#sparkchamber 072125 — Christopher W. Quigley
Art plays multiple roles, serves many purposes, across artists, their audiences, and society writ large. Today #sparkchamber welcomes interdisciplinary artist and designer Christopher W. Quigley, whose focus is on engaging audiences beyond passive observation. His work explores themes of entropy, impermanence, and transformation, with projects that challenge viewers to step inside the collapse of ideas, norms, and histories, asking not just what disappears over time, but what emerges in its place.
With a background in interior and urban design, his practice spans over 20 years of fabrication of public art, sculpture, and immersive installations for other artists. In his own words:
“I’ve spent most of my life helping other people build beautiful things. As a designer, fabricator, and creative director, I worked behind the curtain, manufacturing large-scale public art and architectural installations for world-class clients and world-famous artists. But in April 2023, I had two strokes. One of them nearly killed me.
“In the months that followed, everything shifted. The man who emerged wasn’t interested in spending the rest of his life helping other people say what they needed to say. I wanted, needed to say something of my own.
“So I started ALCHEMIA Art Workshop, a nonprofit arts organization that creates large-scale, immersive public art with a focus on societal transformation. Its first national project is called Transformation of Dangerous Spaces, a travelling installation and civic-engagement initiative addressing gender-based violence across Canada. It’s visceral, immersive, emotional, and direct. It asks: What happens when we, as men, stop hiding behind silence?
“I grew up on the Prairies, in a farming family, queer and creative in a place that didn’t always make room for that. So I learned to adapt. To build. To take things apart and put them back together in ways no one else imagined, much to the detriment of many toaster and lawnmower engines. That’s still what I do, only now, I use those same hands to shape spaces of reflection, grief, and accountability.
“What inspires me? The things I lost in the fire. The stories we don’t tell. The language we haven’t found yet. And the power of art to burn things down, gently, and with purpose.”
Transformation of Dangerous Spaces is currently in the pre-launch phase of a multi-year national initiative. Yesterday, the group hosted a private, summer garden party to introduce ALCHEMIA and its board of directors, and to begin the first phase of fundraising and donor cultivation. A soft launch of the tour vehicle will begin this fall, with community engagement activities in selected cities kicking off in winter. Fabrication and preparation of the national tour to 27+ Canadian cities — combining art installation, civic engagement, and local partnerships with galleries, shelters, and councils — will take place in spring and summer of 2026, with the touring exhibit scheduled through 2027. We will keep track and let you know how to observe and engage.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
For me, ideas come from rupture. From grief, from beauty, from the moment something cracks and you’re forced to look inside. My ideas don’t arrive fully formed. They emerge like fossils, bit by bit, pulled from the sediment of lived experience, memory, and longing.
I think ideas are our way of processing what we can’t make sense of. They come from pattern recognition, from deep listening, from moments of stillness or rage or absolute exhaustion. Sometimes they show up when I’m on my motorcycle. Sometimes in the shower. But always when something shifts in me.
They also come from questions. The ones that haunt. The ones that refuse to leave you alone.
What would happen if we told the truth?
What if art could interrupt silence?
Ideas are not always a solution. Sometimes, they’re an insistence, a demand to stop waiting for change to come from somewhere else or someone else. Sometimes the idea isn’t even yours. It’s a truth that’s been circling, waiting for someone to take responsibility for it. To say yes.
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
I’m trying to make sense of the things we don’t talk about. The shame, the silence, the violence that hides in plain sight. I’m driven by a need to expose what festers when we pretend everything’s fine. I don’t want to beautify the wound, I want to name it, examine it, and ask why we keep passing it down.
After surviving two strokes in 2023, something in me changed. I came out the other side with little interest in niceties or performative civility. The filter burned off. What remained was a clear sense that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life helping others say and build “safe things.” I wanted to say the hard things. Build the necessary things.
Transformation of Dangerous Spaces came from that itch. A refusal to let another generation inherit the same silence. It’s not about healing for the sake of comfort. It’s about reckoning. About making something impossible to look away from.
That’s what drives me. The things we bury. The stories we silence. The weight we carry because no one else would. I create because someone has to show what we’re still afraid to see.
3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
I work in bursts. When the clarity comes, I don’t waste it. Since the strokes, I’ve had to learn to listen to my body more closely. I don’t have the luxury of brute-forcing my way through fatigue anymore. So I carve space around the bursts, protect them, plan for them, and when they show up, I drop everything and follow them.
Mornings are usually best. I wake up with my mind sharp and my emotions close to the surface. That’s when I write, sketch, plan. I’ve built a life where I can follow my instincts, rather than fight against a rigid structure. The flow doesn’t come from discipline, it comes from alignment. Knowing why I’m doing the work keeps the engine warm.
But I’ll be honest, some days and weeks, I just stare at it. And that’s part of the work too. The trick is not to confuse stillness with stalling. Some things take time to surface, and when they do, I’m ready.
What helps me get to it? Solitude. My dog. My lake house. Music. Long rides on my motorcycle. Spicy food. And the occasional jolt of righteous anger, the kind that reminds me what I’m here to do...
4.] How do you know when you are done?
I don’t finish things so much as I release them. There’s a moment when the work no longer pulls at me, no longer keeps me up or drags me back in. That’s how I'll know. Not when it’s perfect, but when it’s quiet.
I’ve learned that if you wait for perfection, nothing gets released. And if you release too early, the work resents you for it. So I listen. I let it breathe. And when the conversation between me and the piece ends, when there’s nothing left to say, I'll let it go.
Done isn’t a finish line. It’s a surrender.