Laura Wee Láy Láq is a ceramic artist who lives and works in Stó:lo territory, in Chilliwack, BC. Inspired by global Indigenous forms of vessels, forms from nature, and techniques learned from Indigenous potters around the world, she creates sculptural vessels through a hand-building technique. She burnishes the surface of the vessels and allows elements of chance to affect the surface through sawdust firing in the kiln. The boundaries or spaces between inside and outside, and containment and explosion, is the focus of the five new works she has created for Border Zones. At the same time, her installation will help to provoke an examination of the institutionalized boundary between art and craft.

When asked by the curator how she would describe her ceramics in terms of a question they ask, Laura answered, “At what point is a vessel or container considered sculpture?”

Wee Láy Láq is an instructor at the University of the Fraser Valley, teaching the Halq’emyélem language of the upriver Salish peoples. Wee Láy Láq is of Stó:lo (Coast Salish) and Wuikinuxv (Oweekeno) ancestry, yet eschews being labeled an Aboriginal artist because of the restrictive boundaries that may place on the reception of her work.