Carmen Simmonds
Region: Whanganui
Carmen is a professional artist and tutor, working from her rural studio in Wanganui, New Zealand. Her glasswork predominantly employs the lost wax casting technique and she is widely known for her sculptural dress forms. Carmen’s glasswork is collected and exhibited throughout New Zealand and internationally.
Since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2002, Carmen’s art practice has evolved from explorations of dress and textile to express women’s individuality, into rediscovering and emphasising the handcrafts associated with historical garment making processes. She has consistently crossed mediums in order to create her glass sculptures, predominantly with cast bronze, aluminium, pewter, natural fibres and soft materials.
In 2013, Carmen completed a Master of Art and Design. The associated research highlighted how themes and art making processes consistently reoccur within individual art practices. Within Carmen’s studio practice these reoccurring processes are crafts such as needlework and crochet and the use of threads and stitching. Whilst she continues to create her signature dresses and figurative production works, Carmen’s current sculptures are narratives that combine evocative glass techniques with mixed media, as a means of complimenting and enriching the form.
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