My name is Chandra Rice, and I’m a Canadian artist living in Italy with my wonderful husband Andrea.

We have a beautiful agriturismo called Il Baciarino in Tuscany, Italy, where I get to share my love of making with guests from all over the world. Creativity is contagious and this place is the perfect soil to let ones creativity grow. Come join us for one of our intensives, retreats, or residencies!

Artist Statement

Art and self are created in endless iterative cycles - we and our work are honed over repeated processes. Each cycle, each stage in our journey offers a story to tell, imagery to share, and processes to engage with. If we are in tune to our making, we can bring the myriad of stories, images, and process from our journey, together into what we create today. I am constantly in the process of recreating, rediscovering, and redefining who I am in relation to what I make.

In my work, I use traditional women’s skills (like sewing, quilting, felting, dyeing, and weaving) in a contemporary context, incorporating ceramics, glass, and woodworking, to explore the binaries of maker vs. artist; functional vs. fine art; women’s work vs. real work.

I incorporate the human struggle - to become, to grow, to be - as a figurative element in my work. I journal and write as part of my process - some public, some private musings.

My biggest challenge as an artist is the idea that art must say something - most specifically something worth saying. In a world that devalues women’s voices, that celebrates only the visual appeal of our self and our work, that encourages us to be small and self controlled, I am striving to strip myself of the voice of the ‘other’. Making is my means to accomplish this.

Unwilling to comply with the admonition to focus, to contain, or restrain myself and my making to the singular, I use any media at hand to enrich my processes. For decades, my work stayed in tidy piles - I made clay pots, and fabric quilts, and wooden furniture. Now, I have found the freedom to cross between media, mixing them, and love sharing that freedom with others.

Each of the images below opens into a gallery of my work, from most recent to more historical. Enjoy!