There’s nothing magical about hanging out the daily wash but London artist Helga Stentzel sees things differently. She’s artfully arranged socks, shirts, pants and whatever else into shapes she calls “clothes line animals,” takes pictures and sells the compositions on-line. She got the idea from toiling in the laundry room after she dropped a sock on the floor and noticed it resembled the snout of a horse and suddenly, a new art form was born.
“My art is about finding magic in the mundane,” she says. “I’m constantly fascinated by the colours, shapes, and textures of the world around us. It’s really about paying attention to what’s around and appreciating them.”
Stentzel has been paying attention to the world around her since childhood. An imaginative kid, she would see dragons in the patterns of the carpet and creatures in the knots of wood.
“My consciousness was telling me there was more to everyday life,” she says. Mind you, it would take decades before she translated her visions into art works. First, she attended St. Martins, a prestigious English art school and then worked as an art director in a London advertising agency. She even ran a children’s clothing business.
She finds humour in the most ordinary things. In her earlier series called Food for Thought she took everyday items like bread, vegetables, and kitchen utensils and arranged them into colourful tableaux. It’s a clever use of real objects. The brain knows they are inanimate but the artist has imbued them with so much personality that they seem to come alive.
Check out the Food for Thought Gallery:
And now she’s turning clothes into animals.
Her imagination is easily stimulated. As soon as she gets an idea, she puts it in her sketchbook. That’s only the starting point though. From that moment onward, the stories and visuals start buzzing in her head.
It sounds like fun but it can take weeks and even months to find the proper clothes and even then, it can be difficult. For instance, for “Hang On,” the construction that looks like a polar bear, she had to hand-paint a toque when she couldn’t find the one she wanted. It was no picnic working in minus 32-degree Celsius weather either. It was so cold her fingers kept freezing and she was only able to work for moments at a time.
Stentzel has been called a humorist, a conceptual photographer, and even a social commentator. It’s nice to be recognized but Stentzel’s really just content to draw our attention to the world around us and make us laugh.
“I hope my art will help people connect with their inner child,” she says “and rediscover the joy of savoring little visual delights in and outside their homes.”
Check out the Hang On Gallery below:
To learn more about Helga and shop for her creations, visit her website Helga Stentzel.
