People

Vanessa Paschakarnis, owner, teacher

Vanessa Paschakarnis is originally from Germany 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 has been a Professor of Sculpture at SMU, Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, TX from 2004 to 2007.
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.
Since 2002, Vanessa has spent regularly extended periods of time in Italy in order to work on large-scale sculpture in a studio near Pietrasanta.
She has exhibited her work, sculpture and drawing, in Europe, the USA and Canada. Most recently she had a solo-exhibition “Foreshadowing”, 2006, Forum Gallery, Dallas, TX, USA, Vanessa Paschakarnis, “Shadows of Bells”, 2006 Studio 21, Halifax, NS and a solo exhibition at Meijers Sculpture Garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA in the spring of 2007. 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, and The White Shield, 2000 for the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (2006).

John Greer, teacher

www.johngreer.ca

John Greer has exhibited his work since 1967 extensively in Canada and more recently in the USA, Iceland and Korea.

John Greer studied Fine Art from 1962 until 1967 in Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver. He taught sculpture as full Professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax for 26 years and is now working full time on his sculptural work in his studio in West Dublin, Nova Scotia, Canada; for the last three years working partly out of Dallas, TX, USA and since the mid 80ies he has been spending extended work periods in Pietrasanta, Italy.

His most recent solo exhibition was “Reflecting on Culture” 2006 in Halifax, NS and he has an upcoming solo exhibition called “Alluding to Illusion in Dallas, TX in the spring of 2008.

John has realized a number of public commissions, most recently the piece “Gathering, 2001” for a family park in Seoul, Korea and “Reflection, 2001”, the memorial to Canadian Aid Workers in Ottawa, Canada. His work “Origins, 1995” is permanently installed in the Ondaatje courtyard of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and he has works in major national collections.

John Greer prefers sculpture as his language and tries to engage the viewer in being a human, thinking object among objects, a being “of” the world, a cultural object.

May 2008