Cicansky at work in the lush garden at his Regina home. (file photo)
Beloved Saskatchewan sculptor Victor Cicansky has died. He was 90 years old.
Born in Regina in 1935, he spent his early years gardening with his parents, who were Romanian.
That early time in the garden inspired his later work: ceramic tomatoes resting in armchairs, benches dripping with ceramic fruit, shovels filled with colourful veg, ceramic cabbages “growing” in pots.
“Considered now among his signature pieces are replicas of home pantries lined top to bottom with faux glass canning jars made of clay, each appearing to be filled with garden vegetables, from asparagus to pickles to tomatoes to corn,” wrote Jack Anderson in Galleries West in 2004, about his work.
“I am inspired by daily experiences,” Cicansky told Anderson in 2004. “My ideas often come out of nowhere: a kiln firing that doesn’t work out could suggest new ways of doing things. Some line in a poem will set me thinking… It all started back with that first ceramic jar of sauerkraut I made, which came to me as an idea while I was canning some real vegetables.”
In the early days of his career, Cicansky taught elementary and high school, but at one point he enrolled in a pottery class. That class changed the course of his life.
He ended up in a ceramic residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, and then completed a master of fine arts degree from the University of California.
He later taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts (now the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity), the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD University), and the University of Regina. He received many awards in his lifetime, including the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, as well as Victoria and Albert Award for Ceramic Sculpture and the California Kingsley Annual Award for Sculpture. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2009 and he was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2012.
His work has been shown in many galleries across Canada, including Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina, Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ont., Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton and Masters Gallery in Calgary.
Source: CBC, Galleries West
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