North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop

The North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop (NESW) is an artist collective, or artist-run initiative, centred on a co-operative shared studio in Edmonton, Alberta, focused on "the creation and promotion of ambitious contemporary sculpture made using industrial processes and materials". The NESW name makes a symbolic reference to the cardinal directions in allusion to the idea of boundless exploration.

The North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop was founded in 2002, with sculptors Mark Bellows, Andrew French, and Ryan McCourt as the resident artists. In its first year, the NESW produced four exhibitions in four different venues: "Front Room Sculpture" at Harcourt House; "North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop" at Global Visions Film Festival; "Desperate Measures" with The Works Society; and "Big Things" at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Sculptures by the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop artists appeared in another 2002 Harcourt House exhibition: "Edmonton Sculpture: The Next Generation", an Edmonton sculpture survey show curated by Canadian artist, curator and critic Terry Fenton. In in his accompanying essay, Fenton singles out the NESW artists:

"Andrew French, Mark Bellows, and Ryan McCourt share a studio, giving them the double advantage of being removed from the student environment while retaining continued access to one another for stimulation and criticism. This does not amount to their charting a common course. If anything, the shared studio has confirmed them in separate directions: the hothouse atmosphere appears to have stimulated both invention and individuality. Their work seems to be getting closer to the source of their inspiration, French's into the occupation of space by brute force, Bellows into a poetry of volume, McCourt into elegant profiles".

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