On the evening of Friday, March 28th, the Slovak Embassy hosted the opening of Susan Kunstadt's ceramics exhibition.
Born in Slovakia, Susan arrived to Canada from former Czechoslovakia in 1968 and considers herself a proud Canadian. Today, her last name has, thanks to the success of the business her children have built, been for a long time tied to Kunstadt Sports equipment stores and she herself has built her reputation as an experienced and motivating fitness instructor. The exhibition on Friday showed us her artistic side that, encouraged by her daughter, she has been exploring through the hobby of ceramics for the last five years.
The theme of the exhibition is threefold: beautiful poppies, bowls, and bears. There is meaningful symbolism behind each component. As Susan herself said, her mom always dressed her in red and poppies remind her of that. The bowls represent her creative outlet and the three strands of ropes that are twisted around their handles represent her three children and her hope that they will always get along.
Bears are a representation of her new home, Canada and its natural beauty and long winters. It is very clear from the beautiful creations seen at the exhibition that Mrs. Kunstadt is very creative, has a unique sense of colour combination, and seeks inspiration in real life. Susan has been devoting part of her free time to ceramics since five years ago and as her former teacher himself said to me, "She is very technically savvy now and has been working independently for a while."
Mrs. Kunstadt is a very energetic athletic woman giving away a lot of positive energy. It is probably not a coincidence her mother enjoyed dressing her in red as this particular colour represents energy, physical fitness, passion, and stability. Perhaps it was her mother's intuition, or perhaps it was the constant presence of red in her wardrobe that accentuated those traits in Susan's own character. One is left wondering what colour her personal aura would be.
The results of her artistic work as well as her personality left a strong impression on all the attendees and rewarded her with much honest praise from the visitors. Her ability to connect with people not just through art in addition to her incredible zest for and positive outlook on life were also reflected in the high number of attendees at her exhibition.
Text: Maria Habanikova, photos: Tibor Dej