It was about this time of the year, in 2012, when I came back to Denmark after a visit to Iceland where I held a grooming seminar for show Schnauzers. It was during that time that I’ve been talking with one of my friends in USA, Sue, who was SURE that I had the ability to create dog figurines under her judgment of my grooming and breeding skills. At that time I first laughed and I didn’t see it as a real possibility, however the idea seemed to be fun. So, she sent one of her own handmade pieces to me in Denmark. When I saw it I was a hesitating that I could do anything close to that, but, Sue, just said go get some air dry clay and try! At that time I was staying with my very good friends Tony and Uwe. One afternoon we drove down to town to get this clay and a couple of tools to model it.
The next day I spent several hours trying to build something up with this strange material. The most difficult part was to make the legs stand still. They would melt down, back or to the sides as they couldn’t support the weight of the bodies. It was really fun to see how they twisted, but, also a bit frustrating as they looked very wrong. After a couple of trials I managed to get few figures that resembled a dog, so I went to buy some acrylic painting to color them. I finished the firsts ones, and just for the fun of it I posted them on Facebook. At that point I felt that I had accomplished the mission to shape something into a very raw dog shape, shared the fun with my friends, and that was that, so I just went out and forgot about the whole thing.
Several hours later, when I went back to the computer, I saw I had messages and comments on Facebook from people asking me If I would sell the funny figurines, it was the laugh of the week! But, sure they looked funny, and lets face it, as a dog lover I would have also asked to buy as they seemed cute. So I was selling some of these figurines mostly to the cover costs of the material I was using and a bit of my time, but nothing more than that. I don’t remember exactly how many I did, but it was many more than I ever imagined or saw myself doing. The whole thing was fun. Someday I wouldn’t do anything else than that when I had free time, and some days I was even using the entire day doing those figurines, it was summer, too hot to do anything else.
The material was horrible to work with, difficult to shape, difficult to dry, and fragile to ship, but I still sent a lot of them to many different countries.
After a while my life had to go on back to ‘normality’: summer was over, I had other things to do, travels and also I decided to go back to Argentina.
Several months passed until I felt the need that I wanted to do more of this figurines, but I liked to try a better/easier material to work with; so I started some exploration process. I got real clay and molded a few. Then I went on to learn how to create a mold so I could cast them in some material what wouldn’t break. iIt was then when I started a serie of resin figurines. I did several breeds. The pieces were improving and the fun was growing, but after few months I stopped again. This was very time consuming despiste joy it provided and I didn’t have the chance to fit it on my daily schedule. However I never gave up, so during the last years I went on working on this whenever I had time. But mostly randomly.
It was late August last year (2015) when I came for another visit to Denmark (I always came here since 2008), after another long trip, and I decided that I wanted to do more sculptures. It seems to me today that life has had it planned forever, cause it took us two days to find a place, an amazing place, with amazing people. We went went to that pottery studio asking to rent a kiln every now and then in order to bisque fire some clay pieces. The thing is that I ended up staying there working as ceramicist apprentice. At the end of August is going to be a YEAR since I started again to do my funny figurines and didn’t stop ever since! The only break I had was when I went to UK for a couple of months in order to learn more.
So, now I’m very happy to be doing this full time, and I’m happy to have a lot of supporters of my work all over the world (literally), I’m very thankful to all the people who trust me to create a piece that would remember their dogs. It is such a privilege to be doing this. And I’m particularly thankful to these people who’d been beside this journey as cornerstones: Sue, who introduced me to it; Tony and Uwe, who were always helping in the way they could; and Finn who last year opened the door of his studio for me and I could find another fascinating world: Ceramics. Well, I’m just getting started on that.
This is just a beginning and I don’t know where it will go from now on, but I can only see someplace better, as it always went that way!
Below is a selection of images that show the evolution of my work since 2012 till today, mid 2016 🙂
2012: First works. material air dry clay material, acrylic paint
2013: second approach, limited editions of resin copies, acrylic paint
2014: bisque fire ceramic pieces, hand painted with acrylics.
2015: First ceramic pieces, handmade in clay, fired twice the color is given with glazes and slips.
2016: Ceramic pieces. Focusing on the improvement of the sculptural subject.
What’s gonna happen in a year?? Keep close beside me during this journey and we can find out together…! Have a happy Sunday!
Barbara
www.applerainart.com/cool
