About the artist

Shelley Combs is an artist – potter, photographer and painter, living in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, (between Nanaimo and Campbell River) just 2 hours drive north of Victoria, British Columbia.

Artists Statement

I build houses of clay.   Initially, a quiet contemplation of the shape and form of quaint habitation, through my travels I began to recognize a certain whisper of consistency of shelter’s form and function across cultures .  The core difference was the material. It was that epiphany which brought me to examine the living materials used to make my own home.

Eventually, I discovered the quintessential form of a tree is an all-encompassing metaphor for all our life and lives.  We are inexorably tied to what we came from and we influence the future, if only through our essence.

As a part of the land, not separate from it, we are born into shelter and die in shelter.  Our remains nourish the living materials that make our homes. So, with these clay pieces, paintings and photographs, I want to honour the trees that fell, both to situate my  home and to make it, because both the falling of any living thing and the making of shelter are natural parts of life.

These works address issues explicit in a community and provide a commentary and hopefully a springboard for critical discourse around such issues as our responsibility to our immediate surroundings, preservation of natural land within and surrounding housing and a responsible commitment to  ourselves as integral to this Mother, our earth.

Biography

Shelley Combs is a widely traveled painter, printer and potter, born in Cumberland, BC from a pioneer family. She served in the Canadian military as a Registered Nurse for 26 years, both at home and on deployment. Working full time at her art career for the past 7 years, she received her degree in Fine Art from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2007 and will be continuing her studies until such time as she, herself, nourishes this earth.