Progress Report: Pamela Wallace Individual Artist Grant

Published on October 21, 2011

Pamela Wallace, our 2011 Community Arts Grants Individual Artist recipient, took her creative process on the road during the last week of September.  The initial step in Wallace’s project invited participation from students from Germantown High School art classes.  Under the artist’s direction they created plaster molds and cast paper spheres that Wallace will later coat with beeswax, mount with steel brackets, and integrate into her wall installation “Extending Off and On the Way Down.” 

The shift in thinking from instructing students to produce their own independent work to incorporating them into her own creative process represented new insight for Wallace.  Teacher Terry Lamacchia also remarked that, “the students greatly enjoyed the experience and can’t wait to use the (remaining) plaster pieces in their own artwork.”   

   Pamela explains some of her interactive process.  In Step 1, “we are pouring plaster into various molds, with the molds all in plastic and floors.”

 

 
    In Step 2, “Using a rubber glove, we are making plaster cylinder shapes in the fingers.    Later I will break the finger shapes off and sand them into small cyclingers.  It is also fun for the students to cast hands, so I left behind a few that were filled up for them to have.”
 
 
 
 
 
  In Step 3, students are “peeling the rubber glove off the solid plaster positive.”   The installation in which these pieces will be incorportated will be completed by Wallace in her Germantown studio.  

Check back in January. We’ll post Wallace’s finished project and that of Alban Plotkin, our 2011 Greene County Individual artist recipient, and (drum roll please!) announce our Individual Artist award recipients for 2012.  For information on the Individual Artist Grant program, contact our Director of Community Arts Grants at Colettegcca@hotmail.com or 943-3400.