Getting her hands dirty From a place of play come profound figures and faces The Creators
By: AV Kitching Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, May. 3, 2025

Kathleen Shellrude is in the thick of making an army of benign monster friends. At present she’s finished hand-moulding six yet-to-be-named characters and has at least 25 more in the pipeline.

Working with an assortment of tools — the majority of which are far from traditional pottery paraphernalia — Shellrude cuts, rolls, pinches, scratches, whacks and smooshes bits of clay together to create her funny and wild characters.

Her arresting monster mates, and equally fascinating polka-dot girls, butter-dish ladies and vases-with-faces are a joy to behold, encapsulating the artist’s playful approach to life and friendship.

Using just her fingers and her unconventional pottery kit — wire to slice off slabs, a dollar-store rolling pin to flatten the clay, the back of a wooden spoon to “whack” it into shape and a variety of dental tools to scratch areas, carve spaces and make indentations — Shellrude hand-builds every one of her pieces, shaping them carefully as she brings her characters to life.

According to Shellrude, she’s just helping the clay along its way.

“The clay knows what it wants to be. It tells me the shape it wants to be in,” she says. “You have to learn the rules of how clay works, there are certain things that you can’t mess around with.

“Once you know the rules you can expand and push the boundaries of what clay can do. I work instinctively — it makes it more fun for me. It’s a very joyous practice.”

While Shellrude’s pieces originate from a place of play, her approach to creating them is anything but.

The disciplined ceramicist has established a routine which sees her in the studio five times a week, spending at least three hours a day making things.

“My mental health really suffers otherwise. It’s nice to leave the house, it’s nice to see other people and it’s nice to get sunshine on my face,” she says.

Shellrude splits her studio time between painting and pottery, moving from the canvas to her bags of wet clay when she’s ready to get her hands dirty.

“It feels like being a child again, like when you played with mud pies. The feeling between your hands is the feeling you get when you squish mud between your toes or walk along the beach barefoot,” she says.

Faces, be they on monsters or people, are a recurring theme. They’re not modelled on anyone she knows, or has even seen. They all come from her mind.

“I like to think that I am creating the kind of world I would like to live in, full of people that are happy and kind,” she explains.

Shellrude came to art late.

Hospitalized for five months in 2015, while her body fought off a bone infection, doctors were unsure if she would ever walk again.

So, stuck in bed, she began an art journal.

Two years later she found herself gravitating towards clay. An art residency at Artbeat Studio coupled with pottery classes through the City of Winnipeg’s Leisure Guide programming unleashed her innate talent with the medium.

“Art wasn’t a thing I ever really dabbled in,” she says. “Before 2015, I hadn’t made art at all and before 2017 I had nevesr worked with clay.”

Since then Shellrude has had nine solo art shows, and has been part of countless group exhibits.

Her next solo outing in August sees her make a return to Artbeat Studio. And in November, the monster friends she’s currently creating will make their debut at the Edge Gallery.

Shellrude posts all her new pieces on her Instagram account @kshellrudepottery . Her works are also on the shelves at Tara Davis Studio Boutique, located at 246 McDermot Ave.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca