Day 1: Building Communities

Dayna Gedney is a multidisciplinary artist who works in ceramics, textiles, and wood.  Her work exhibits finesse with materials and diligent refinement. It is as much about the process of making as it is about the final product, an ever-developing exercise in not limiting material and perpetually expanding her skill set while exploring craft. She is also the co-founder of the Hamilton Craft Studio.

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Pasha Moezzi is a mid-career jewellery artist residing in Toronto. He obtained his Fine Arts diploma from Langara College (Vancouver) and later completed his BFA in Design Arts at Concordia University (Montreal). His true passion for jewellery emerged while working at his father’s furniture-making workshop, where he made jewellery out of scrap metal. He then pursued goldsmith training at George Brown College, where he graduated from the Jewellery Arts program in 2015. Afterwards, Moezzi was accepted as an Artist-in-Residence at Harbourfront Centre, where he stayed for his three-year residency. His work has a unique style influenced by deco-industrial shapes and architectural forms, evident in his one-of-a-kind work and production lines. He has won several awards and competitions in Canada and internationally and has had solo and group exhibitions in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, New York, Dubai, Milan and Tehran. Moezzi has also worked with the MetalAid group since 2016 and has worked effortlessly to support and give back to the community.

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Munira Amin has more than two decades of experience in artisan product development. She is a specialist in artisan training and artisanal production methodologies. She has worked on numerous social design projects and developed product ranges for both regional and global markets. In 2015-16, she worked on the PCTBI trade-based program with BRANDTRADE in Peru, conceptualizing, designing and developing an extensive product line for global markets in partnership with artisan communities in four regions of Peru. Amin has also initiated The SEWAN Project (Indigo) in Pakistan. The SEWAN project is a platform that combines artisan production with contemporary design to create new product lines for global markets. This income-generating project focuses on sustaining artisans while supporting skills and traditional production methods in Pakistan. Amin is a product design graduate from the National College of Arts, Pakistan, a former faculty member at the Pakistan Design Institute and a founding member of Design Collective, Karachi. She is now based in Toronto.

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Naomi Clement is a Canadian artist and educator who explores ideas of home and belonging through the powerful lens of functional ceramics. She received her MFA from Louisiana State University in 2017, and her B.F.A from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University in 2003. Clement has participated in residencies, given lectures and workshops, and exhibited her work across Canada and the United States. She served as a board member for the National Council on the Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and was named a 2017 Emerging Artist by Ceramics Monthly magazine. Most recently, she was a summer Artist-in-Residence at the renowned Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana. After spending many years as a pottery nomad, working and travelling across North America, Clement has recently established a home studio in Stratford, Ontario.

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Nehal El-Hadi is a journalist, editor and producer whose work investigates the relationships between the body, place and technology. She completed a Ph.D. in Planning at the University of Toronto, where her research examined the relationships between user-generated content and everyday public urban life. Her hybrid digital/material research methods as a scholar are informed by her training and experience as a science and environmental journalist. El-Hadi advocates for the responsible, accountable and ethical treatment of user-generated content in journalism, planning and healthcare. Her writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines and several anthologies and edited collections. She is the Science+Technology Editor at The Conversation Canada, an educational news site, and Editor-in-Chief of Studio Magazine, a biannual print publication dedicated to contemporary Canadian craft and design. She currently holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, developing a live art event exploring surveillance, privacy and consent.

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