About the artist and her work

Vanessa Paschakarnis is a German Canadian sculptor and holds a Masters degree in Fine Art, Sculpture from the Art Academy in Berlin (Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee) and a Master of Fine Art in Fine and Media Arts from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

She has taught sculpture at NSCAD University and she taught in the summer of 2002 for the University of Georgia at Athens on their Campus in Cortona, Italy. She taught as Assistant Professor of Sculpture at SMU, Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, TX from 2004-2007 currently maintains a studio in LaHave, Nova Scotia.

Vanessa Paschakarnis was coordinator, member of the steering committee and participant of the first Atlantic Stone Carving Symposium, an event that was planned for 3 years and took place with extraordinary success in Inverness, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in early September 2005.

She has spent extended periods of time in 2002, 2004, 2005 in Italy in order to work on large-scale sculpture in a studio in Pietrasanta.

She has exhibited her work, sculpture and drawing, in Europe, the USA and Canada. Most recently she had three solo-exhibitions, “Foreshadowing”, 2006, Forum Gallery, Dallas, TX, USA and Vanessa Paschakarnis, “Shadows for Bells”, 2006 Studio 21, Halifax, NS and Vanessa Paschakarnis at the Meijer Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Recent commissions have been Spirit, 2001 for the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Canada, Ottawa; The Red Shield, 2002 for the Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax, NS, and Three Masks 2003, for Basek Holdings in Calgary, AB.

» CV [PDF]

Vanessa about her work

"My work functions on the level of reconstruction. It is about trusting our own sensibilities rather than appropriating information. It is about reconstituting a sense of being human, breathing in and out and articulating ourselves.

This understanding for me is not developed through the vacuum of a comment, but relies on the density of space during an encounter. As we move – we encounter. As we engage – we effect our lives.

Sculpture helps to find the place where we are moved by desire."