acadian Surfaces and she will be producing ceramic tiles based on her findings. In 2014 Nancy was awarded the Grand Pré Prize from Arts Nova Scotia for her artist in residency work at the Fortress of Louisbourg. She worked abstractly creating collaged landscapes inspired by the rugged coastline and allowing her mind to wander through time. Manipulating space, color and perspective provides endless fuel for these creations. She also created hand built pottery vessels inspired by eroding and historical buildings both real and imagined.