Artist’s Bio

Nancy Walker works mainly in ceramics but also features fibre, beading and sequins. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University in Fine Arts (BA) and Emily Carr College of Art and Design. She also has studied silver and metalsmithing at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Fine Art studies at the New England School of Art in Boston, Massachusetts.

Nancy Walker has collaborated with the Robert Minden Ensemble since it began in 1986. She is the designer of the Ensemble's unique stage performances, her sequin art appears in their costumes and stage sets.

Walker has exhibited her handbuilt pottery since 1984.
Walker rolls out the clay and lets it get leather hard, then rips it into pieces and embeds it into another sheet of clay, rolling it all out together. The figures read like paper collage. She also adds stamped symbols, sometimes a tiny open window to peer into, or found objects. The wash of terra sigillata - a refined clay slip and an ancient technique- makes the surface unpredictable.
Walker low-fires her pots and then coats them with a mixture of paraffin and beeswax. She evokes the conscious and the subconscious, the present and the buried past, the mundane and the mythological.