Private: Brad Copping

Working from his home on the edge of the Canadian Shield, Brad Copping has found muse and foil in this transitional landscape. Here, he maintains a successful practice as both a sculptor and a functional glass blower – often traversing the line between, sometimes on foot, sometimes by canoe.

While his studio practice has evolved around attempts to understand our place in a world where the only constant is change, he has found a place making work that accepts that we are not separate from the natural world. Searching for a dynamic balance, an equilibrium, within the flow of our lives, the work examines how we live with each other and within the physical places in which we find ourselves. Most of his work references water.

“Water moves us; it connects us one to another, both physically and metaphorically. It both nourishes and threatens us. Water flows within us and through all life, with water we are in constant communion. It is in this relationship that my search for balance and connectedness within one’s self, between people, and between people and place arises.” Brad’s exhibition Setting afloat on a river in spate was initiated at the Art Gallery of Peterborough in 2016 and was remounted at the Elora Centre for the Arts in 2017 and at the Ottawa School of Art in 2019.

His sculpture is included in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Speed Museum, the Fine Art Collection of the Department of Global Affairs, the Claridge (Bronfman) Collection, and the City of Lommel (Belgium) Glass Collection. His sculpture has been acknowledged by the Corning Museum of Glass in their annual publication, New Glass Review, which juries 100 new glass works created worldwide, on 9 occasions throughout his career. He has also received much appreciated support for the development of this work from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.