Phyllis Schwartz

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 constantly surrounded by cameras, maquettes, and art exhibitions. She recalls having a conversation with her art teacher in the pottery shed at summer camp and sometimes wonders if that's where her interest in becoming an artist began. Her first opportunity to learn observational drawing was in a biology class, where she was taught the blind contour drawing technique and learned to trust her eye-hand coordination when drawing what she saw in the microscope. At the age of seven, Schwartz started making photographs with a box camera and always carried a camera with her. During her teaching career, she integrated art assignments into the academic subjects she taught, finding innovative ways to involve students in art experiences as part of the course content. Throughout those years, Schwartz spent long nights working on her art until she found a way to transition from a teaching practice to an artist practice that included guest teaching and residencies, providing more time for artmaking and curatorial work.

Phyllis Schwartz and Edward Peck collaborate on various art projects, including photography, curation and publishing. Their art often emphasizes the importance of creating and sustaining communities. In 2016, they curated an exhibition titled "Intervals: Photography in Flux" as part of Vancouver's Capture Photography Festival. Between 2019 and 2020, they worked with Pierre Leichner, a land-based artist, to create artworks using plant-based materials that explored the themes of permanence and impermanence. The resulting works were exhibited in four different art galleries in the Vancouver Lower Mainland region.

Most recently, Schwartz and Peck were artists in residence at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, Saskatchewan, where they explored the life of a small, Saskatchewan prairie agricultural community set amidst a vast landscape. Schwartz's work in particular investigated the concept of permanence and impermanence in a community that faces the industrialization of prairie farming. This work became part of a larger body of work — Aperion - in the White Mud Valley, which was exhibited at the Xchanged Art Gallery in Victoria.

Schwartz is a photographer whose work has been featured in various magazines like PhotEd and Aeonian. She is also a collage artist whose works have been published in Kolaj Magazine and Contemporary Collage Magazine. Both Schwartz and Peck are currently members of Agora's Experimental Photography Mentorship, which is an international collective that exhibited their project at the 2023 Experimental Photography Festival in Barcelona. They are also members of Metchosin ArtPod, which is an artist-run centre that produces six exhibitions every year and hosts community events related to these exhibitions.