TRICIA SELLMER and AMANDA ECCLESTON:
My sculptures are drawn from my imagination as I envision a far distant future where life has evolved into new and fantastic species for study. Inspiration comes from images of plant growth, seed textures, and microscopic cell structure. Coral reefs and tidal pools are also of great interest and study. Life, growth, and fertility are strong themes for my work.
Amanda is a ceramic artist living in Kamloops, BC Canada. In her youth Amanda lived in Florida and California and her pottery continues to be influenced by the ocean life she experienced there. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Thompson Rivers University in 2008 and has since started her own pottery business. Her work has been represented by four fine art galleries across BC.
Homage to Louisa : Summer Heat reflects the emotional connection between the muse, Louisa Gregory Sanderson and the artist, Tricia (Sanderson) Sellmer. Louisa Gregory Sanderson was told as a young woman that she could not go on to school and become a teacher by her Methodist father as she was a "female". She packed her Singer Sewing machine and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, unaccompanied, to begin a new life in Canada. This story was told to the artist, as a young child, in the muse's garden. The artist became a teacher. Chazou Art Gallery is housed in a house very similar in structure to the home that my grandmother lived in when I was a child. As a child,I visited this home almost everyday.
Tricia Sellmer is a multi-layered, multi-media Canadian artist working primarily inside the parameters of painting and drawing. For more than fifteen years, she has concentrated on making the invisible visible. Her interests are three-pronged. The first probes the personal and veiled subtleties of the garden and the shifting patterns of the landscape. The second finds the extraordinary in the ordinary and focuses largely on the domestic lives of women and in particular those lives that have often been forgotten within the dialogue of history or silenced through circumstances beyond their control. The third connects the dots and blurs the boundaries between genres, often in collaboration with other artists who work in a different medium.
As an independent working artist Tricia Sellmer also writes, lectures and curates projects and exhibitions. Recently she opened Chazou Gallery, a project space that caters to contemporary Canadian and international artists. She holds four degrees from three universities and has participated in numerous residencies. Her work hangs in public and private collections throughout North America and Europe.