Available at the Alberta Craft Gallery - Edmonton & Calgary

P. Susanah Windrum (Calgary, AB) is a craft artist working primarily with quotidian post-consumer, recycled and found metals. Susanah earned a Diploma in Theatre Arts Production at Mount Royal College in 1982. The program enhanced her technical and creative abilities through the designing and constructing of sets, costumes and props. In 1992 she received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. While studying at both institutions Susanah was inspired by a multitude of ideas and exposed to various artistic processes and problem solving methods. Since graduating, she has continued her education with courses and workshops in jewelry and metalwork, taught by a number of extremely talented and giving metal/jewelry artists including; Crys Harse, Joan Irvin, Shona Rae, Richard Salley, Paul Leathers and Keith Lo Bue. Each of these artists has imbued Susanah with knowledge, proficiency and encouragement to forge her own unique and vibrant artistic practice.

“I am attracted to objects and materials imbued with a primary inherent narrative. Consequently, I pursue my craft using quotidian metal objects. I love the process of transformation, like an alchemist I create something new out of objects that once had a completely different purpose and value. I search for lost, tossed or abandoned metal objects, especially those that been reshaped and distorted by their contact with the urban and natural environment. After collecting these discarded objects, I assemble ‘characters’ inspired by the way the metal has been altered, it’s like working with free-form jigsaw puzzle pieces. I am initially attracted to the texture, the colour, the patina of the metal which imaginatively becomes suggestive of body parts; a face, an arm, a torso which I amass into a new persona. I craft and transform post-consumer metals to create wearable and free-standing sculptures, magnetic metal collages, and shadow box assemblages. These fanciful works are constructed with a wide variety of re-purposed materials including contemporary and vintage tins, broken, mismatched and abandoned jewellery pieces, bottle caps and rusty fragments. 

I use classic jewelry construction cold connection techniques (traditionally used with gold and silver) and put them to use with post-consumer tea tins, rusted steel, flattened bottle caps and other non-precious metals. The recycled metal pieces are all assembled by hand-riveting, no soldering or welding is used to join the metal. In medieval times the alchemist sought to change base metals into gold; in modern times I change discarded un-wanted material into unique whimsical works of art.”

 Portrait Photo: Jeff Yee