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.

Paschakarnis exhibited her work, sculpture and drawing, in Europe, the USA and Canada. She currently has a solo show at Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montreal, PQ.
Her last solo exhibitions were “Domesticated Beasts” at Alison Smith Gallery in Toronto, ON Canada; “Vanessa Paschakarnis” at the Meijer Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA and “ForeShadowing” at the Forum Gallery Dallas, TX USA. Her work has been included in the summer group exhibition 2008 at Marlborough Chelsea in New York City and she was a participant in Blickachsen 7, an international sculpture Biennale in Bad Homburg, Germany in the summer of 2009 where she also received the “Best Young Artist Award”.

Paschakarnis has taught sculpture at NSCAD University and for the University of Georgia at Athens on their Campus in Cortona, Italy. She was Assistant Professor of Sculpture at SMU, Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, TX from 2004-2007. She 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.

Vanessa Paschakarnis has works in private and public collections, among others the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the art collection of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Canada and the Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax, NS.
Vanessa currently maintains a studio in West Dublin, NS Canada and she spends periodically extended periods of time in Italy in order to work on large-scale sculpture in a studio near Pietrasanta.

» CV [PDF]

Vanessa about her work

I am interested in the “thing” as the conceptual other. By making objects - shadows, shields, bells, beasts, horns and guardians – I am referring to phenomena and feeling that transpire in the world of the individual. My forms seem familiar, but they rest unknown.

I try to physically charge an encounter through their visceral quality of surface and form, their presence as “thing”. The surface and the form of my objects are very distinct and they provoke a consideration of what they are and where they come from.

All my work is scaled in response to the human body in order to relate to the viewer in real space. I want you to look with your knees, see with your elbows and smell with your eyes, transcending the senses by opening up to the unfamiliar that is so much like us. Sculpture allows for an experience and I like to surround a person in an environment for contemplation that fine-tunes one’s awareness to distinguish – and to reconnect – mineral and animal and human.

While my work is foremost sincere and soulful, it is an optimistic confirmation of our presence as living creatures – responsive and alive in the world.