Colour and Ceramics

This week Bob Acton @bobacton joined by ceramic and installation artist Heidi McKenzie, whose work uses clay and image as archive—exploring ancestry, migration, race, and belonging through powerful abstract portraiture.
From Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories to the Indian Ceramics Triennale in Delhi, Heidi’s work reminds us that ceramics can hold memory, heal, and tell the stories history forgets.
Check out her work at https://www.heidimckenzie.ca/

I’m thrilled to welcome Gillian Boon to the podcast, an Alberta-based ceramic artist whose work carries the pulse of the ocean, even from the heart of the prairies.
Inspired by coral reefs, tide pools, and the intense blues and greens of Grassi Lakes, Gillian’s ceramics explore movement, surface, and a deep sense of place. We talk about making ocean-driven work far from the sea, the role of teaching and community in a studio life, and how landscape leaves its mark on clay.
🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
#ColourAndCeramics #CanadianCeramics #CeramicArtists #OceanInspired #SurfaceAsNarrative #CalgaryArtists
You can find her work at https://www.gillianmitchellceramics.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/gmitchellceramics/

This week I’m @bobacton joined on the Colour and Ceramics Podcast @colourandceramics by Australian ceramic artist Maricelle Olivier, whose work is deeply shaped by memory, landscape, and line.
Drawing inspiration from South Africa’s Kruger National Park, a place tied to generations of family history, Maricelle meticulously draws and etches every line into her ceramic surfaces. The result is a layered, rhythmic abstraction of landscape and emotion, brought to life through colour.
We talk about: • drawing as a way of remembering • surface as emotional terrain • translating childhood landscapes into contemporary ceramic language
🎙️ Now live on the Colour & Ceramics Podcast
🔗 Website Link: https://maricelleolivier.com/
🔗 Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/molivier_ceramics/

Ceramic artist Shae Bishop joins me @bobacton on the Colour and Ceramics Podcast @colourandceramics this week for a rich conversation about material, curiosity, and community.
Shae’s practice moves between ceramics, textiles, and the body, shaped by residencies at places like the Archie Bray Foundation and Kohler Arts/Industry, and by years embedded in craft communities from North Carolina to Japan, Turkey, Mexico, and beyond.
🎙️ Now live on the Colour & Ceramics Podcast
🔗 Website Link https://www.shaebishop.com/
🔗 Instagram Link https://www.instagram.com/shae_bishop/

Meet Jane Sheppard, a UK-based ceramic artist whose hand-built, smoke-fired vessels echo ancient artefacts and the sacred threads of human experience. Her award-winning work blends ritual, memory, and earth-rooted simplicity—inviting us to pause, feel, and reconnect.
You can find Jane via her website here: https://www.janesheppard.me/ and her Instagram page here: https://www.instagram.com/rev_jane_sheppard/