Featured Metal Clay Artist
Paula Kroft has been working with metal clay for the past six years. Her passion for metal clay started initially with silver clay, after completing her certification with Tim McCreight.
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| Bronze Hollow Forms |
Since then she has gone on to establish herself as a teacher and artist in her favourite medium. She currently co-owns the on-line shop One Sweet Bead with her lampwork artist daughter Stacey, where she sells her work and offers workshops in metal clay. Paula was kind enough to let us in to have a little peek at her world and her work.
Paula loves working with metal clay, in particular silver and bronze, confessing that she has a preference for working with bronze. She loves, she says, the richness of the bronze and the unpredictability of the patinas. Working with bronze is less costly than silver and this gives her opportunities to experiment with different techniques without thinking too much of the cost. She tells us that it frees your mind to create larger and more dynamic pieces and if it works, she can recreate the piece in silver if she so chooses.
When asked to describe her style, Paula believes it's very eclectic - loving primitive textures and simple lines, she says that her style changes as she grows and learns. To that end, she's very enthusiastic
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| Paula's Favourite Piece |
about trying new techniques and combining the metals for the effects. Designing textures is also something she enjoys doing and is planning to have them reproduced onto her own line of texture sheets. So what's her favourite piece? That remains, it seems, a constant. It was a reproduction of a Hopi Kachina doll, originally made in wood that she shrunk down from 6" to 2" and made in silver. She's proud of the fact she managed to keep the detail that was in the original she carved and put it into the silver replica.
Paula's workspace is rather chaotic, she confesses. She works on more than one project at a time, with her 'production' work - i.e. the pieces that she sells in her shop, mostly findings and spacer beads, always on the go and her more 'artistic' creations being worked on whenever there's time. She does try to find a balance between complete chaos and a blank canvas to ensure that any ideas can be captured straight away. Paula is currently working on a set of amulets and talismans to give the wearer a sense and source of personal power and 'magick' to use in their daily lives.
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| A signature piece by Paula |
This inspiration has become particularly poignant since the sudden death of her husband in the very recent past she says, because her talisman will hold her intentions for the future, reminding her of her own strength and power as she moves forward in her life without her beloved husband by her side.
When Paula is stuck for inspiration, her solution is to sit down and roll out some bronze clay. She says that usually gets the ideas flowing, but if not, she will go to the internet or look through old National Geographic magazines for ideas on textures which she often finds inspiring, saying that the photos she finds take her out of her four walls and into the world.
So what keeps Paula going? She says it's keeping an open mind to try anything and being grateful for everything that comes your way. She thinks she is blessed to be part of the exciting and growing field of metal clay and being able to express herself in such a diverse and limitless medium.
Click here to see more of Paula's work and perhaps attend one of her classes.
