Carmen Simmonds
Carmen is a professional artist and tutor, working from her rural studio in Wanganui,
New Zealand. Her glasswork predominantly employs the lost wax casting technique
and she is widely known for her sculptural dress forms. Carmen’s glasswork is
collected and exhibited throughout New Zealand and internationally.
Since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2002, Carmen’s art practice has
evolved from explorations of dress and textile to express women’s individuality, into
rediscovering and emphasizing the handcrafts associated with historical garment
making processes. She has consistently crossed mediums in order to create her glass
sculptures, predominantly with cast bronze, aluminium, pewter, natural fibres and soft
materials.
In 2013, Carmen completed a Master of Art and Design. The associated research
highlighted how themes and art making processes consistently reoccur within
individual art practices. Within Carmen’s studio practice these reoccurring processes
are crafts such as needlework and crochet and the use of threads and stitching. Whilst
she continues to create her signature dresses and figurative production works,
Carmen’s current sculptures are narratives that combine evocative glass techniques
with mixed media, as a means of complimenting and enriching the form.
