Shalya Marsh's work expresses the intrinsic limitation that language places on communication, through the use of decipherable codes and symbols. Marsh's hand built ceramic sculptures reference illuminated manuscripts, ancient cuneiforms, and primitive accounting systems known as tokens; these archaic systems of recording information are juxtaposed with modern codes and ciphers such as binary, substitution, and Morse. The viewer is invited to literally decode the piece's nonsensical pangrams and whimsical definitions.

Marsh attended the State University of New York at New Paltz, earning a BFA in Ceramics. She currently teaches ceramics at the Lancaster Museum of Art, and La Academia Partnership Charter School. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally including exhibitions at the Rose Lehrman Art Gallery (Harrisburg, PA), MICA's Fox Gallery (Baltimore, MD), the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts (Wilmington, DE), and the Center for Emerging Visual Artists (Philadelphia, PA).