A Quiet Passage, an installation of light sconces and terminus forms in clay and glass, solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, April 18 to July 22, 2002. A series of light sconces illuminated the length of the long, narrow gallery that connects the two wings of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Along this path sat three columns based on the terminus,* a four-sided, tapering form used in ancient times as a marker along a journey. In contemporary use, terminus refers to the idea of a terminal at a train station or airport, a point of departure or arrival. But terminal can also signify the end of a journey, a life lived, ending due to terminal illness.

A glass bowl rests atop each terminus form, gathering light. The widening halo of light created by the light sconces is echoed in the flared bowl forms that appear to hover above the grounded clay columns. The ceramic terminus forms and the glass bowls are delicately and tenuously connected, one earthy and organic, the other ethereal and elusive.

An article on my solo exhibition A Quiet Passage, 2002, appears in Ceramics Art and Perception (n 52, summer 2003, pp 80–87), an international ceramics magazine from Australia. The article includes photos and the essay written by curator Helen Delacretaz for the exhibition catalogue.

Grace Nickel: A Quiet Passage cover

Grace Nickel: A Quiet Passage exhibition catalogue is available at the Winnipeg Art Gallery Shop, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk.

*From Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary:

terʹmi·nus \tẽrʹmĭ·nŭs\, n.; pl. TERMINI. [L.]
1. Literally, a boundary; a border; a limit.
2. (Myth.) The Roman divinity who presided over boundaries, whose statue was properly a short pillar terminating in the bust of a man, woman, satyr, or the like, but often merely a post or stone stuck in the ground on a boundary line.
3. Hence, any post or stone marking a boundary; a term.