Featured Artist: Amy L. Rawson

I'm in love...

...with Amy L. Rawson's sculpture pieces!

I discovered Amy's work through her Etsy shop, Draig Athar Designs. Though the majority of her shop consists of cute little felted plushies and wool batts, what caught my attention were the 4 sculptures she had for sale. They were gorgeously crafted, and I couldn't help but notice that each piece had a story behind it. (It must be my illustration background, because I adore when a work of art is attached to a tale.)

Though I've featured artists on this blog before, I've never had the opportunity to post a Q and A. Amy was kind enough to take the time to answer a pile of questions I e-mailed to her. That said, I'd like to present Honeydew Studios' first Featured Artist interview!

Honeydew Studio: Where does your inspiration come from?

Amy L. Rawson: My art doll sculptures are often inspired by myths, legends, folk tales, as you've noticed.


HS: How do you find these stories?

ALR: Usually once I have the theme to start from, I just browse the internet or dig through books until I find a story that sparks my interest. Someone once told me that good art should do one of two things: capture an emotion, or tell a story. I guess I just end up telling stories more often.

HS: What is it about a particular story that will make you want to create a piece based on it?

ALR: This is something that started almost by chance for me, to be honest! I've always loved myths and legends, but I didn't start sculpting them until one day when I was at a loss for what to work on next. I had an urge to sculpt but no ideas ready to go. Well, I have a deck of animal cards, it's called an animal oracle. It's something like a tarot deck, but I don't much use it for that. I just liked the animal artwork, heh. When I couldn't think of an idea to work on, I pulled out the animal deck and drew a card at random. It was the Crane. I decided to use that as a starting point, so I went browsing through books and webpages for stories about cranes. That's how the Crane Woman sculpture was born. That method of idea generation was so much fun, I kept doing it.
I found I quite liked anthropomorphic art, too, so the animal cards were perfect. Drawing the Seal card led me to the myth of the Selchie. Drawing the Raven card grew into my Hugin and Munin sculpture. The Wolf card gave birth to La Loba, and so on! I like art challenges, when the topic of themes is provided by an outside source, whether it be a group challenge theme or one identified at random by my deck of animal cards. My sculpture of Farmer John came from a group challenge theme of 'pumpkins' and led me to meeting a very talented singer/songwriter, Peter Mayer, who wrote a song about pumpkins who were nervous about becoming jack-o-lanterns. Another group challenge theme of 'emotions' is where Worry and Fear came from.


HS: What's your process? Do you sketch your ideas first?

ALR: I do sketch my ideas first, usually as a guide to construction because my sculptures involve a lot of different media and stages until they are finished. I may have some of my sketches somewhere online if you want pics. I don't usually make models first, though sometimes I will photograph people in the poses I'm aiming for, to use as a reference. I did that with the Kappa - I made my sister squat down like the Kappa is, for lots of photos, heh.


HS: Do you create a model or a mock-up? What materials do you use?

ALR: I use lots of different materials, that's the glory of doll art. Generally, my sculptures have a wire armature with hard-sculpted extremities (head, hands, feet) in either polymer clay, epoxy clay, or paperclay, and then painted. I create some sort of soft body, either wrapped and stuffed or needle felted. Then the clothing and embellishments can be anything - fabric, fur, leather, feathers, beads, lace, you name it. I have drawers full of little objects that I gather over time and save until they turn out to be exactly what I need for some particular project.

To see more of Amy's work, head on over to her website. Once there, you can read her bio and see much more of her sculpture work as well as her beautifully realistic oil paintings.