Phyllis Schwartz

Phyllis Schwartz is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in photography, ceramics and publishing. She is an Emily Carr University graduate with a concentration in photography and the recipient of the Canon Photography Award (2010). Her photography has been installed, exhibited and published locally, across Canada and internationally; her works are in public, corporate and private collections. These collections include the Farmboy Collection at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia and St. Paul's Hospital Art Collection. Recent exhibitions include Illuminations and Impressions (die Bedürfnisanstalt, Hamburg, Germany), Light (A Smith Gallery, Johnson City, Texas), Light Sensitive (Gilbert, Arizona), Intervals: photography in flux (South Main Gallery, Vancouver), Ekphrasis (Metchosin ArtPod), and the Sooke Fine Arts Show.

Born in Brooklyn, raised in Texas, educated in the Mid-West, Phyllis Schwartz migrated to Western Canada during the 70s, where she put down roots and grew her artist practice. Coming from a family of artists, she was surrounded by clicking cameras, maquettes and conversations about art exhibitions. She remembers a summer camp conversation with the art teacher in the pottery shed and sometimes wonders if this is where her pursuit of an artist practice began. Biology class was her first opportunity to learn observational drawing, an early lesson in blind contour drawing and trusting eye-hand coordination. Schwartz began making photographs with a box camera at the age of seven and always had a camera with her, especially when she travelled, early evidence of her interest in detail and situational portraits. Throughout her teaching career, she infused art assignment into the academic subjects she taught and found creative ways to engage students in art experiences as part of the course content. During those years, Schwartz spent long nights making her own art until she found a way to move from a teaching practice into an artist practice that included guest teaching and residencies, which in turn allowed more time for artmaking and curatorial work.

Phyllis Schwartz works collaboratively with Edward Peck on photography, curatorial and publishing projects. Often their work investigates art making situated in the community, which in turn builds community. Together, they curated Intervals: photography in flux an exhibition for Vancouver’s Capture Photography Festival in 2016. Schwartz and Peck recently completed the publication of Artists in Residence: Mary Filer and Harold Spence, a photo-documentation of artist studio residences belonging to two cultural pioneers in the Vancouver art scene. Recently, Phyllis Schwartz and Edward Peck launched the second edition of Seeking the Nuance, a book about nuances of glaze making in the ceramics community in Vancouver that is inextricably tied to the work of Bernard Leach, founder of the Leach Pottery, St.Ives in Cornwall, UK. Between 2019 – 2020, they collaborate with Pierre Leichner, a land- based artist, to explore plant-based materials to create works of art that speak to issues of permanence and impermanence; this work was exhibited in four Lower Mainland art galleries. Most recently, Schwartz and Peck were artists in residents at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, Saskatchewan. During their residency, they explored life in a small, Canadian prairie agricultural community set on a vast landscape. Her work investigated the idea of permanence and impermanence in a small-scale agricultural community that confronts the industrialization of prairie farming. Her work was recently published in PhotEd and Aeonian magazines. Schwartz is currently a member of Agora's Experimental Photography Mentorship, an international collective that exhibited their project at the 2023 Experimental Photography Festival in Barcelona.