Charley Young is an educator and an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and public installation. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Charley holds a Master in Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University.
Young’s practice focuses on site-based, indexical modes of mark-making shared between the disciplines of printmaking, sculpture and drawing. Her work challenges the role of the printmaking matrix and envisions the world, both natural and built, as a printable surface ready to be recorded. To date, her work includes large-scale monoprints of historic building facades, intimate portraits of vanishing Arctic ice and small-scale hand casts that record the space between clasped hands of new immigrants.
Young has been an artist-in-residence at The Tides Institute and Museum of Art (2017), The Arctic Circle Program (2014), The Banff Centre (2013), The Vermont Studio Centre (2013), Spark Box Studios (2013), The Klondike Institute for Arts and Culture (2012).
Young’s work is in various collections including The Canada Council Art Bank, Global Affairs Canada, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Telus Sky Collection and The Nova Scotia Art Bank. Her work has been exhibited at He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen, China), The Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, China), Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (Halifax, NS), SPACE Gallery (Portland, Maine), Free Will North Church Project Space (Eastport, Maine), The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax, NS), Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 (Halifax, NS). In 2014, Young was included in as one of the artists in the Blouin ARTINFO’s Top 30 under 30 in Canada. In 2012, she received the Charlotte Wilson-Hammond/ Visual Arts Nova Scotia Award and the Lieutenants Governor Award presented by the Nova Scotia Talent Trust.
Young is Regular-Part Time Faculty at NSCAD University where she teaches drawing and printmaking. She works out of her home studio in Bedford, Nova Scotia.