BIOGRAPHY
Andrea Charise (she/her) is an artist-researcher working in ceramics, narrative, and digital media. A recent graduate of Fleming College’s Ceramics Certificate Program, Charise received the Haliburton School of Art + Design’s 2022 Ceramics Award. With the support of a New/Early Career Artist grant earned from Canada Council for the Arts, she now produces functional pottery and ceramic ware as SQUARED CIRCLE CERAMICS.
Also trained as a health researcher with a focus on geriatrics (the care of older people), Charise’s creative practice is deeply informed by her lived experience at the intersection of arts, healthcare, aging, and radical interdisciplinarity. Drawing from a rich background in writing and digital storytelling—including her founding and curation of The Resemblage Project, a multi-award-winning online intergenerational storytelling initiative—Charise felt the pull toward more tactile, material art media. Clay’s haptic, transformative properties, the ceramic alchemy of glazing and surface decoration, and the land-based sustainability ethos of wild clay harvesting, provided the definitive answer.
Born in Ottawa, Canada, Charise grew up in England and Indonesia. These days she divides her time between Tkaronto and the traditional lands of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗ, Mohawk, and Omàmìwininìwag (Algonquin). In Spring and Fall 2022 she was Biophilium Artist-in-Residence at the Ayatana Artists’ Research Program. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions in Canada, Belgium, and online.
artist’S statement
My ceramic forms are generous and substantial, deliberately working with curves, size, and texture to fully realize clay’s intrinsic abundance. My functional work often involves wheel-thrown, iron-rich, cone 6 stoneware decorated with rustic, expressive lines and non-toxic, food safe glazes. My one-of-a-kind sculptural works explore more abstract, larger-scale, often coil-built forms, ornamented with innovative, experimental glaze formulas developed in conversation with each unique ceramic object. Both functional and sculptural works reflect my interest in emphatically textured, even weathered, surfaces: an aesthetic translation of my professional background in geriatrics, and a personal meditation on the inevitability of aging’s marks on bodies—flesh and clay alike.
Clay is a medium that traverses seemingly opposite elements, states, and forms: be they liquid|solid, novel|ancient, fragility|endurance, constancy|volatility, or art|science. Long used as an alchemical symbol, the “squared circle” offers a fitting motif for my own understanding of ceramics practice, denoting the interplay of elemental materials in high-temperature conditions to produce extraordinary effects on clay and glaze. Its more personal resonances speak to my integration of creative practices with health research methods—often thought of as diametrically opposed or even incompatible worldviews—as well as my lifelong appreciation for professional wrestling.
The wrestling ring (aka "the squared circle") also provides contemporary inspiration for my functional and sculptural work. From my signature “Hardcore Pots” functional ware, which utilizes for surface decoration the iconic props of hardcore deathmatches like barbed wire, thumbtacks, and pizzacutters; to more conceptual engagements with the art of wrestling, as in the collectible “Busted Open” sculptural vessel series. Channelling the ancient classical association of Greco-Roman ceramics with wrestling’s aesthetic richness, my pottery debuts a fresh vision of clay’s infinite potential as a twenty-first century art and craft medium.
Artist’s CV.
highlights
Education
12/2021. Ontario College Certificate in Ceramics, Haliburton School of Art + Design, Fleming College, Canada.
Selected Honours and Awards
2022. The 2022 Ceramics Award (for highest overall grade in Ceramics Certificate Program), Haliburton School of Art + Design, Fleming College, Canada.
2021. Janet Honsberger Endowed Bursary (Ceramics), Haliburton School of Art + Design, Fleming College, Canada.
2020. Digital Humanities Award (The Resemblage Project, “Best Public Engagement” category)
Grants
2022-23. “DEATHMATCH: A Hardcore Wrestling Exploration in Ceramics.” Research and Creation (Explore and Create Program; Visual Arts - New/Early Career Artist), Canada Council for the Arts.
Residencies
11/2022. Biophilium Artist-in-Residence: MORTEM. Ayatana Artists’ Research Program. November 14-25. Chelsea, QC, Canada.
05/2022. Biophilium Artist-in-Residence. Ayatana Artists’ Research Program. May 9-20. Chelsea, QC, Canada.
Selected Exhibitions
Group
2023. Toronto Outdoor Art Fair [juried]. Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto ON. July 7 - 9 and online at TOAF.ca July 2-9.
2022. FUSION Clay and Glass Exhibition and Show. Wychwood Barns, Toronto ON. November 19-20.
2021. Wrap It Up 2021. Haliburton School of Art + Design, Haliburton ON. December 18.
2019. Inter/Generate (organized and exhibited). Gallery 1265, Toronto. January 14-25. [digital video]
2018. Ageing Companions/Geprogrammeerde Veroudering/Les Cyborgs Vieillissants. Closing Event, hosted by Constant (non-profit, artist-run organization). De Pianofabriek: Brussels, Belgium. June 24. [digital sound art]
2017. Ontario Psychiatric Outreach Program (OPOP) Annual Conference, Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto. November 10. [digital video artwork]
Selected Publications
Creative
2022. “Pica,” “Reclaim.” [Poems]. Studio Magazine. Fall 2022/Winter 2023. 26-27.
2022. “Stretch Muffler.” [Poem]. West End Phoenix. June 2022: 42.
2020. “Bleach,” “Fire Fallow.” [Poems]. Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, Arts, and Humanities. 15.2 (2020): 40-42.
Exhibition-Related
2019. Editor, Inter/Generate. Chapbook [20 pages + Editor’s Introduction]. Print accompaniment to eponymous group exhibit (see above), Gallery 1265, Toronto. January 2019.
2019. “Inter/Generate: Foreword.” Inter/Generate. Pp 4-5.