The Artist
Catherine Valois (Caval) is an emerging ceramic artist living and working in Quebec City. She graduated from the Maison des métiers d'art de Québec - Ceramics option in 2021. Her work has been shown at Galerie Lewis, Centre Materia, Maison Tessier Dit-Laplante, and in two Manif d'art 11 satellite group shows. She is the recipient of three Première Ovation grants.
Her practice is first and foremost exploratory, and materials occupy an important part of it. Fascinated by fine details, wear, and imperfection, she gathers traces and abandoned materials along the way, like precious jewels to be offered a second life. She observes and archives their transformation as they are fired, accumulating a multitude of test fragments. Her creations emerge from this abundance and address issues of heritage, transmission, and sisterhood. They are a celebration of subtlety, reverie, and quiet strength in resistance to our productivist world.
Residency Project
Catherine spent 3 months at the Rozynski Art Center, ending in June 2024. During her stay, she became interested in making books that combine ceramics, hand-crafted paper and poetic writing. Her research focused on gathering and reusing materials such as ashes, wild clay, milkweed and a variety of minerals, and incorporating them into clay and paper. Moreover, it is the addition of paper to the clay she works with that enables her to produce delicate pieces imbued with a latent friability. The Centre's resources and rural location were conducive to the development of her project and, more broadly, to her enrichment as a maker.
On June 30 and July 1, 2024, she proposed a collective book-making workshop at the Rozynski Art Centre's Céramique à Way's Mills event to mark the close of her residency. A warm thank you to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, whose support made this residency possible.