katy-may maurice
Katy-May Maurice grew up on a farm just outside the small town of Wellington in the Central West of NSW. After completing school in Sydney, she trained in Fashion Design at the Sydney Institute of Technology, then later after extensive world travels, she returned to her studies to complete a Bachelor of Visual Arts, with First Class Honours at the ANU School of Art in Canberra in 2007.
Maurice trained in Print Making, however throughout her studies and ever since, has work as an assemblage artist specifically working with found objects. Her focus on and response to materials defines her process. Discarded objects have always featured heavily in Maurice’s work and this speaks to the themes of consumerism her conceptual work often engages with. During her time at ANU she was awarded the Jasso Scholarship to study at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, where she spent a year further training in printmaking and exhibiting assemblage works made from discarded objects and materials collected in Kyoto. Maurice’s work exploits patina and explores the collected mark, “I find the incidental marks of life, like the scratches on a workbench or the patina on a book cover far more intriguing than any mark I could ever make on a fresh piece of paper or canvas, they are unconscious and uncontrived so there’s a pure energy about them that is full of life and beauty. I just collect these marks and colours and put them together to expand on the stories they hold”.
Since 2018 Katy-May Maurice and her husband, sculptor and blacksmith Alex Scheibner, have lived and practiced alongside each other in their studio and forge located in the small town of Rylstone, NSW. Access to her husband’s workshop, forge and extensive knowledge has allowed Maurice to further pursue the use of jewellery like metal components in her work. Maurice and Scheibner also create small batch, hand made products from their studio and workshop in Rylstone.