Christine Pedersen works in clay and metals. Strong textures, surface disruption, material research, and a desire to tell stories permeate her work and process. Pedersen started to work with clay in her teens and, after emigrating to Canada from the UK in 1995, she became a community member at North Mount Pleasant Arts Centre. She studied Jewellery + Metals at Alberta University of the Arts from 2005-2012, drawn to metal because of its abilities to flow and be formed, just like clay. She specializes in contemporary approaches to ancient techniques: hand-making her steel tools for chasing and repoussé on metal; and pinching clay with a highly personal technique that allows her to generate intense surfaces. Increasingly, Pedersen brings elements of clay and metal together into sculptural and functional pieces.

Pedersen has completed public art projects as part of Jeff de Boer’s LEXM artist team, most recently building steel-wire dinosaur sculptures on display at The Royal Tyrell Museum. She participates in wood and soda firings whenever possible and wrote an article about wood-firing John Chalke and Barb Tipton’s noborigama kiln for Ceramics Review. Her work has been featured by Ceramics Monthly, Alberta Craft Council, Metal Arts Guild of Canada, and published in recent books including Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox, The Crafted Dish, and the Society of North American Goldsmith’s Jewelry and Metalsmithing Survey Vol 2.