Blake Ward

Creating the figure using this technology changed everything about modeling the sculpture and allowed a previously inconceivable amount of freedom for the imagination. The choice to combine traditional hand-made/analogue sculptural methods with digital techniques, allowed Ward to maintain certain elements unique to the traditional materials used that were absent in the digital world of mathematics and geometry. In contrast, the development of an interior structure to serve as a central core for these sculpture became the ideal element in which to employ these new digital resources. Some of digital interior structural features designed for the Andromeda Collection also transferred over to the Spirits Collection in 2019.

Departing further from the traditional techniques of sculpting, Ward broadened his creative process by employing technology centred on the use of computer assisted design (CAD) software and 3D printing. The Andromeda Collection (2017–present) began with a year of study in 2016 to acquire the necessary skill to create this digitally enhanced work. The result is a process that permits the realization of sculptural forms that previously could only be imagined and designing elements that would be impossible to create by hand.

In Ward’s most recent series of works, Andromeda Collection (2017 - present) the figure has evolved to another level of creative requirements through the use of computer aided design (CAD) software and 3D printing. This series combines the use of digital technology with traditional sculpting, in order to enhance the design of the "open partial figure" originally created in the Spirit Collection.

In acknowledgement of her contribution Ward insisted she start signing the works that they co-authored in 2014. However, this caused some difficulties and resulted in the couple stepping away from fellow associates who were not aligned with their beliefs. That incident ran counter to Ward‘s support for Women’s rights and although they were exhibiting the co-authored sculpture as a couple, acceptance was slow to be granted. Hilton Asmus Contemporary in Chicago was the first to publicly acknowledge the couple with a joint exhibition "Somewhere Within" in 2019 as published in ARTNET.".

Ward and Hackel began working together in 2013 as Hackel shared her knowledge and experience as a conceptual artist and an old masters painting restorer, in developing and painting the graffiti that covers many of the ReThink Collection sculptures. Ceresoli added of Hackel’s contribution "…in her experimental eclecticism…autonomous and self-aware,(Hackel) finds in sculpture a code of renewal of the intangible and the spiritual, practiced assiduously from 2013 and 2016, years of fervent study and work." The Spirits Collection, a series that Ward had begun earlier, also benefited from the amalgamation of the two artists’ respective methods. The freedom of her approach to building sculpture was a perfect fusion to Ward’s academic style and brought about something new. Ward said "…she wasn’t concerned with the technical principles of the pour; she was fearless. I liked that energy. I watched her pour and copied her abandonment."

In 2007 the Fragments Collection was exhibited at the Canterbury Festival in Cathedral Chapter House, Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, England.

In 2003, Ward was invited to teach figurative sculpture at the University of Hanoi. This time in Vietnam inspired the creation of the Fragments Collection (2005 - 2012), influenced by the enduring effects of explosive military waste left behind from the many wars in Vietnam. Consequently, Ward began to deliberately disfigure his completed clay figures as an expression of both tragedy and hope. Thus, this body of work became art that was meant to foster social engagement. Specific to a form of Activist Art that Ward refers to as "Intentional Art"; art that conveys a "call to action"; to lend assistance to a cause. "I think what I'm trying to represent in my work is our tragic and violent nature. I destroy the work in order to create the fragments, and the fragments stand as symbols of hope". In 2011, Ward began to explore alternative ways to transform the figure. The resulting Spirit Collection (2011–present), incorporated the idea of a "partial figure" explored earlier in the Fragments Collection. Early in the development of the Spirit Collection, his collaboration with conceptual artist, Beatrice (Boky) Hackel, later to become Ward’s wife, materially influenced this body of work. "…a restorer, painter, musician, photographer, performance and conceptual artist, who trained in Florence where she breathed, lived and absorbed the ‘grammar’ of the Renaissance. A polyglot, obsessed with language, she conjugates poetry and figuration resulting in an autonomous, recognizable code." It became a collaborative undertaking between Ward and Hackel to create a distinctive and innovative interpretation of the figure; designed to suggest our distinctive levels of consciousness and spiritual transcendence; inviting us to become aware of the mysteries that lie within and beyond ourselves. "Blake and Boky share the body as a material extension, a fragment, mortified on the net in the digital age. We are nothing but a sum of destinies without an identity, in an infinitude of places."

For most of his career, Ward has used traditional materials and techniques, creating the original sculpture in water-based modelling clay, and producing a plaster cast of the clay model. Finally, the finished work was cast in bronze, using the lost-wax method, or alternatively hand carved in Carrera marble. "He states that it was people that sparked his interest and continue to inspire him." During the early years, Ward’s figurative style was formed by his academic foundation, sculpting representational figures and concentrating on the beauty of the human form. The influence on the work during this period (1990 - 2005) came from the subject matter, as political events of the time charged the artwork and inspired socio-political statements. Ward used the figure as a language to speak of a political and moral perspective, eventually focusing on the struggle for Human Rights in a series entitled ReThink Collection. The events of June 3 and 4 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, inspired the first work of this series.

As a pupil of American sculptor, Cyril Heck, Ward learned a classical method of sculpting the figure that was said to have been developed by the ancient Greeks. Ward has credited Heck as the most knowlegable teacher he had ever studied under. "I was lucky and was able to study under an excellent teacher for four years and that was the beginning of what I can only qualify today as both a blessing and an obsession," Beginning in 1985 Ward spent most of his free time studying with Heck in his atelier in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.

After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, with honours in 1979, Ward worked for Wardair Canada Ltd., in the US, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Italy and briefly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. While living in Paris, (1985 - 1989), Ward had the opportunity to delve into 18th and 19th century sculpture, earnestly studying works by Auguste Rodin, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Aimé-Jules Dalou and Aristide Maillol.

Blake Ward (born June 3, 1956) is a Canadian-born sculptor best known for his contemporary approach to the classical figure. Contrary to the trend toward abstraction that was taught during his formal education in Canada, Ward’s early work centred on the figure. Evolving through the 1990s and early 2000s into contemporary partial figures created as excerpts of the human condition. In the words of Art Critic Jacqueline Ceresoli "Bodies in metamorphosis, balanced between apocalypse and the Postmodern, steeped in a lost Classical age, echoed through an ever-evolving Renaissance, in vibrant tension or torsion as they head toward some future utopia." Ward has been exhibited in France, Monaco, Italy, Germany, England, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada.

Blake William Ward was born on June 3, 1956, in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Canada and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. Born to Maxwell W. Ward (1922-2020) and Marjorie Dortha (née Skelton) Ward, (born 1923). Blake was the youngest of four children. Encouraged by his parents, his love for art developed through his travels to Europe and the United States as a young man. "He credits his mother who he said was instrumental in exposing him to art and instilling in him this passion of creation." Greek sculpture seen in London and Athens remained among the most influential, followed by the works of Auguste Rodin and finally a fascination with the work of Marcel Duchamp.