Pörrö Sahlberg
Pörrö Sahlberg was born in 1971 and is living in Helsinki with her husband and two adorable girls.
Contact
porro @ hiidet dot com
In my own words
As a child I dreamed, that my future was in either writing or teaching. The art came into the life much later, first in form of crafting jewellery and then slowly growing from there to textile and wall art. It was bit of an accident that it all started – a complete stranger bought handmade jewellery bought from my neck at the bus stop and when I told about that freak occasion to friends, they started to buy my jewellery too. I have always been interested in bit larger scale jewellery and as it was not available, I learned to make my own as a teenager. Selling them was easy leap from wanting to make tons of jewellery.
I had tried polymer clay somewhere around 1991-1992 but because it was not available in Finland I almost forgot the material for years. Then some day 1995 I saw lots of it in sale in local craft store. I bought 10 packets and went back a week later to get me more. I was addicted but the information about polymer clays was almost non existent. So I tried, everything and everything that came into my mind. Soon most of the other materials vanished from the jewellery I was selling and I was monogamous to polymer clay for years.
Enlargement of scale and starting to combine textile techniques with polymer clay was partly an accident too. Knitting was a long lost hobby that came back in form of small children’s clothing. I was getting married and wanted to have polymer clay flower “things” as my wedding bouget. I had to learn to crochet to make it, but while doing it I discovered several interesting techniques and ideas about what all could be possible to do with polymer clay and yarn. After that I have tried combining knitting, crocheting, makrame, weaving and sewing by hand in both larger scale wall pieces and (un)wearable art.
I describe myself as polymer clay artist although the reality is that most of my work is somewhat mixed media. With jewellery I am mainly combining polymer clay with glass, cotton cord and silver. But with sculptures and wall pieces I am all about combining textures from both the yarn world and polymerclay together. Most of my polymer clay pieces have at least one hole in them – even the larger pieces are constructed with pieces that have some kind of hole for threads to go trough.
Working with someone else
Working with someone else is both enormous challenge and richness. I usually love working alone – the best working evinroom for me is completely alone in the house. How ever sharing visions and continuing from where someone has started to finish the piece is surprisingly easy. I am not jealous of ideas or unfinished projects – if the vision continues to something else I planned I am accepting the change as necessary part of the process.
The most interesting part of co-operative working is the difference between the materials and visions we both like to work with. Where polymerclay is mostly art of “adding more and shaping bit more” work in the wood is art of “taking the extra pieces off to relieve the shape”. As we both have strong knowledge of our own materials it has been exiting to realise there is not much information available for combining the materials and techniques together. We are still in the start of this adventure, and still have many teqhniqal aspects to conquer before being able to do the pieces we have planned. But the journey ahead looks promising and interesting.
