Thursday, September 1, 2011

Artist Profile - Jacquline Hurlbert - Sculpture


Jacquline Hurlbert first discovered the power of clay at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in art with honors in 1976. Starting with a kick wheel and a small ball of clay, she became obsessed with the hypnotic spinning process of throwing. After college, she began her sojourn west. Her first stop was Vail, Colorado, where she worked as a ceramics instructor at Colorado Mountain College. Eventually, she ended up in California, where she returned to college, earning her master’s degree in three-dimensional art/sculpture and ceramics from California State University at Northridge.

Returning to get her master’s degree proved to be a turning point in her history with clay. She started using the thrown form as a canvas for elements of the human form. Suddenly, pots were sprouting faces, torsos, and legs. Gradually, the figure superseded the thrown form until the figure stood on its own as sculpture.

In 1993, she moved to the Pacific Northwest, where she continues to work with sculpting the human form. The figures she creates dramatize the struggle for self acceptance through the continuing exploration of the various aspects of what we call personality.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Artist Profile - Grayson Malone - 3D Mixed Media


With a background in the arts, architecture, building, landscape, and furniture design, Grayson Malone leans towards geometric and simple forms. Her cast stone and concrete mixed media pieces are infused with atomized metals, found objects, up-cycled and re-cycled materials. She first became interested in concrete as a material because of its ability to mate with and absorb many other materials. In particular, metals. She wanted to see what would happen if she integrated very finely ground particulates of bronze, copper, iron or steel, directly into dry cement. After a few years of experimentation she refined the mixture into a hybrid of metal and concrete creating an interesting visual and physical marriage of the two materials. The appearance of her metal -infused concrete forms can best be described as bronzed metallic stone, as the atomized (finely powdered) metals co-combine with cement to form a completely separate, distinct medium. The result is a much harder compound able to be polished to a fine satiny gloss or honed to an eggshell matte finish.

Labels: , , , , ,