Studio PMC, Winter 2005, Volume 8, Number 4
Cover artist featuring Celtic War Pony
Celtic War Pony
She found there were some adjustments to be made working in PMC. “[PMC] dries out quickly, and so it takes a little more patience to learn how to use it,” she says. “But the fact that you can dry it, and add to it, and repair it if it cracks, which are things you can’t do in ceramic clay, that’s great. You can even refire it if you’re not happy with it, so in that respect it’s pretty forgiving.”
Although she does make some jewelry, it was the opportunity to embellish her sculpted ceramic and bronze Journey Ponies that drew her to PMC. “I almost always put things on my Journey Ponies, like beads and shells and agate,” she explains. “So adding some silver is kind of like dressing them up in jewelry. People just really like it because they haven’t seen anything like that before.”
In the piece pictured, Tammy used a mold of a Celtic design to add texture to the PMC, and then cut out the pieces of the armor. “If I tried to do that in ceramic, it would look kind of cheesy, because it would be either painted or glazed, and I’d have to worry about the horn of his headpiece breaking. I don’t have to worry about that in PMC,” she says. “It’s lightweight and durable, and it is metal.”
The PMC embellishments are either attached directly to the ceramic sculpture with epoxy, or are sewn onto leather and put on like a horse blanket. Other embellishments, like a series made with PMC geranium leaves, are simply draped over the horses.
One project still on the drawing boards is a Journey Pony with PMC legs. “I can see how one with silver legs would be really cool,” she says. “I did one little guy, he was maybe an inch by an inch and I used the PMC for legs. I’ve thought about doing something like that [in the bigger pieces], but I ended up going to bronze on the big horses. I’d still like to come back and do silver, though. I just need to do more experimenting.”
Why she had struggled initially with PMC.
“I have bad hands, and syringe PMC was very exciting to me, but I couldn’t get it to work,” she says. “Vera said, ‘let me help’ and we discovered it was a bad syringe!” Since then, Sandra has begun regularly incorporating PMC into her beaded jewelry.
“I’m having a lot of fun with it,” she says. “
Copyright, PMC Guild; used with permission.
Studio PMC, Member Magazine of the PMC Guild
Winter 2005
