Hello, my name is Shelli and I am the ceramic artist behind Shell Ann Ceramics .

  I retired to the Okanagan after selling my Salon and Spa business in the Kootenays and that fall began taking once-a-week pottery lessons with a local potter. 

  I quickly found my passion for pottery and  experimenting with colour, unique shapes, and texture is what I loved. That once-a-week lesson turned into a couple years of training and very soon I found it wasn't enough - I needed to play with mud every day to advance my skills.  I came to realize that creating with my hands was incredibly important to my well-being and that I had been needing a creative outlet for longer than I knew.  It was time to bite the bullet, make space in my house, and set up my own little happy place aka my ‘mud pit’.. This little ‘happy place’ is now a fully equipped pottery studio and Shell Ann Ceramics was born.

   I have spent hours at home watching videos, reading  books, and taking online classes from some well-known ceramic artists throughout Canada and the States.  Recently I have attended Clay Con West in Utah, The Metchosin Summer School of the arts and Medalta, advancing my education in clay.    

  You ask what do you do? I don't go to a job...I don't get an hourly wage or yearly salary...  I head to the ‘pit’,  roll out a few slabs, transform the clay into a manipulated form that will be textured, shaped, trimmed, add handles, dried for a week or two, wet sanded, fired in the kiln, waxed, glazed, and fired again.

   Christmas Day comes often at ShAnnCer.....

anxiously waiting hours before I can open the kiln to see what treasures await me. Some days are not great days, when the glaze drips onto the kiln shelf, a piece cracks or a glaze combination doesn’t turn out, but other days I experience the most amazing high when I see beautiful transformations.

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Creating with my hands, adding love and intention within every piece I make, hoping to pass that on to you, as you use what I have created in your everyday life…that is what I do.