DaNisha - Dan & Nisha Ferguson

Dan Ferguson, born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1965, knew that he wanted to be an artist when at age three he watched, with great envy, an older child of twelve years render a near perfect Dr. Suess elephant in pencil.

Throughout his childhood Dan always drew, and always in pencil. Not until age twenty-one, when he entered the Art Centre at Central Technical Centre in Toronto, did he try his hand at other mediums. It was during second year of the program that he and his classmates were introduced to figurative sculpture. Dan found the simple exercises of rendering the human torso in clay so exciting that everything changed, and sculpture became his main focus.

Dan and Nisha were classmates throughout art school and married after graduation. Their artistic collaboration began in 1991 and has become a celebration of art. In every way they integrate their talents and ideas in order to bring beautiful objects into the world. Their pieces are an expression joy and wonder to be shared by all.

Nisha, born in Ottawa in 1966, has always been an artist in training. Since her young childhood she has practiced dance, gymnastics and visual art in every moment and every way. Invariably, her love for the art of movement provided inspiration in her visual art and she drew dancing figures over and over.

When the time came to make a choice for a career she settled on the visual arts. There she pursued drawing and illustration vigorously all the while teaching jazz dancing and gymnastics in the evenings. Colour and design became a clear focus in her studies at the Art Centre of Central Technical School in Toronto, where she met her future husband, Dan.

After graduation, Nisha and Dan began collaborating in the ceramic medium, each employing their principal talents. Nisha developed a technique of drawing and painting in ceramic bowls which remains strikingly uncommon. Her abilities with colour and design govern a world of images most beautiful to behold, elevating the everyday form of the bowl to a work of art.

In 1996 Nisha decided to bring her love of acrobatics and the circus into reality. She founded the aerial dance troupe, "Gravityworks", trained herself and the other members and soon began performing. Inspired by the “noveau circus” movement created and led by Cirque du Soleil, Gravityworks was an influential force in the Toronto circus scene during the nineties. After leaving Canada in 2001, she left the northern chapter of Gravityworks and formed a southern chapter in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, prevalent and alive today.