Not everyone will walk away with an Oscar this weekend at the annual Academy Awards extravaganza.

But those nominated and not ultimately selected for an Oscar will get a gift basket, and in it, a colourful box containing the work of Vancouver ceramic sculptor Suzy Birstein, 56, right.

Birstein, an artist and teacher who left Toronto’s Bathurst Manor for Kitsilano in 1976, got her work into the Oscars’ gift basket because Kristina Estlund of Distinctive Assets, a Los Angeles firm that assembles gift baskets for celebrity events, discovered her through the Internet. Estlund found Birstein’s work while searching for Mexican pottery, for a gift basket for the Grammy Awards.

“I fell in love with Suzy’s work,” Estlund says. “Her art is just stunning, and she’s a very creative, cool and awesome individual.”

“Kristina gave me carte blanche as to what I wanted to make for the Oscar gift baskets,” says Birstein, who came up with the series Motion Pitchers, ceramic artwork designed to resemble a pitcher.

This is the first time Distinctive Assets is including ceramic items in its gift baskets. Concerns about possible breakage were alleviated when Birstein came up with a tube package secured with thick bubble wrap that would protect her sculptures until their hand-delivery to the residences of the non-winning nominees. “Everyone who doesn’t win an Oscar gets a Suzy,” she quips.

Birstein, the only artist whose work has been selected for inclusion in the baskets, made a total of 38 sculptures for the event, 21 of them for the nominees in the top categories and 17 for selected media.

“This is amazing exposure that I would never be able to get ordinarily,” she says. She is already feeling the effects of that exposure; she has received an offer from the Jonathon Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London, Ont., to show her work.

Birstein is enclosing a DVD containing a slide show of her work in every gift package.

A graduate of the Emily Carr School of Art in 1980, she cites Chagall as a key influence. She has focused on creating sculpture and tableware, in-between raising two sons and teaching from her home studio and at Granville Island’s Arts Umbrella for the past 18 years.