Featuring
Featured articles about artists in Ojai Studio Artists
Hallie Katz
With over 50 years of creating sculptural jewelry, Hallie is passing on that knowledge to her students with workshops one or two weekends per month. With help from her husband Stan Katz as “the tool guy,” Hallie works with four students each at their own station filled with a myriad of jewelry making tools.
“We explore different ways to fabricate jewelry, and we also offer wax carving and lost wax casting,” she explains. “I emphasize learning the proper skills to make beautifully handcrafted jewelry, but also the concept of jewelry as an artform.” For class information, visit www.HallieKatzJewelry.com.
As to Hallie’s feelings about post-HumanArts “retirement,” she wryly recalls Ricky Nelson’s song “Garden Party” – “It’s alright now. I learned my lesson well. You can’t please everyone, but you got to please yourself.”
“You really have to do what you love to do,” Hallie asserts. “And hey, I do the best I can and it makes me happy.”
By Martha Moran
It has been truly exciting to watch Hallie Katz’s work evolve since closing HumanArts Gallery six years ago. Hallie has reinvented herself both as a teacher and jewelry maker who views her work as wearable art. And you can really see the evolution – her work IS truly Wearable Art!
“I try to infuse a sense of power, energy and story into every piece I make -- so that when someone is wearing my work, it effects the way they see themselves and the way other people see them,” she explains.
When she started making "Keeper of All Things Possible” (pictured at left), the design began to emerge like a wheel, with Golden Topaz as the center stone and eight other colorful gems surrounding it. Gemstones are assigned metaphysical properties that are said to enhance one's energy and well-being. Golden Topaz is meant to increase abundance, good health, and creativity. The other stones are also meant to imbue specific attributes, while the circle itself is symbolic of wholeness, unity, perfection and balance.
Sooz Glazebrook
By Martha Moran
It’s always fascinating to discover what path artists have taken to get where they are today. Sooz’s artistic journey began on a New Zealand sheep farm, where Sooz grew up spinning wool and weaving at 5 years old, then creating art pieces using fibers, vines, mud and other natural materials she found on the farm.
When she was 20 and studying sculpture at the Ilam Art School at Christchurch University, her dad asked Sooz to create a backsplash for the kitchen he was remodeling. She’d never worked with tile or glazes before, and at the time, there were no premade glazes. The first fired tiles looked fantastic, but when she picked one up, the glaze fell off. Undeterred, and with no one to guide her, she read a few library books to find a way to layer underglazes and create the huge, whimsical backsplash which can still be seen in her family farm kitchen 50+ years later, documenting the family’s farm life -- sheep, chicken, a pig, their cat Bundle, the family shield, and other bits of the family’s lifestyle.
The backsplash was the spark that took Sooz into ceramics, first working for a small tile factory in Australia, then as a colorist for Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers. Relocating to London, she created mixed media sculptures using ceramics and cast bronze. She then moved to New York City with her husband, abstract painter Peter Sims, then Cape Cod and Brooklyn before moving to Ojai in 1997 where she designed her own home.
Her show-stopper garden is a favorite stop on OSA Art Tours. It is a glorious riot of colors just like her studio where her work with plants and other natural materials is evident in her ceramic pieces.
“I’m entranced by color!” she grins, admitting that she really thinks of herself more as a painter than a ceramist. Many of her signature hanging wall plates have sculptural elements, clearly modeled on seed pods, seashells and other natural forms.
In all her work, there is a brazen fearlessness to experiment -- perhaps fail, perhaps discover something completely new. If something cracks or a glaze doesn’t work as planned, she pivots and takes advantage of what at first could be seen as a mistake.
A new piece is a brilliantly glowing sunflower-like wall plate with a sculptural element with delicate cast seed pots woven into the piece. Another new work is a large metal mesh screen which will serve both as an art piece and privacy window screen. “Look for it in my living room window,” she advises.
As for her future? Sooz is excited to be combining sculptural elements with the new screen, as well as mixing bronze and ceramics in her work. In the tradition of Violet Frey, she would like to create large ceramic figures to stand tall in her riotous garden.
