Making alternative, and often macabre, maximalist home decor and art is something I have been doing on and off for the majority of my life, but have only recently started selling my work to other people. 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, and of course many other artists’ work I admire.
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.
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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One Of A Kind Upcycled Sculptures
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 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. Their birth certificate makes them technically more collectible as each figurine is a named artwork, not to mention it’s a cool bonus if you are buying as a gift for someone else. My figurines are available directly through my site here for New Zealand and Australia customers, and on Etsy for other countries. If there is a figurine on this site that is not on Etsy and you are outside of NZ/AUS please send me a message and I will get an Etsy listing up for you
View all currently available figurines here
Vintage Colouring Pages
For the past year I have been collecting public domain (out of copyright) illustrations and artworks that lend themselves well to be converted into modern SVG files. As of April 2023 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!
Shop all colouring page collections on Etsy
Print On Demand – Society6
Print on demand is a new venture for me – I began creating seamless repeating patterns using elements of the colouring pages I had already created such as butterflies and insects and thought it would be so cool to see something I had made on a t-shirt or pillow. The cost of wholesale manufacturing is very prohibitive to a small business so without investing tens of thousands of dollars into stock, the best option was opening a POD store. This means that until you order it, nothing is printed. Working in this way minimises waste and unwanted items ending up in the landfill which I am a huge fan of, as well as being able to offer much cheaper shipping to anyone outside of New Zealand because those NZ courier rates are crazy (I know we live on an island, but still!). Any orders placed with Society6 with my designs on them will be manufactured and shipped directly to you with a small cut going to me, nothing gets printed that one one actually wants, and you’re not paying for other side of the world freight if you’re international to me – win all around!
