biography

Gloria  Elies  was  born  in  1923  in  Toronto,  Canada.  Gloria  drew  and  worked  in  plastiline   from  early  childhood,  making  images  of  the  animals  she  loved.  Her  basic  training  in  the  visual   arts  occurred  in  her  teens  at  Western  Technology  School  in  Toronto,  which  she  attended  from   1938  to  1942.  During  a  1946  trip  to  New  York,  Gloria  encountered  museum  reproductions  for   the  first  time.   She  return  to  Toronto  and  started  making  hydrostone  reproductions  of  a  three-­‐ dimensional  works  in  the  collection  of  the  Royal  Ontario  Museum.  Familiarizing  herself  with  the   museum  collection,  she  learned  how  to  cast  in  rubber  latex  is  a  skill  she  always  practiced.  In   1948,  Gloria  travelled  for  the  first  time  to  Mexico;  it  was  a  place  of  great  beauty  and  simplicity.   She  “fell  hopelessly  in  love”  with  the  country.    In  1952-53  she  hitchhiked  and  youth-hostelled  through  England,  Western  Europe   and   French  North  Africa.  She  married,  had  two  children  as  she  continue  the  reproductions  and  her   artistic  paintings  and  sculptures  for  5  years  in  Nice,  France.  She  returned  to  Mexico   permanently  in  1958.     In  her  Mexican  studio,  her  reproductions  of  Paleolithic  goddesses,  ancient  Chinese   tigers,  miniature  Egyptian  scribes,  and  Pre-­‐Colombian  figurines  sit  side  by  side  with  models  and   cast  of  her  own  sculptures,  establishing  a  lively  dialogue  between  past  and  present,  intimacy   and  monumentality.       For  decades  she  juggled  for  most  of  her  live  the  competing  roles  of  artist,   wife,  mother,  businesswoman—“You  might  add  I’m  a  philosopher,  a  non-­‐ conformist,  and  a  feminist”  she  said. 

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