Polish-born Liliana Berezowsky arrived in Canada as a child in 1948. She earned a BA in sociology at the University of Toronto before moving to South America, where she lived for six years. She earned a BFA in 1984 and a MFA in 1989, both at Concordia University. She has taught at Concordia University since 1988, as a lecturer in sculpture and drawing. A prolific sculptor, she has created numerous works of public art and her works are in many collections, including that of the National Gallery of Canada.
Berezowsky’s early artworks, monumental in size, were inspired by the industrial landscape and machinery. She then concentrated on a series of smaller sculptures based on the principle of found objects and interior space. Her current works, created from non-traditional materials, are sometimes large, sometimes small.
Artwork description
The sculpture is set back from the main entrance to a fire station. It portrays a trail of smoke. Liliana Berezowsky fixes immateriality and ephemerality with a solid, permanent material, steel. Using minimalist formal strategies that lighten the material, the artist creates volumes with thin bands of steel tracing sinuous lines and creating gaps.
The title of the work, Smoke and Steel, evokes the artist’s interest in industrial landscape and machines. The work also refers, by extension, to the vocation of the building before which it is placed and to the poem by Carl Sandburg with the same title, Smoke and Steel (1920).