Balombini: a Closer Look at Sculpting Color
Laura Balombini, Maybe Tomorrow: Pages from my Dreambook, 2009, detail
clay board with polymer relief, encaustics, oils, collage
This is one of nine pages from Laura's imaginary sketchbook installation in the Sculpting Color exhibition, currently on view at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton MA.
Laura writes:
“I found my way into the world of polymer having started as a traditional clay artist. I was seeking something more immediate and which required less equipment. Now I create stories – two-dimensional stories – with polymer as the relief element. Each panel is a page from an imaginary sketchbook bringing into view materials used and forgotten, colors loved then left behind, and stories briefly remembered that disappear before they can be written down or drawn – until the thought resurfaces in a painting somewhere in the future.”
I cannot remember a time in my life that I wasn't interested in looking at art, talking about art and the making of art. In 1990 I earned a Phd in art history at the University of Maryland. My first experiences with polymer clay were in 1992, but I consider my real work with the medium to date from 1999.