{"id":28142,"date":"2026-05-06T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/?p=28142"},"modified":"2026-04-30T13:20:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:20:45","slug":"camosun-alumna-nabs-big-award-for-big-sculpture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2026\/05\/06\/camosun-alumna-nabs-big-award-for-big-sculpture\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun alumna nabs big award for big sculpture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun Visual Arts graduate Erin Berry recently won a national award for emerging ceramics artists: the Winifred Shantz Award, worth $10,000.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The award recognizes her master\u2019s thesis piece, Hyperprocess<\/i>, a large walk-in spiral made from 238 ram-pressed bricks. The installation functions almost like a library of artifacts containing everything from fossils to computer chips alongside Berry\u2019s own ceramic works, creating a complex and immersive narrative piece.<\/p>\n

Berry was introduced to clay by her grandmother, a production potter, who taught her how to work with clay and provided her with the equipment to set up her first studio at her parents\u2019 house. There, she was able to hone her skills before attending Camosun, where she began to work on larger pieces and sculptural ceramics pieces.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College Visual Arts alumna Erin Berry\u2019s award-winning piece, Hyperprocess<\/em> (photo by Erin Berry).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIn [high school], she asked if I wanted to learn how to work with clay,\u201d says Berry. \u201cShe taught me how to throw in a little porch area at my parents\u2019 house, [where] we set up a little studio. Eventually, I ended up getting the old kiln off [my grandparents]… but the first sculptural ceramics I did was at Camosun.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from Camosun in 2012, Berry moved to Montreal to pursue sculptural ceramics at Concordia University. But her path took a detour when a spot on the National Sailing Team led her to take three years away from school to focus on making it to the 2016 Olympics. Her sailing career was cut short when she got a severe concussion during an event in France in 2015; after recovering, her focus shifted back to ceramics, leading her back to Concordia and eventually to Alfred University in Upstate New York.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlfred is a very highly regarded university for ceramics,\u201d says Berry, \u201cthe calibre of… graduate work coming out of [there] is really incredible\u2026 My thesis work, Hyperprocess<\/i>, could have only happened at Alfred; I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any other university in North America where I could have made that work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from the demanding technical aspects, Hyperprocess<\/i> is an exploration of human connection with geological \u201cdeep time.\u201d The name is partly inspired by Timothy Morton\u2019s concept of \u201chyperobjects,\u201d which refers to things so vast\u2014like global warming or the Earth\u2014that they cannot be fully perceived from one angle. During her first year at Alfred, Berry took 3D scans of local shale walls that were remnants of a 300-million-year-old ancient seabed. These scans became part of the exterior texture of her bricks, referencing the origin of the town of Alfred and the clay industry in New York, which exists due to these shale deposits, and geological sedimentation as an archive of the processes that happen on earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere does the iron in our blood come from?… Was it once within the core of the earth? We often as humans think of ourselves as separate from the processes that are constantly happening in the earth and from time itself,\u201d says Berry. \u201cIf you look at the processes of deep time, we are very small and insignificant… it\u2019s healthy to keep that perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now back in Victoria, Berry is continuing to work on pieces in preparation for an upcoming exhibition in Toronto. While she was aware of the Winifred Shantz Award before winning it, her main focus was on bringing to life the concept she had for Hyperprocess<\/i>, as well as continuing to maintain a high calibre of work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking, like, oh, this work is going to win awards… I was mainly thinking about the conceptual side of it at the time and kind of really pushing that. I\u2019m really honoured because I feel like I\u2019m among some really incredible artists that I really admire who have won this award in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, Berry continues to embrace the unknowns of the early stages of an art career, advising young artists to \u201cmake work that makes you a little uncomfortable. There\u2019s usually something there. Don\u2019t let judgments from exterior voices prevent you from making the work you really feel you should be making. There\u2019s always going to be people that don\u2019t like your work or don\u2019t understand it\u2014and then on the other side, there\u2019s people that really need to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun Visual Arts graduate Erin Berry recently won a national award for emerging ceramics artists: the Winifred Shantz Award, worth $10,000.\u00a0 The award recognizes her master\u2019s thesis piece, Hyperprocess, a large walk-in spiral made from 238 ram-pressed bricks. The installation functions almost like a library of artifacts containing everything from fossils to computer chips alongside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[353,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-may-6-2026","category-campus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28144,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28142\/revisions\/28144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}