Janet Fullmer Bajorek

Painted Wood Assemblages
After twenty 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.

Unique Ceramic Sculpture
Janet Fullmer Bajorek's ceramic sculpture is unique in form and spirit. It comments on contemporary American society with a gentle humor at the same time it conveys the affection, anger and pathos experienced by all peoples. Bajorek feels her sculpture is the expression of her love of life.  She says, "I enjoy ceramic sculpting because of the tactile experience, the satisfaction of creating a three-dimensional object and the excitement of the unpredictable results of firing clay and glazes.