Sculpture · Mixed Media
Rowan Cardinal
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
“A join should remember that two things arrived separately.”
Biography
Rowan Cardinal is an Indigenous Canadian artist who combines reclaimed wood with cast resin and copper. Their sculptures follow splits, channels, and repairs already present in the material, giving weathered forms a contemporary structural clarity.
Artist statement
Cardinal approaches joining as a record of relationship. Resin does not imitate water and copper does not hide repair; each material marks the distance and contact between wooden parts.
In the studio
Cardinal sources discarded cedar and elm, dries each section slowly, and responds to existing checks rather than milling them away. Resin is cast in narrow stages, then joined with hand-cut copper plates and pins.
