Gavy Swan Art

In grade 3 I discovered polymer clay. I wanted to find a medium that would harden when I wanted it to, and that would be hard enough that I could play with my sculptures in the sandbox. I was eight years old, and my previous attempts at freezing plasticene to make it hard  just weren’t cutting it.

To this day you can dig up one-of-a-kind “toy" sculptures in my parents’ garden where the sandbox used to be.

My artistic motives have changed since then, but I continue to be fascinated by the miniature and the sense of wonder and delight that people express when they encounter it. I will never stop playing.

 

I'm inspired by a lot of things. Hybrids in the margins of medieval manuscrpits inspire me because of their humour in an era that's seen in popular culture as being humourless and drab. I'm inspired by science, because it never ceases to amaze me and make me feel like a little kid. I'm inspired by nature and by words, and by people around me. Like I said, I'm inspired by lots of things.

Each of Gavy's sculptures takes many hours of careful work to create. The sculptures range in size from two to twelve inches long and are created from polymer clay, a plastic-like modelling clay that fires in a home oven. Gavy doesn't use molds, instead achieving a high level of detail by using her favourite sculpting tool and multiple reference photos.

"I create the head first," says Gavy, "and fire it so it won't get smushed. Then I build the armature and sculpt the rest of the figure over that, blending the already-fired head into the rest of the sculpture. If I'm making a jar fairy, I fire the whole thing in the jar."
 

Gavy Swan creates polymer clay sculptures with a playful sense of fairy-tale humour. Fantastical creatures and surrealist science feature prominently in her work, which explores issues of containment. “Our typical response to anything “other” is to contain it and to study it outside of its natural habitat. We do this in science with test tubes and particle colliders, and we do it in art with glass cases and ‘do not touch’ signs,” says Gavy. “I want to raise questions about whether containment and classification are the best way to examine the world around us. I think they are…but there are questions of ethics and methods that we need to explore.”

“Our typical response to anything “other” is to contain it and to study it outside of its natural habitat. We do this in science with test tubes and particle colliders, and we do it in art with glass cases and ‘do not touch’ signs,”