Bev Ellis
An accomplished ceramic sculptor, Ellis was the recent winner of the Surrey Art Galleries Clay Competition, Winner of the SSICA Ceramics Biennial People’s Choice Award, and a large scale Ceramic Installation for Vancity. Bev enjoys creating highly textured surfaces with clay. Her favourite muse is nature, where often beauty is found in brokenness. Burned out trees, and layers of peeling bark, bear a common thread of beautiful imperfection. Her sculptural forms have a hyperrealistic quality, drawing the viewer into forest textures of birch bark and fungi. Not content to replicate nature, Ellis plays with form and colour, creating fantastical sculptural shapes, unusual colours, sometimes enhancing the visibility of fungi by her addition of 22K gold. Bev has been requested to speak at conferences and Galleries, and has been Artist In Residence in many schools. She is published in Artist Journals, magazines, the Book of 100 Vancouver Artists: WeMakeStuff, and in The Crafted Dish: a Juried Collection of talented clay artists from Across Canada. Represented by several Galleries, she has exhibited her work throughout the Province, across Canada, and in the US. Her artwork is in corporate and private collections around the world.

I sculpt tree inspired forms, representational in appearance, and multilayered in meaning. When I am outside, I’m filled with awe and wonder. I get lost in the moss, fungus and bark, enamoured with the cracks, crevasses, and life springing from unknown places. Trees speak to me about vulnerability, community, beauty, brokenness, nurture, help and hope. I am an encourager. Flowing from that, as an artist, I have a desire to bring into existence not just things, but the creation of artful objects that bring joy and beauty into our daily lives, while giving opportunity for pause, reflection, and an interest in the minute and vast wonders that are all around us.