Ceramwitch
Zoë Bernhardt is the fiber and multimedia artist behind Ceramwitch. Raised in Northern California and Southern Oregon, she’s now based in Long Beach California. She primarily makes fiber pieces inspired by the natural world as well as femininity.
The artist draws inspiration for their work largely from the wilderness of their regional home, the Oregon-Cali coast. She channels memories of breathtakingly colorful wildflowers, vibrant post-storm rainbows, and ever-hard working bumblebees and butterflies to be expressed in her work. Where her biggest inspirations lie so do her passions, meaning she’s a huge advocate for environmental conservation and sustainability. She often uses organic, recycled, and repurposed materials in her practice and advocates for waste reduction and the fall of fast fashion.
In inseparable turn, her work has a large underlying focus on our human rights to be happy, healthy, and love unconditionally without prejudice or restriction. The artist identifies as an eco-feminist, a modern branch of feminism that sees a correlation between the mistreatment and repression of women, marginalized peoples, and the earth as rooted in patriarchal structures. “Nature is a feminist issue because an understanding of nature and environmental problems often helps one understand how and why women’s oppression is linked with the unjustified domination or exploitation of nature.”
Being a fiber artist means engaging in an art form traditionally dismissed as ‘women’s work’. By creating art and sustaining herself through the feminine labor of fiber and nurturing the earth by working within sustainable means, she takes back a certain power taken away from women and leads others to do the same. She tries to reflect this all in her work, sometimes a flower made by hand isn’t just a flower, but a message of love and hope for a better future we can make together.
Zoë officially started her art career midway through the pandemic, as many other artists had at the time in order to stay afloat. This experience of hardship has created a strong sense of unity with the local arts community, pushing her to be a lead part of several community initiatives to uplift other artists and makers. Her work can be found across Long Beach at community-over-profit-based popup markets and in stores that aim to support the wonderful community of artists and small business owners in LB, including Songbird Boutique, Goods On Orange, and Flatline Gallery.
