Crowden, Polly (AUS, New South Wales),
Wake Up & Smell the Coffee
Wake Up & Smell the Coffee
Wake up and Smell the Coffee is about turning a waste material into an art piece… I was also drawn to using the cups because of the beautiful artwork on them and liked the idea of interlacing those artworks together to create a new artwork.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Polly crowden
Working for costume in the Sydney film industry since 2017, Polly Crowden is also a Textile, Visual and Graphic Artist and uses her spare time to work on her own projects.
Growing up in a family of creatives on the Far South Coast of NSW, she was constantly experimenting with all kinds of mediums such as ceramics, drawing, painting & textiles.
Later in life Polly went on to study Fashion Design & Visual Art on two separate occasions. This lead to a merging of these two practices in 2015 when she started a small business specialising in screen-printed clothing made from natural fibres such as hemp, bamboo & organic cotton. Using the fabric as a canvas for her original artworks, it was a chance for Polly to bring together her love for illustration and a love for slow fashion & clothing design.
In 2018, Polly received runner-up in the Burnie Arts Council 'Paper on Skin' competition for her piece Adira of Aberlorne. The piece allowed her to experiment with and explore the versatility of paper, drawing on the many skills she’d learnt previously from her mother, a paper and mixed media artist herself.
More recently Polly has started exploring her textile roots again, creating one-of-a-kind pieces made from hand painted and recycled fabrics collected from opshops. Her pieces often come together in an organic nature, working with a rough idea in mind and allowing it transform during the making process, which she has found is a fun way to create.