Archive / Visual Arts : Round 1 / Round 2 / Round 3 / Round 4

In Praise of Variety

Sculptor Sheila Vollmer is clearly of inquisitive bent and not easily typified – as she says, “The material and processes I work with are various since my aim is to stay true to the original material whilst creating a new image, a new construct with its own breadth and meaning.”

Situated in a private arboretum in Ontario Canada, ‘Berg’ is a glass block totemic shape in the snow. Is it a miniature tower? A folly of some description? Is it some interesting variation on a wedding cake? No matter – it just seems, whatever image it may conjure up for you, that it has every right to be there, naturally situated and, at the same time, adding new values to its environment.

[ More… ]

Steel, glass blocks, polypropylene rope, and cast cement – Vollmer clearly derives inspiration from a wide variety of textures and tactile substances transformed into new shapes and new configurations – obviously her imagination is wide-ranging, her influences extensive.

She was educated at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada and St. Martin’s School of Art, London and now, as well as her own artistic endeavours teaches sculpture and is Section Head of Sculpture, Drawing & Painting at Morley College, London.

She has exhibited widely in Britain and also been featured in group exhibits in Eire, Canada and United States. Recent exhibitions have included: travelling exhibit Fe2 05 of 5 women sculptors working with steel in Darlington, APT Gallery, London and Canary Wharf, London; Royal West of England Open Sculpture, Bristol; Bounty A Case of preposterous Optimism APT Gallery London, Royal British Society of Sculptors, London; and Electric Blue, Barge House, London. Her highly individual work is featured in public collections, most recently Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Staffs and Dillington House, Illminster, Somerset. Some of her work is also on ongoing display at several sculpture parks including Cass Foundation www.sculpture.org and www.thesculpturepark.co.uk . Her work will be included in the upcoming group show this summer 2008 at Poussin Gallery, London SE1.

We are particularly enamoured of ‘Bounty-Pot’ (2006-7) described as ‘cast cement fondue taken from moulds of breadfruit and secured with adhesive’, a construction that seems to establish a perfect bridge between the natural world and an intriguing ‘object of art’.

Increasingly Sheila is being asked to undertake individual commissions. Perhaps she will provide an antidote to the dull and derivative corporate art we too often see today.

[ Less… ]