TAKE A SHELTER

Valérie Ronvel-Blaya, aka Vee, aka Veesuel, is a polymer clay artist from France. Everybody loves her for her humbleness, loveliness; she has a great sense of humour and talks a lot but in a funny and pleasant way! She is a very busy lady as well, good businesswoman and plus all of this she is a very talented and creative person.

These pieces were made about three years ago but Valérie had to stop working on them for a lack of time. The inspiration was a feeling, a thought “Take a shelter” – the English expression she has always loved. It means to go to safety, to take care of yourself. So she created a sacred cave, a warm and intimate space for beings who would decide to inhabit that space, a nest, refuge, isolation...

The creation of these pieces had required an important work on both the structure and the surface. Wire reinforces the narrowest part of the suspension, but everything else is a polymer which has been covered with several more layers. Valérie used an incredible amount of different colours and shades to create blends and canes to make the caves look so good. Total of 48 actually! Then they were sanded to the satin look. Now was a time to populate them. Valérie opted for very simple figures, a little bit mysterious with their matt black coats and their metallic faces. In the last sphere lie eggs. The inside of the spheres is dressed in a very soft acrylic “wool” that she sewn in a spiral. Each item is approximately 50 cm high and 15 cm wide.

These spheres from the mysterious world including their present and future residents are beautiful examples that polymer clay is offering so many ways to express our feelings and thoughts and to show what is in our hearts, how fragile we are and how art is helping us to show it to the world.