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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Maya Gelfman
but it didn’ t quite work for me. It might be that it starts to veer too close to sewing and away from some of the conceptual aspects I want to evoke.
Portrait Medallions came about after a year of experiments. I made an earlier version while making Blink. I tried recreating the texture of lace in a variety of ways, making molds of lace and doing slip cast versions, hand building the shapes in porcelain, dipping the lace into porcelain slip and Hiring that.
Ultimately I liked the textile itself but had issues with the original backing which were those tiny 2 x 4“ canvases you can get at any art supply store. I wanted the backings to be consistent but individual and hand made. I was inspired by Josiah Wedgwood’ s portrait medallions. The supports of the Hinal version of Portrait Medallions were made from a white porcelain but came out of the kiln with a slight blue grey cast which was out of my control but the perfect result because it leaned towards the look of Jasperware by Wedgewood. Rhizome is composed from hand made lace from the civil war era. They came to me from a good friend who had been holding on to them and thought I could do something interesting with them. The color is a result of their age. I often draw overlapping circles like that for my students as a way to illustrate this idea of
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