Patsy Hely is a Canberra-based artist working in ceramics and with a concentration primarily on domestic forms; she has exhibited and taught widely since training at the National Art School in the late 70's. Her work often incorporates other materials - wood, glass and metal - and also, at times, found objects. For some time she has been involved in a project of recording life around where she lives or travels: birds seen, political life, local events and places and, more recently, people encountered.
She has worked as an academic at the ANU School of Art (2002 - 2014) and at Southern Cross University (1988 - 2001) and completed a PhD, Ceramics and the Articulation of Place, at ANU in 2007. Written work has been published in a number of journals including The Journal of Australian Ceramics and Art Monthly and a book chapter Buildings and the performance of identity in 'The Territories of Identity: architecture in the age of evolving globalisation', (eds Soumyen Bandyopadhyay and Guillermo Garma Montiel), Routledge, 2013.