Artist Stephanie Singh casts creative keepsakes by suspending botanicals in resin

In January, the Umbra flagship store in Toronto hosted Lucid Ideas, a prototype exhibition produced in collaboration with the annual DesignTO Festival. Stephanie Singh, an interdisciplinary artist with a studio in Mississauga, Ontario, presented her Island Table, a shapely piece of furniture with a silhouette that reflects the contours of Jamaica’s topography. Encased in its resin panel are an abundance of Caribbean spices, fruits and flowers, suspended to create a decorative piece full of personal meaning and storytelling. It’s an eye-catching object that, strangely enough, has its origins in the age-old question of how to preserve a wedding bouquet in style.

“The Island Table uses all of these vibrant materials that you see on the island – things that people might have enjoyed with their family,” says Singh of the sentimental facet of his design. Both sets of Singh’s grandparents emigrated to Canada from Jamaica and she visited the country frequently in her youth. The shape of the furniture is also a nod to the tradition of hanging a wood carving in the shape of the island in your home. “I wanted to focus on that and capture those memories.”

This was the first year Singh participated in DesignTO. For their dynamic efforts – and the work of the exhibition’s curators and designers – Lucid Ideas won the festival’s People’s Choice Award for Best Exhibition. Singh’s work has been receiving similar accolades since 2022, when a series of vases made from the pulp of marijuana, sugar cane and other plants were included in the Royal Ontario Museum’s Canadian Modern exhibition of iconic indigenous design. Since then, she has exhibited at the 1000 Vases gallery in Paris and was commissioned to create original pieces for the Waldorf Astoria Orlando.

“My mother and grandmother taught me the impact of botanicals on health and the connection between wellness and plants in general,” says Singh of her motivation for incorporating these earthy elements into her designs. “Plants are often overlooked – of course they’re pretty when they’re alive, and when they die they’re done for.” Singh says she likes to focus on the beauty of plant material, be it living or dead. “I celebrate these materials, because I know they are beneficial to us,” she says.

Exploring preservation through objects in her artistic practice took a turn in 2021. when she received her first bridal commission. While the island table tells the story of a place’s vital greenery and how it is intertwined with the lives of its residents, Singh says that her creative use of resin was the impetus when she turned a wedding client’s bouquet into a work of art. She continues to transform a bridal shower’s dying blooms and festive table settings into every kind of keepsake, from scarves to paper to wall-mounted art.

Memories and the objects and ingredients they evoke are an important theme in Singh’s sustainability-focused practice, which focuses on recycling waste materials and using natural dyes. The use of plants culminates in the creation of decorative objects and furniture pieces with compelling texture and also captures the ability of everyday materials to poetically combine the tangible with the ethereal.

For more information, see stephanieangela.com.