Multimedia artist Martina MacDonald-Bleriot aspires to heal as well as create through her art. She employs traditional craft techniques, including a carefully selected array of gemstones, metals, and found objects from around the world. Crochet, knitting, felting, beading, and weaving are repetitive, meditative, and calming, reinforcing heart beats and breathing patterns. Wool has warming and soothing properties; colours and gemstones are therapeutic. Fragments of ceramic tiles from the Mediterranean Sea, metal wires from the streets of Paris, or beads found on a Greek island represent the time “before”: the unloved and discarded become treasured and integrated.
MacDonald’s recent Heal and Protect Breastplate Series helped her overcome a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer. The resulting form of still life and assemblage is part sculpture, part jewelry, and part armour, plus a portrait of the artist’s cosmopolitan upbringing in Paris. Through this work, MacDonald becomes healer and healed, protector, and protected, shaman and artist.
MacDonald holds two BA degrees in Jewelry+Metals and Painting (With Distinction) from ACAD. Before calling Calgary home, MacDonald wrote and illustrated historical, award winning children books for Art Publisher Adrien Maeght in Paris, France. Flower Power, donated to the 2016 KOAC Fundraiser, was selected to participate in the opening exhibition at the Esker Foundation in 2012. Solo exhibitions include: Les Perles de Martina, Paris, France (2004); Journée Fleurie, Vannes, France (1995); Les fleurs de Martina Bieriot, Banque Credit Mutuel de Bretagne, Muzillac, France (1993). Selected group exhibitions include: 2016 KOAC Gala; Chasing the Silver Line, ACAD (2016); Changing Hues: Colour Embraced by Metalsmiths Around the World, Ganoskin Project, ACAD (2014); Fibre Program: Miniature Show, ACAD (2014); In the Loupe, Influx Gallery, Jubilee Auditorium, ACAD, Central Library (2014). MacDonald’s work appears in private collections in Canada, Austria, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, US, Venezuela and Vietnam.
Martina MacDonald-Bleriot “Heal and Protect Series No.2”
12″ x 20″ x 3″
Wool, Beads, Organic Material
Silent Auction Lot#123
Fair Market Value $850
