www.janetmacpherson.com

Recipient of the Craft Ontario Volunteer Committee Emerging Professional Grant

Janet Macpherson earned a BA in philosophy from York University, after which she studied ceramics at Sheridan College for three years. She maintained a studio in Toronto where she made and exhibited her work in Canada and the U.S. In 2008 Janet began the MFA program at The Ohio State University where her work underwent a significant transformation from vessels covered in layers of imagery sourced from her interest in Christian iconography and her own Catholic childhood, to sculptural objects, and a focus on installation.

Using re-purposed commercial plaster molds as well as hand-made molds cast from found toy animals, knick-knacks, and religious statues, Janet re-composes objects that upon closer inspection reflect a physical process of manipulation and fragmentation. Seemingly innocuous figures present themselves as decorative, domestic objects. A discomforting reality is revealed: human and animal heads are duplicated and pushed together, limbs are absent or obscured, faces are reduced, masked or perforated. Creatures have collided and edged into a world outside the boundaries of the everyday. Motivated by the peculiar, overlapping and often unsettling images that were vivid in her Catholic childhood, Janet has been experimenting with hybrid objects that invite encounters with the grotesque.