I am a contemporary sculptor living in Ōtepoti Dunedin with my family, human and animal, studying a bachelor of visual arts fulltime and running an Etsy store inbetween parenting and assignments. I make a mix of contemporary works exploring political and environmental subject matter that is important to me as well as mixed-media ceramic alterations and uncommon material experimentation.
I am drawn to and take inspiration from; folk stories and fairytales, urban exploration and decaying architecture, entomology and taxidermy, classical ballet, unsolved true crime cases, psychology, fear, environmental issues, politics and personal trauma – basically anything that makes up my personality will make its’ way into my work eventually.
What does Ōtepoti Renaissance mean? I am currently a bit taken by the optimistic view that art and creativity will come out of the global pandemic as it did following the bubonic plague with everyone taking time and space to appreciate their surroundings and reevaluate how they spend their days. Besides the ongoing world situation, I have also been dealing with surgeries and questionable health for the last five or so years, and making art is one of the only things that brings me joy from a seated position. I’d love to be climbing trees or returning to ballet, but such is life sometimes! Ōtepoti is the Māori name for Dunedin, New Zealand, where I happily live with my immediate family and pets.
Most historians interpret the emergence of the radical death iconography as a manifestation of the traumas that people suffered during the plague epidemics. However, the iconography also can reflect the passion for life, how strongly people were attached to it, and how bitter it was to lose it.
Sardis Medrano-Cabral
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View Etsy shop here
One Of A Kind Upcycled Figurines
Thrifting – or op shopping in New Zealand – secondhand figurines, dismantling them and putting them back together in interesting (read: macabre) ways using has been a huge love of mine since I first upcycled a sculpture for my sister’s birthday, and the love for the process really grew from there. I love to repurpose objects that are typically seen as undesirable or out of fashion in the modern world unless attached to sentimentality, such as porcelain figurines and fine china. I adore turning something that has been donated or discarded entirely into a piece that someone with a bizarre sense of humour would adore. If you would happily put any of my creations on your mantelpiece, we would be friends.
I use a variety of materials including clay, wire, epoxy resin, oil paint, foam, pigment and more. The majority of the figurines are made from poured resin, ceramic or porcelain and were originally manufactured between 1970 to 2010. There will never, ever, be two exactly the same! I love finding them in secondhand stores where they are often not seen as cool or desirable in modern homes, especially with the uptick in modern minimalist design and a move away from super personalised home decor, and turn them into weird little creations that someone would be excited to have in their collection again.
Each of my figurines comes with a birth certificate to let you know that I have altered it (with my whole heart) and made it into a new beautiful object for you.
View all currently available figurines here
Vintage Colouring Pages
For the past few years I have been collecting public domain (out of copyright) illustrations and artworks that lend themselves well to be converted into modern SVG files. So far I have published 16 full collections including the original illustration, my vectorized version, a formatted A4 PDF + PNG of each page to print and colour in as well as matching printable bookmarks with nearly every collection. While the source material is publicly available to anyone the process of finding, converting and formatting illustrations to usable, cleaned up files is very time consuming, so these sets are available for a fee, but I have tried to keep them as affordable as possible so everyone can enjoy them. In the future I will have a number of free printable pages available on this website so keep an eye out!
