After thirty years of sculpting figurative work in ceramic clay, Janet Fullmer Bajorek found herself intrigued with a totally new artistic challenge. In June 2005 she encountered in her mother's garage a large group of industrial patterns that had been saved from the family business. Her father was, as her brother is, a patternmaker, sometimes called a modelmaker. Patternmakers make models in wood which are used by mold makers at foundries to form a cavity in sand into which molten metal is poured to form a casting. Most metal products we use originated with a wood pattern - think of anything from metal lamp bases and cooking pots to auto engine and space rocket parts. After the metal casting is made the wood pattern is no longer needed.
Fullmer Bajorek thought the wood patterns were visually interesting and representative of so much human thought and endeavor that she hated to discard them. So she created a new and different art form - assemblages of wood patterns on plywood bases which become wall-hanging, low-relief sculptures that she calls "wood assemblages." She strips the wood patterns of their original finishes, attaches them to a background board with a hanging system, and paints them. The images below show several of these wood assemblages, compositions which may contain from one to fifteen wood patterns.
"I am happy to be recycling these once useful parts of the manufacturing process into an exciting group of artworks, each totally unique in composition, color and feeling," says Fullmer Bajorek.
Available Wood Assemblages
Click on any image below to see a larger version and details.
Cruciform 40x48x9"
Buttoned Up 28x48x9"
Juggernaut of Technology 24x48x6"
Reaching for Space 24x38x7"
Horizon 28x48x4"
Whatever 24x38x5"
Creativity, Camille Claudel 24x40x7
Circled 53x60x5"
Party 28x48x7"
Stairway to Space 36x24x4"
The Eye 9x14x5"
Migra 40x22x7"
The above painted wood assemblages sell from $1,200 to $7,000.
Please e-mail or call Iguana Galleries for prices of specific works.
Fullmer Bajorek studied at the University of Redlands, California, and received a Bachelor of Arts Degree, Magna Cum Laude, in Latin American Sociology, History and Art Studies from the University of the Americas in Mexico City. She has studied painting, sculpture and ceramics in Los Angeles and New York and has exhibited on both coasts and in Minnesota. She now lives and sculpts in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is owner and director of Iguana Galleries. She is a member of the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California.
