One to Watch: Sfossils

Artist Mike Seymour’s process for the ceramics arm of his latest endeavour, Sfossils, started with a mistake. “I thought that everybody was making their own [ceramic] glazes,” he says with a smile. But that misbelief led to innovation, with Seymour pushing the limits of what his glazes can do (they can act as a glue, for example). “Glazed flaws were way more interesting than the perfected ones,” he says.

Seymour studied architecture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg (“because it’s art, but employable”) but instead of joining a firm after graduating, he began working with metal, glass, ceramics and, notably, lighting as an artist. For over a decade, he was a designer for famed Vancouver-based lighting company Bocci, where he specialized in large-scale installations. Simultaneously, Seymour began working with ceramics for public art pieces, but it wasn’t until he bought his own kiln that his experimentation with glazes intensified—and everything seemed to click.

Sfossils bridges the world of artistic sculpture with functional objects: ceramic pieces that are so delicate they appear translucent, and thus become an ideal medium for light itself. His debut design was a dramatic floor-to-ceiling ceramic chandelier, called Paean, installed in the Villa Bagatti Valsecchi at Alcova, an annual design exhibition that was part of Milan Design Week 2024. (It was since acquired by the villa and is now part of its permanent collection.) “First Light,” his latest launch (and the Vancouver debut of Sfossils), builds off of the textures of the Milan villa, while using space in a different way. Installed at designer Daniel Ching’s Untitled studio, the ceramic pieces radiate golden-hued light as they hang gracefully above a dining room table—though their spacing seems almost organically haphazard. And while the pieces all cast light and shadow throughout the space, Sfossils is notably not a lighting brand, says Seymour. Instead, it’s an experimental art studio. “I don’t want to be a lighting designer, so I’m not,” he says with a laugh.

Figuring out how to mount and hang the pieces was also part of the artistic process (including custom-made rigging for the wiring)—but what stands out most are those uniquely textured glazes, which range in colour from sage green to bone white, with organic crackling and bubbling of the surface that shifts the colour when exposed to light.

While Seymour has plans to create new installations and designs for Sfossils, he’s looking to collaborate with other artists, too. “This is a long-term exploration… Making the work is the easy part. It’s the narrative and the concept and figuring out how it fits in—that’s the hard part,” he says.