Page 37 - homestyle New Zealand (February - March 2020)

Artist profile —— PEOPLE

“I spent a long time

in the supermarket,

looking at so many

Devyn Ormsby has been drawn to art bananas, pears, lemons
all her life. Four years after graduating
from Auckland’s Elam School of Fine and mandarins.”
Arts, she says she feels very fortunate
to be able to work in a creative field —
but she’s so talented we think she had
it coming.

So, Devyn, what led to your exploration
of glass as a medium? I’ve been working
with glass for two years now. I made my
first glass mandarin in December 2018
and gave it to my boyfriend’s mum for
Christmas. After that, I began working
on the rest of the fruit, which I launched
in June last year.
I learned the casting process through
my job at Lukeke Design. We primarily
make glass birds that are sold in galleries
locally and internationally. Everyone
who works there has their own glass
projects on the side, which encouraged
me to experiment with my own.

We love the concept of fruit as art
object — how did this come about? Fruit
holds a large significance in art history,
which is where I think the appeal comes
from. I’d thought for a while about
what I wanted to make and kept seeing
vintage glass fruit in op shops. Brightly
coloured with exaggerated forms, it was
charming in its own outdated kind of
way; I wondered where it came from,
what its purpose was and who used to
own it. Eventually I set about making
a cast-glass version true to the form
of actual fruit.

We hear it’s gained international
interest… Yes, which is still so
surprising to me! I had my Instagram
‘idols’ get in touch with me, which
I was starstruck by and has already
made the whole venture worthwhile.

What’s your process for making each
piece? After spending a long time in the
supermarket thinking about what fruit
would work well, looking at so many
bananas, pears, lemons and mandarins,
I cast the fruit in silicone rubber and PERSONAL INTEREST Devyn says she’s inspired by “spontaneity, being open to mistakes or failures, not taking
things too seriously, reading, travelling, architecture, photography, trying new food, going for walks, having
made plaster moulds around that. When a balance of art practice and life. I’m also really interested in how things are made — the production side of
these silicone plaster moulds are set, > making. I like the process more than the outcome.”

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