Shelby Charlesworth is an interdisciplinary artist and educator currently located in Mohkinstsis (Calgary). She received her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Connecticut in 2021 and was Instructor of Record for Sculpture. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Alberta University of the Arts (formerly Alberta College of Art + Design) in 2017 and attended an exchange program at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon in 2015. She worked as a studio assistant, sculptor and ceramicist in Los Angeles prior to returning to Alberta in December of 2022. Through her residency at Casa in August of 2022, the Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge presented her with the Artist in Residence Award and she was the recipient of the Pilot Art Award for 2022-23. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for CARFAC Alberta, is on the Arts Acquisition and Program Committee for the Kiyooka Ohe Arts Centre and was recently a Visiting Artist at the National accessArts Centre. Her primary focus both through education and personal practice is community engagement and arts accessibility through visual language. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Artist Statement:
Tracing spaces once touched, seeking comfort in an absent hand, I ground my work in personal experiences and a larger social context. Responding in an interdisciplinary manner, I investigate themes of loss, longing, grief, and collective trauma. My interests lie in the slippage between absence and presence; the ephemeral and fixed. Porcelain, embroidery, printmaking, textiles, and found objects are utilized to create compositions that relate to the temporality and permanence of the body. Repetition and labour are used as linkages to empathy and understanding. Cracked flesh, an aching back, but still I must persist, sifting through the residue as it falls through my fingers.
Photo taken by Haley Comstock.