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About the Artist         


 

"Gourds are a great, natural art medium. Nearly any technique from arts and crafts can be used with gourds. Gourds help us accept and embrace imperfection (including our own), and encourage us to be flexible and 'go with the flow'. When working with gourds, I can become so totally absorbed that I sometimes find a 'Zen' state of mind. The gourd always guides me."
Colleen Platt recently left a career in landscape architecture to explore new directions and challenges in life and art. Experiments with hard-shell gourds satisfied her love of nature and need to create. Colleen’s training in art and horticulture made working with gourds a natural progression. She enjoys the collaboration between art & nature, and the challenge of adapting two-dimensional designs to three-dimensional objects.

Colleen also has a lifelong fascination with photography, beginning with a Polaroid as a teenager, then "artsy" black & white snapshots in high school, and continuing through the years traveling and chronicling daily life and the beauty of the natural environment. Recently she has focused on gourd photography, doing promotional work for herself and for other gourd artists.

A year living in American Samoa as a child and a tapa cloth collection sparked Colleen’s interest in primitive and ethnic art styles. Ancient and universal patterns and symbols inspire her work, which ranges from stylized designs to realistic line drawings with geometric, botanical, and abstract motifs. Pyroengraving, carving, inlay, painting, and dying are her primary techniques; symbols and objects from nature are used in designs and embellishments.

Colleen entered and won a blue ribbon for her "Warrior Gourdess” mask in the California Gourd Society 2003 Gourd Art Competition, held at Welburn International Gourd Art Festival, and won ribbons for “Starbird Spirit Vessel” and “Da Vinci Pendant” in the 2004 Competition. She has contributed to two design panels on the Traveling Gourd, and to the Ashanti Mother project, both statewide collaborations of California Gourd Society artists.

For inspiration and support, Colleen belongs to the Calaveras County Arts Council, Foothill Gourders, the California Gourd Society, and the American Gourd Society. Her gourd art has been displayed at the Firehouse Gallery in Murphys, Gallery 10 in Sutter Creek, and in special shows at the Calaveras County Arts Council Gallery in San Andreas, California. Colleen was a Featured Artist at the 9th Annual International Gourd Art Festival 2005, and is featured in the book Beyond The Basics: Gourd Art, published by Sterling/Chapelle Books (click here to order). Her work can be seen by appointment at her home in Valley Springs, or at the Tidewater Art Gallery in Stockton, California.

Colleen Platt creates and grows gourds on a hilltop in Valley Springs, California, along with husband Ron and rescued canine companions Nick and Sweetie.
                                        
©2005 Colleen Platt - All rights reserved.
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