Domestic Exploration: Art by D'Andrea Bowie
Sleeping Bunnies, polished plaster
D’Andrea Bowie is an artist who studies at Toronto’s OCADU. She works in drawing, ceramics, sculpture, and installation, often combining several of these mediums, to great effect. There is an interesting undercurrent of domestic exploration in D’Andrea’s work that is at times inviting and at times subtly critical.
I find D’Andrea’s installation work really interesting. She seems to have a great eye for how different mediums and components compliment one another rather than trying to drown each other out. In her Perfect Pie installation, she combines sculpture, drawing, and a live Christmas tree to create a surreal landscape of emotion and exploration. In Offering, she uses time-based media in conjunction with a literal avatar for the passage of time (rising and decaying bread.) This idea of baking is present in many of D’Andrea’s works, with her usage of the imagery of pies, and the media of bread and flour. It seems somehow apt, considering that D’Andrea has chosen to continue a self-taught practice by taking up a formal art education – the process of growth and change in an artistic practice echoes the mixing, rising, and baking of a pie or a loaf of bread.
