Royal College of Art exchange student documents her encounter with Calgary

British artist Jasmine Pajdak is playing with materials and creating new works in the studio space in the Department of Art. She is here as part of a six-week exchange program between the University of Calgary and the Royal College of Art in London, that was initiated by Professor Emeritus Bill Laing and late artist Tim Mara more than 25 years ago.

Pajdak is making paper, using elements from the environment: pine needles, Douglas fir, and grasses from Nose Hill Park. She is also creating sculptures out of paper clay that represent a more physical relationship to her environment and materials.  

“I’m getting to know the landscape and am giving myself a sense of place in it,” says Pajdak. “By using what is around me — whether organic elements for the paper or studio materials like metal sheets for the sculptures — I’m creating work about the immediacy of being here.”

Pajdak recognizes that Calgary and its surroundings are vast. Initially, she tried to create big works as a response, but then she realized all she wanted to make were intimate and fragment-like pieces. “Even if I’m in a bigger place than London, I don’t have a car, I live a small distance away from campus. Everything has become about intimacy and looking at the smaller things.”

Coming from a printmaking background, Pajdak explains that the work she’s creating is quite similar to more traditional printmaking. “I’m leaving an impression within something. It’s what’s left and remains. It’s more immediate,” she says.

Her art works will be on display in the exhibition Sweet Nowheres, from Feb. 20 to 23 in the Little Gallery in the Art Building.