Dustin: A Closer Look at Sculpting Color

Kathleen Dustin, Allium Pod, 2008
3’h x 3’w x 9”d
Polymer clay

Kathleen commented:

“To fulfill it’s educational mission, The Fuller Craft Museum likes to have pieces that people can touch included in their exhibitions, and I allowed them to use my table sculpture, “Allium Pod” for this purpose in the exhibition “Sculpting Color: Works in Polymer Clay”. The sculpture is 28” long, 8” in diameter and the museum made a small stand to secure it to the pedestal so people wouldn’t cause it to roll off when touching. They also provided white gloves for patrons to put on before touching.”

Another aspect of the educational part of the exhibit was a small display of common tools such as a pasta machine and slicing blades as well as a step-by-step model of a skinner blend made into a cane sliced into thin petals made into a flower brooch. A step-by-step model of constructing a checkerboard was also displayed. These models were provided by Judy Belcher.

Judy Belcher, Instructional Display, detail

Kathleen Dustin, Nature Fix, 2009
3’h x 3’w x 9”d
Polymer clay

Kathleen wrote about this piece:

“My job as an artist is to pay attention and then reinterpret what I see. Lately I've been paying attention to the shapes, color shifts, and repetition of seemingly mundane elements in nature, such as seed pods, buds, moss, grasses, leaves, sticks and stones. Changing the scale of the objects enables me to comment on their importance in contrast to the way modern culture tends to overlook the mundane. This nigella series explores the fragile relationship between man and nature, and his presumption in manipulating or controlling it.”