live slow, bike fast
Hey :~) it’s me, Celina.
I’ll introduce myself as my human first.
I am a fluid and relentlessly curious inner and outer traveller. I feel most myself under a canopy of trees, feet submerged in a flowing river or excavating the nectar out of a sweet peach while it rolls down the wrist. I love being around my circle of people and equally enjoy the company of the moon.
I live, play and sleep on Vancouver Island. I didn’t always.
After years of advocating, securing permits, renovating for a community co-work space the was tucked beside my personal artist studio in Jasper National Park, I found out that I had the windows on the wrong side of the building. A wildfire roared through the town. All that was left of my two businesses was a crooked kiln and a single cup peacefully sleeping on a stack of bricks. Perfectly framed by a heroic pastel blue mountain range. Still standing tall, almost mockingly, as they have for millennia.
I spent a blissful seven years in the mountain town paradise of Jasper. The land was dramatic, humbling. It’s landscape shaped my art and spirit just as the glaciers had. I learned to love something bigger than myself. I learned what devotion looks like. That was my 20’s, learning to become a good villager. Everyone wants to build a village, but it’s nothing without its villagers.
Slowly as we sorted through the towns rubble, it became evident there wasn’t much that was able to withstand the heat. But what did survive was our soul and somehow, the ceramics.
From tree to sea, mountain to prairie, my work is largely inspired by where I plant my feet. What I feel. Who I am in that moment.
I believe it is in my greater purpose to illuminate the connection between our inner and outer landscapes. I am not interested in doing things, to do things. I am here to create work that reflects fluctuating landscapes and our internal worlds.
Art will out live us all, after all.
I am an artist seeking
truth over performance
What is live slow, bike fast
You’ll hear them say “Live fast, die young”
We live in a world of fast. Fast internet, fast fashion, fast food, fast shipping. It all moves so fast. A young version of me once said to my grandpa “I wish my birthday would come faster” and he simply replied “don’t wish your life away, one day you’ll blink and it will feel like it went by too fast.”
I want to take the scenic route, to learn to garden, to make a wicked batch of lemon crinkle cookies, to create limitless pieces, to learn guitar, to enjoy the fleeting sunshine, to nest in my home and I want travel inwards and outwards. I don’t want those things to go fast, I’ll save the fast moments for my bike, the hill, the running shoes.
Instead of living fast, I want to live slow.
