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About Cindy
A unique appreciation of color, texture and craftsmanship inform life as a sculpted gourd artist.
Journey
As an artist, Cindy’s journey also defies classification.
She has been a photographer, builder, designer, carver, painter, gardener, and landscape artist.
This eclectic artistic journey began when Cindy left her California home at 17 to join the Army. Stationed in Europe, she found herself devouring impressionist museums and became a photographer. While raising her three boys she ran a photography studio and became immersed in the theatre, as a director, set designer and builder.
Artist's Statement
Gourds, each in their own organic way, offer a surface that an artist can paint or decorate as a two-dimensional art form, but in fact they are a three-dimensional canvas and can be carved, or cut and transformed into sculptures or reorganized practical artifacts.
Throughout history gourds have defied classification. Are they food? Decoration? A canvas? Building materials? Or drinking vessels?
Passion
Her passion for form and function lead to a growing expertise with tools as she and her husband built their own log home and studio space.
Cindy has grown accustomed to the tools and techniques that help transform silver, wood, plant life, paints, and dyes as well as stone, fabrics and plastics. Each of these varied explorations are now revived as she grows gourds on her farm in the Berkshire mountains and then discovers how to interact with each of them in their own way, and in her own way.
Process
Each finished, one-of-a kind piece is a unique celebration of color, texture and craftsmanship.
After considering the shape and texture of a gourd, Cindy begins the artistic transformation through carving and wood burning techniques, layering the altered surface of the gourd with intricate inks, dyes and acrylic paints.