Jean Mihalcheon
Calgary artist Jean Marie LaPointe Mihalcheon died July 17 at the age of 92.
She was predeceased by her husband and fellow artist, George Michalcheon, in 2011.
Her works are in several public collections, including the City of Calgary, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Canada House in London, as well as corporate and private collections across Canada and internationally.
She had solo exhibitions at Mount Royal College in Calgary, the Fleet Gallery in Winnipeg, Calgary Galleries and the Peter Whyte Gallery in Banff, among others.
Mihalcheon served on the board of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and was part of the founding group for the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, now the Alberta University of the Arts.
Mihalcheon, mainly known as a ceramic artist, was born in Domremy, Sask., in 1929 and received a diploma from the Alberta College of Art in 1953, where she also completed post-graduate studies in glaze technology. She worked as a sessional instructor of design with the college's adult education program.
In the late 1960s, she made a series of stylized female ceramic busts. "Not intended to be actual portraits, Mihalcheon’s theme of womanhood could be seen in the larger context of the women’s movement," said a 2016 catalogue for the Made in Calgary exhibition at the Glenbow Museum.
Her other interests included ceramic bowls and relief murals with landscape themes, for which she combined slab and wheel-thrown porcelain forms fired with oxide glazes, mounting them on painted plywood backings.
Source: Obituary and other online sources
