Ruth Chambers

• Ceramics Based Sculpture and Installation
• Contemporary Craft Theory and Practice

Ruth Chambers makes works in ceramic sculpture and ceramics-based installation, often incorporating innovative approaches to ceramic sculpture, and at times incorporating other media. Current porcelain objects, modeled from botanical subjects through direct observation, address ideas of careful looking, beauty, consumption, and temporality, in alignment with traditions of the still life. Chambers' earlier installations act to playfully and decoratively intervene into, dispute, and interact with architectural structures with foliage and garden inspired porcelain ornamentation, found materials, and image projection. Her works have explored the human body, medicine, architecture, and notions of the material and immaterial, among other subjects. Chambers was a founding member of the Regina-based Art and Science collective Petri's Quadrille (1997-2006). She has also published writings about contemporary craft and ceramics theory and regularly delivers conference papers, participates in symposia, and chairs academic panels. Chambers studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design (AOCA) and received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Regina. She has taught at the University of Regina since 1994 where she leads the Ceramics Program, is Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Visual Arts, and has held positions of Associate Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, and Faculty of Media, Art, and Production (Undergraduate,) and Department Head of Visual Arts.

Research Highlights

• Selected Solo Exhibitions
• Tend, Art Gallery of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, 2021
• Conservatory, Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, Yorkton, SK, 2010
• Tokoname Kiln Installation, Koyegama Gallery, Tokoname, Japan, 2010
• Temporary Adornment, Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo ON, 2008
• Through the Skin, International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, 2006
• Giardino Segreto, Estevan National Exhibition Centre, Estevan, SK, 2002
• Breathing Room The Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, (Two person), 2001
• Beneath the Skin, Art Gallery of Calgary, Calgary, AB, 2001
• Pneuma, SAW Gallery, Ottawa, ON/ The Mendel Art Gallery SK, 1998/2000

Selected Publications

• Re-Negotiating Materiality: Craft Knowledge and Contemporary Art (co-editor with Mireille Perron) in RACAR Vol. 42 No. 1 (2017)
• Ceramics Installation: Towards a Self-Definition in The Ceramics Reader, eds. Kevin Petrie and Andrew Livingstone(Bloomsbury Academic, UK, 2017) 227-232.
• Messing with Making and Meaning in Current Craft Media in Cahiers métiers d'art ::: Craft Journal  2015
• Utopic Impulses: Contemporary Ceramics Practice. (contributing co-editor with Gogarty, Amy and Perron, Mirielle) Ronsdale Press 2007.
• Ceramics Installation: Towards a Self-Definition. Ceramics Art and Perception. 65 (Sept-Nov 2006): 81-87

Selected Artist in Residence Positions

• Guldagergaard International Ceramics Research Centre, Denmark, 2018
• Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, AB, 2013/14 and 2009
• Koyegama Studios, Tokoname, Japan, April/May, 2010