On the Boards | Andrea Copp & Mike Seymour – 2026.01.26
January 26, 2026 from 5:30pm–7:00pm
Local Speaker Series
Presented by the West Coast Modern League
Hosted by Addition Agency | 1675 West 2nd Ave | Vancouver BC
Doors 5:30pm | Presentation 6:00pm
Celebrating local designers and artists carrying forward our fertile culture of creativity and experimentation on Canada’s west coast.
On January 26th, the West Coast Modern League, with Addition Agency, presented the next in our On the Boards speaker series. We welcomed Vancouver-based ceramic artist Andrea Copp (Andrea Copp Ceramics) and artist/designer Mike Seymour (SFossils), each sharing their latest works and research within practices that both articulate intuitive, material-led experimentation with sculptural and functional prerogatives, shaped by life experience, place, community, and technique.
Andrea Copp works primarily in a variety of stoneware and porcelain clays, with ties to both Canada and the UK. Her practice spans sculptural and functional forms, including one-of-a-kind collectible works, paper-thin porcelain sculptures, a sculptural table, wall-based tile pieces, and intuitive rock sculptures. Layered with poetry, story, and emotional landscape, Copp’s work explores inner and outer worlds through material, intuition, and balance, shaped by lived experience and place.
Mike Seymour’s artwork situates itself within the disciplines of craft, design, and sculpture. His process involves an experimental approach to combining and using craft and industrial processes and hands-on collaboration with craftspeople and technicians. Deliberately suspending his focus between crafts such as metalworking, enamelling, glass working and ceramics, combining processes and materials almost haphazardly, his interest lies in bypassing a kind of technical ability to allow the material and techniques to influence the works.
Now 15 years on, this investigation has produced numerous innovative projects, and the Princeton Architectural Press publication Patkau Architects: Material Operations. The journey of this investigation was the focus of John’s presentation.
The West Coast Modern League gratefully acknowledges the partnership and generous support of Addition Agency | www.addition.agency | @addition.vancouver
Meet the Speakers
Andrea Copp
Andrea Copp is a Vancouver-based ceramic artist working primarily in a variety of stoneware and porcelain clays, with ties to both Canada and the UK. Her practice spans sculptural and functional forms, including one-of-a-kind collectible works, paper-thin porcelain sculptures, a sculptural table, wall-based tile pieces, and intuitive rock sculptures.
Layered with poetry, story, and emotional landscape, Copp’s work explores inner and outer worlds through material, intuition, and balance, shaped by lived experience and place. Her approach is honest and collaborative.
She was recently named Western Living Designer of the Year in the Makers category and a Western Living Design 25 finalist, and regularly leads workshops and creative collaborations.
Mike Seymour
Mike Seymour’s artwork situates itself within the disciplines of craft, design, and sculpture. His process involves an experimental approach to combining and using craft and industrial processes and hands-on collaboration with craftspeople and technicians. Deliberately suspending his focus between crafts such as metalworking, enamelling, glass working and ceramics, combining the processes and materials almost haphazardly, his interest lies in bypassing a kind of technical ability to allow the material and techniques to influence the works.
Mike Seymour has worked as a designer for the international lighting company ‘Bocci’ for over a decade, where he specialized in large scale installations and exhibitions. Meanwhile, he has maintained an active art studio practice exploring ceramic, glass and metal work while exhibiting work Canada-wide and completing 2 public artworks in Vancouver. In 2024, Mike Seymour launched ‘Sfossils’ as a way of reframing works that bridge sculptural and functional prerogatives. The debut installation ‘Paean’ was a large columnal ceramic chandelier hung in the grand staircase of the Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, a 16th century disused villa in Milan, Italy.
Mike Seymour has been exploring surfaces for his most recent projects, mainly by examining the interconnectedness of materials used in crafts like ceramics, enamelling and glassblowing. Using first-hand relationships between these ways of working, observations on industry, and the communities that form around them as sources of inspiration – these projects become social, philosophical and most recently, political. Discussions will be framed along the most recent experiments of Paean (2024) which uses metal, enamelling and glassblowing materials on ceramic, Crucible (2025) which uses ceramic and glass material as bronze enamel, and future glass projects which deploy metallurgical and ceramic processes with glassblowing.
Photo: Luis Valdizon
Photo by Alejandro Ramírez Orozco.
On the Boards Local Speaker Series
On the Boards is the West Coast Modern League’s ongoing speaker series that turns focus on our local designers, to those who are carrying forward the strong traditions of creativity and experimentation on Canada’s west coast. These events provide an opportunity for the community to come together in celebration of design and to share in recent works being undertaken right here in our own backyard.
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Please email league@westcoastmodern.org
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