Biography

Holly Ratcliffe is a ceramicist, anthropologist and theologian.  

Her turn to ceramics full time began in 2015.  She graduated from the three year DEC programme in ceramics at la Maison des métiers d’art à Québec (MMÀQ) in 2019.  It was then that the strands of her life journey came together with her artistic spirit in creating simple, classic forms of thrown or handbuilt ceramic funeral ware in the tradition of abstract expressionist surface treatment. 

Holly was ceramic artist in residence in 2020 at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, where her interest in funeral ware developed in new directions, thanks to her access to the collections and the expertise of the curators of the museum.  She finds in the artistic wealth of these traditions a privileged source of creative inspiration, but also an opening for dialogue on the spiritual and communal problem of the lack of meaning of death in our culture.  She received a grant from the CALQ for this time of research  and creativity and she shares the fruit of it now through her workshops in cultural mediation (art outreach) entitled « Befriending our mortality with clay. »  Her studio is in Saint-Roch-de-Richelieu, Québec.