sabrina mantle
multi-media artist

elemental studios

Websites:

• http://elemental.artspan.com

I love to create and find many forms, styles and mediums fun to work in. Currently I am focusing on oil paintings and photography but I never know what's next. I find nature a constant source of inspiration but also love the industrial and just plain weird. Right now I am trying to branch out online and see what kind of connections I can make to help my business. That includes a new blog, sabrinamantle.wordpress.com and maybe future Youtube excursions.

I often find in painting I like to take a ordinary object and show its beauty, either by lighting, color choice or making it huge! I think of these paintings as everyday icons. For example one of my favorite paintings is of a chrome kitchenaid mixer showing all the beautiful grays and hypnotizing reflections. With photos I am more random I never know what will catch my eye but I do find I often shoot something in a way that captures its lines, composition, and color making it more abstract and losing original reference. I also am drawn to decay, rust, cracking and all sorts of texture found in industrial chaos. Nature also has great texture I love to shoot, rocks and trees being two of my favorites.

This last year is the first time I have made a effort to work at becoming an artist professionally and I am trying to learn all I can about this as a business. I have some gallery exposure and a web site (elemental.artspan.com) but know I need more to suceed. I need to learn my market, trends, advertising, pricing, where to show, accounting, and many more things for this venture to begin to support me.

Growing up I had many small classes on painting, drawing, and general art with two years spent after high school at Ivy Tech studying commercial art and photography. Ten years later I attended IU Bloomington Fine Art school where I took more painting and photography along with some sculpting, textiles, woodworking, 2 and 3D desing, metal, and printmaking.

Over the years I have tried my hand at sewing, fabric art, furniture design and refinishing, folk art painting, sign painting, and logo design. I also am an avid gardener and herbalist and this often combines with my art and vice versus.