If you’ve been following along with our newsletter articles lately, you’ll see that we’ve told you about the variety of artwork and artists in our gallery. Earlier newsletters have covered painting, photography, digital art, glasswork and jewelry. As a final chapter in this series, we invite you to read about our 3-dimensional artwork, and we offer a bit of information about how it is created.

When referring to sculpture and pottery, this can cover an expansive range of artwork. At Parklane Gallery, our artists offer bronze casting and stone sculpture, as well as expressing themselves with artistic creations made of clay.

HILDA BORDIANU
For Hilda, the process of sculpture in clay, with its slow beginning and the transformation through water and fire, is an exciting journey. Her expressive, hand-built sculptural forms are a delightful blend of abstract and realism.

She uses a variety of hand-building techniques. For smaller, functional pieces she uses slab building. This involves rolling out the clay to an even thickness, then cutting shapes, bending, manipulating, and joining together to form a finished object. Contemplative figures emerge from abstract shapes that she models with her thumbs and fingers. Supporting structures such as crunched-up newspaper or sponge are often needed. Each fissure and edge is carefully designed, creating a pleasant and balanced composition. After the finished pieces are dry, they are fired in the kiln. For coloring, a glaze is applied and after that, the pieces are fired again. Some portraits are cold finished with acrylic paint. She finishes her pieces with texture that can range from loose to refined. Her aim is for the viewer to have an emotional response and an appreciation for sculptural lines and textures.

RACHEL MULLER
Rachel specializes in creating small, fanciful animal forms based upon a centuries-old raku process. Raku is a Japanese word that can be translated as enjoyment, happiness or comfort, and as an art form, its origins were in 16th century Japan. It is unique in both appearance and in the method of creation from traditional pottery which is slow fired over a longer period of time. Incorporating some modifications and changes to the process since its introduction to the western world in the early 1900s, it is basically a process where the ware is glazed, then placed into a hot kiln, and once the glaze has melted, is quickly removed while still red-hot, then allowed to cool by a variety of methods. The result is a distinctive art object that has a metallic, often glittery, appearance.
There are no raku glazes as such, it is more the process of firing that gives raku pottery its distinctive appearance. The glaze can be applied in one of several ways, resulting in a surprise at the end of the firing. There is a multi-step firing process, and it is the second firing – the glaze firing – which gives the traditional raku its unique appeal.

Rachel’s raku pottery creations are hand shaped, and each of her delightful little creatures is carefully crafted to assure that they bring pleasure and joy to those who behold them.

ED THAYER – GUEST ARTIST
Ed’s abstract bronze sculptures very often consist of smaller modular components that are assembled to produce patterns that are distinct from replicated pieces. He is inspired by a blend of natural structures (seeds, soap foam/films/bubbles, anatomical) and mathematics. The assembled pieces often don’t take shape until many modules are created and he begins the process of arranging them. He works in wax directly after carving plaster or stone to create the initial collection of waxes. His use of both smooth and hand-textured surfaces emphasizes how his pieces are two sided – which is not common in bronzes.

In 2017, Ed began carving stone where he often follows no specific vision when starting a new piece, preferring instead to surrender to the natural strengths and weaknesses of the stone itself as a guide to the final abstract. Inspired by many sculpture friends, he’s begun work on mixed stone and bronze abstracts.

MARIA WICKWIRE – GUEST ARTIST
Maria works with the most elemental of materials: clay, story and the human form. Her ceramic sculptures celebrate the archetypical experiences of the universal woman. Each sculpture must go through an arduous process to become who she is, beginning with a soft and malleable, formless lump of clay.

As Maria builds, using a coil method, the earliest layers must gradually become strong enough to support the new growth that will be added. Finally, the piece must acquire glaze patinas and pass through several firings with heat up to 2200 degrees until her body is transformed. During the firings, her body shrinks and moves, melts and glows, until she has changed completely. However delicate she may appear, she has become incredibly strong and able to weather extreme cold or heat. Her metamorphosis is not unlike human life where we are all in the process of creating and recreating ourselves, emerging stronger each time.