Mandy Olson

Based: Hawke's Bay

 

Mandy Olson has been working with clay since the mid 1990s. Before that she also knitted, weaved and made craft work from natural objects.

 

She initially developed her skills and love for ceramics at Wellington High School evening classes and Petone College’s adult sculpture classes. During this time she began exhibiting with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in group shows, and also started to supply her work to commercial galleries here and in Australia.

 

Mandy had work in the 2000 Norsewear Art Award and was a member of Wellington’s Bakehouse Gallery, as well as supplying for the Wellington Potters Co-op Gallery.

 

In January 2001 Mandy attended a bronze casting workshop in the Wairarapa, where she produced several pieces, and continues to work in this medium as well as in clay.

 

Her work is largely narrative and figurative in nature with a quirky, humorous feel. She prefers to work instinctively with little plan other than a phrase or an amusing play on words. She sculpts mainly in a fine earthenware clay which requires 2 firings. Mandy’s bronze pieces are formed in wax and cast by the ‘Lost Wax’ method.

 

Mandy comments that her most personally satisfying pieces are those that evolve as she pushes and pulls the clay, or softens and squeezes the wax until a form appears.