On the Prairies

Five year old me knew she wanted to be an artist, clever child that she was. Along the way, of course, I tried other things out. These days I live in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, a small town smack dab in the middle of the Canadian Prairies. I have a little shop called Field and Fable, where I sell my work and that of other artists, and my studio is tucked in there.

There’s space for friends to come share stories and learn new crafts. The local Makers, both in the art sense and the geeky sense, come here often to work on projects. The prairies stretch forever just a few blocks away. At night you can find the aurora covering the big sky.

I Play with Clay

Bead Making AssistantI spend a lot of my days playing with clay. My clay of choice is polymer clay, an oven bake clay, although I love ceramic and air drying clays as well. Polymer clay comes in all sorts of colours, mixes like paints, stays usable for years, can be used for everything from jewellery to whimsical critters to prototyping manufacturing parts.

My time is filled with making beads and canes or millefiori. Canes are fascinating little bits of art where the image is entirely made of mixed and shaped clay and runs the length of a rod or cane. I have fun designing and building my own, indulging my inner doodler, and then using those designs to make beads, vessels and jewellery. Sometimes I rope my kiddo or my partner into helping with the drudgery bits but mostly I’m mad scientist-ing on my own.

This is my daughter helping make beads

Out in the Wild

You can see some of what I’ve been up to:

And you can take a look at what I’ve gotten up to out in the internet wilds: