jennifer maestre: making her point with pencils

one of the highlights of returning to school in september, whether as a student or as a teacher, is the purchasing of supplies. new binders, coil bound multi-subject notebooks, bic pens, lovely fresh pencils and impossibly pink erasors, and perhaps best of all - a new box of pencil crayons. pulling back the lid on a set of pencil crayons still has the effect of making me want to run home and pull out a sketchbook and blow off the first day of teaching just so i can draw and colour.

i can’t help but thinking that somehow, those coloured pencil crayons must have had the same magical effect on jennifer maestre who has made an art out of assembling them into quirky yet strangely lovely sculptures. her artist's statement reveals a deeper aesthetic inspired in part by the form and function of the sea urchin, animals, plants, other art, ernst haeckel, odilon redon, and mythology

jennifer’s portfolio is filled with brilliantly colourful spiky creations, all crafted from the sharpened ends of coloured pencil crayons. to make the pencil sculptures, jennifer takes hundreds of pencils, cuts them into 1-inch sections, drills a hole in each section (to turn them into beads), sharpens them all and sews them together. the beading technique she uses is called peyote stitch. the eye catching results can be seen here . . .
to see and read more about jennifer’s work and thinking then visit her homepage.