[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/todd2a.jpg” caption=”A Song for Eve, Graham Todd (mixed media)”]Close your eyes. Imagine a landscape like no other. Earthen red, strange and barren: a land foreign to most of us. There is beauty in its simplicity. Revel in its mystery. Spain.

For McMaster professor, Graham Todd, this is his home away from home. He refers to his association with Spain, as slightly schizophrenic – the splitting of location and time with a continual shift – dividing his time as he does, between Olias Del Rey, near Toledo, and Toronto, maintaining a studio and an active presence as an artist in both.

A professor at the School of the Arts since 1984, Todd specializes in sculpture, drawing and ceramics. He studied in San Miguel, Mexico (focusing on sculpture) and in Britain, and has taken part in shows throughout North and South America, as well as Europe.

As 2006 begins, Todd can look back on and celebrate much success over the past year. 2005 was marked with regular exhibitions, in Canada and abroad. With three different showings at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, where he was also September's Featured Artist, his works displayed ranged from ceramic plates, to drawings, to four mixed media panels entitled A Song for Eve (above). He also acted as a visiting artist, twice, at White Mountain Academy of the Arts in Elliot Lake, Ontario.

Most recently, in Varazdin, Croatia, Todd's ceramic and steel sculptural piece Juxtajut was showcased at the exhibition Ceramica Multiplex, the main event of the International Festival of Postmodern Ceramics, whose theme aimed to provoke artists to observe the differences in the approach to ceramics in the East and the West. Todd was amongst 105 ceramic artists selected from 43 different countries.

Visually, Juxtajut resembles two bells placed together, joined in the middle by steel plates. Todd's colour palette is reminiscent of earth and sky tones, in keeping with the ideal landscape. He explains his inspiration for the piece. “My house in Spain is right beside a church, so I'm always listening to church bells, so that's how the natural geometry of the shape was created.”

Juxtaposed with the artistic successes of 2005, a forced hiatus as an artist and teacher due to surgery last summer is tough for Todd. Tough too for students in the School of the Arts, who miss his inspiring presence and the exploratory and innovative principles he displays as an artist, and are looking forward to his return.

Asked what inspires him in his work, Todd replies, “there's a love for craft, a search for innovation, a desire to push the limits. One thinks that by truthfully communicating with your inner-self, you can touch on common ground, draw on commonalities and infect people in a positive sense.”