During the cold months, Lara Melnik was preparing reminders of warmer days.
“It was a long, dark winter so I made flowers,” she says of her polymer clay creations.
“I started my seeding very early. January, February … I planted the seeds and I’ve been nourishing them and now they’ve bloomed.”
The walls at the Chocolate Claim in Whitehorse are transformed with splashes of vibrant colour, courtesy of Melnik’s whimsical garden of cartoon-like flowers. The exhibit, titled Bloom, showcases her distinct style in over 30 pieces devoted to playful petals.
“I don’t work realistically; I just like kind of simple flowers. Simple, ‘70s kind of flowers, I guess,” Melnik says, while perched on a stool at the coffee shop.
Her subject matter isn’t exactly the lilies, daisies or roses seen budding from the ground. Melnik’s imaginative designs are more inspired and born out of vivid hues, quirky designs and eye-catching patterns.
“I work with the colours and I work with trying different designs within the petals, like stripes or texture. And I’ve got to have all the colours in there,” she says between sips of coffee.
“So then I’m looking at five pieces I’ve worked on and I’ll say, ‘I don’t have any pink’ and then I’ll work on pinks and purples.”
Her influence may be the rainbow, but it is simple to decipher her love for flora. Melnik’s shirt is riddled with bright yellow flowers, while her pigtails are fastened with matching hair ties. Everything from her car to her signature is speckled in blossoms.
Since about 2000, Melnik set her sights on working exclusively with polymer clay – a plastic-based sculpting medium. Initially she stumbled on it as a young girl, making figurines and solid-coloured beads.
Eventually she began experimenting by mixing the colours and creating intricate designs.
“I thought if I put it on a board and maybe if I put a little frame around it or something, it would look kind of neat. So I started to do a few things like that and they were just geometric designs, just playing around with colour,” she explains.
“Because the clay is just like paint. It’s kind of like acrylic paint that you can model with your fingers.”
Bloom features strong three-dimensional plants that jump off their textured surfaces. And while the petal constructions are at the forefront, the backgrounds demonstrate Melnik’s ability to emulate a painterly aesthetic by smoothing colours into a seamless gradient. Others are pressed with texture plates, fabric or hand prints for depth and detail.
The artist is clearly hooked on the clay’s seemingly endless possibilities.
“If I just want to do a full show in black and white, I mean, I could just do some totally wild stuff. If I get sick of working flat, then I can make beads or make something sculptural, something three-dimensional. You can’t really do all of that with paint.”
And Melnik appears to be stretching the medium to its fullest.
While Bloom is her latest offering of artwork, her creative garden continues to grow as she dreams up new beads, brooches and jewelry.
Bloom is on display at the Chocolate Claim until the end of July. Melnik’s clay creations are also available at the Fireweed Market every Thursday.
