Biography
Debra Kuzyk is a clay-based artist currently living and working on the unceded, ancestral Mi’kmaq territory in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. She creates work about local wildlife and the impacts of disappearing wilderness. She gained her love and appreciation for Nature from her naturalist father and a childhood partially spent living beside a lake in North-central Saskatchewan.
She completed a BED at the University of Saskatchewan, a BFA at NSCAD University, and a one-year residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Influential NSCAD professor, Walter Ostrom, encouraged Debra to study the history of ceramics while making work directly from her own life and surroundings.
After graduating, Kuzyk spent a decade involved in arts related work, study and travel before teaming up with potter Ray Mackie to establish Lucky Rabbit Pottery studio and gallery in Annapolis Royal, NS. For 25 years they produced functional and exhibition pieces which featured Debra’s depictions of local flora and fauna. She sculpted animal finials, embellished the surfaces of Ray’s pots and ran the gallery. In 2017 she initiated and coordinated Lucky Rabbit & Co., an artists’ collective of studios and gallery which received an Industry Leadership/Supporter Award in 2022 from Atlantic Canada Craft Awards for Excellence.
Lucky Rabbit closed its doors at the end of 2022, and Debra is now working solo. A Creation Grant from Arts Nova Scotia in 2024 enabled her to create a body of work as artist-in-residence in the Zoology Department at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax. Her involvement with the group “Save Our Old Forests” informs her work and deepens her commitment to wildlife conservation.
Artist’s Statement
I have been fascinated with animals and animal imagery since childhood. In my ceramic vessels and sculptures, I attempt to capture a kind of animal truth, rather than a realistic replication. For the past 25 years I have been creating work about the wildlife surrounding me in Southwest Nova Scotia (Kespukwitk). As the climate crisis accelerates, I think about the animals that are cleared from the land as we extract resources, pollute and develop. We destroy forests, wetlands, and beaches causing immense suffering and death to wildlife. This moment is a threshold for the future of coexistence, health and balance.
My chosen medium of clay with its fragile fired state is an excellent material for expressing the vulnerability of the natural world. Clay comes from the Earth. It is the material of life, the universal matter associated with many creation stories. The tactile quality of wet clay echoes the touch of the earth, malleable and responsive. Vitrified ceramics possess a remarkable durability, with objects from ancient cultures often lasting millennia. However, clay in its fired state is also extremely fragile, and this mirrors the precarious existence of endangered species and ecosystems in our changing world. Each sculpture embodies the need for care and respect, reminding us that both art and nature are vulnerable.
The process of creating these works is as important to me as the finished piece itself. I work intuitively, allowing the sculpture to develop organically from coils and pinched lumps of clay. I sculpt between daily walks in an old forest or around a saltwater marsh. I connect with the community of artists and environmentalists around me. This symbiotic relationship informs my work while deepening my commitment to wildlife conservation.
