Kaas Ghanie and Kate Grey are two ceramic artists that live and work in Halifax, Nova Scotia and have a Household Membership at VANS. They graduated from NSCAD University in 2016 with Bachelor degrees in Ceramics and minors in art history. Ghanie and Grey’s studio is located in Wonder’neath Art Society on Isleville Street in the North end of Halifax. They both teach pottery classes through the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design.

Ghanie is the sole proprietor of KG Ceramics, a pottery company in which he uses motifs from family Islamic prayer rugs and sgrafitto’s them to the surfaces of his functional wares.  Ghanie also creates large scale sculptural ceramic vessels that examine his personal experience as a first generation Guyanese Canadian Muslim in contemporary society.

Grey’s ceramic work is an expression of the desire to understand femininity through the uses of historical and current modes of personal surface decoration. She uses this conceptual format to also make connections between the uses of items like makeup and hair accessories to ceramic. Her goal is creating a contemporary visual language of clay and ceramic.

We motivate and inspire each other
Ghanie: I am inspired by familial connections, Islamic art history and daily rituals of domesticity. I create pottery as a way to represent the beauty in Islamic decoration and symbolism. There are two sides to the ceramics that I make; the first is my functional pottery that incorporates motifs from family prayer rugs and the second is using historical Islamic vessel shapes to create large sculptural pots about contemporary issues.

Grey: My influences have always come from questioning the invisible measuring scale of self-worth through technological means and personal visual representations. I use ceramics and digital art to create connections between femininity, objectivity, the act of collecting, memory and clay. I build modularly and then assemble pieces through installation. While at NSCAD I was slowly learning digital art technology and was able to be a Centre for Art Tapes Media Arts Scholar with Susan Tooke as my mentor in 2017-18. That program allowed me to learn more about projection mapping and combining ceramics with digital arts.

Both: We motivate and inspire each other through our individual processes. Often we collaborate on the production pottery for KG Ceramics and work together on both our fine art practices. We challenge and support each other.

planting roots in Halifax
After graduating from NSCAD University the problem that is on most recent grads minds is “where do I find a studio?” For ceramics this issue is even more concerning because the start-up cost of running a closed personal studio is a massive undertaking. We both began by doing local residencies and mentorships. Both of us did the NSCCD’s summer residency twice and then Kaas did their new AIR Craft residency which ran from September 2017 to June 2018. Kate was accepted into the VANS Mentorship program 2016-17 and then the CFAT Scholarship in September 2017 to February 2018. These programs of development allowed us to plant roots in Halifax and grow our practices while still working day jobs and teaching at night. Kate was able to find a small studio space in the winter of 2017 with peers but moved out October of 2018 due to building foreclosure. That same month we moved into our studio at Wonder’neath with our studio mate Lux Gow-Habrich whom Kate shared a space with in their old studio on Almon Street. During the last three years since our graduation we have both received Arts Nova Scotia grant funding for sculptural and installation based ceramics.

the place for us to go when we have a question
We joined VANS because of the access to information on how to be a practicing artist. Kate especially has reaped the benefits from VANS because of her mentorship in 2016-17. She was partnered with Andrea Dorfman, a filmmaker and animator in Halifax, and they collaborated for the end of year exhibition at the Craig Gallery. Kaas had a featured article in Visual Arts News, Between Sacred + Profane, written by Kathleen Higgins about his Arts Nova Scotia equity granted project, Adaptation, which was curated by B Welter-Nolan in the Hermes Gallery on North Street. VANS has been the place for us to go when we have a question about our studio practices. Through workshops and now their online seminars it’s super amazing to feel and have support when we need it.

current and upcoming projects
Kate is currently working on a project where she hand-builds items meant for beautification [makeup, eyelash curler, hairbrushes, hair dryers, tweezers etc.] all in ceramic and she will projection map digital information and imagery about the history, chemistry and technological influences behind some standard beauty practices today. She recently started facilitating more frequently at Wonder’neath, NSCCD, through extended studies at NSCAD and hopefully more places in the future. Kaas is currently a CEEDling at Centre for Entrepreneurial Education and Development in Halifax. Through this program he is taking business workshops and has been paired with a mentor to improve his pottery business plan. He is primarily focused on his functional pottery at the moment but is currently in the process of applying for opportunities to create a new body of sculptural vessels.