PDX Profile: Lindsey Sedlar, of Love, Lindsey

I loved Lindsey Sedlar's collage plates on first sight. What a great application for special bits of paper and wonderful saved images! They're so fun and whimsical. And useful . . . this is becoming more and more important as my house reaches critical mass.

Be sure to visit the Love, Lindsey Etsy shop to see more photos of her work! And enjoy the interview....

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Tell us about plates. What inspired you to create your line of them?
My plates are little jewels of idle hands. I find it impossible to sit still. I am always in the process of making something, and the collages started in college as silly projects and turned into a way to step into the world of art shows, which I love.

I have been experimenting with square pieces of glass and things other than plates (bowls, glass panes, coasters) but I always return to the plate. I love the preconceived idea of what a plate is and that I can help people think about something so common in a different way.

How do you approach your collage work? Do you have a plan in mind, or does it just happen?
It is usually a combo of planning and chance. One image will inspire me, and that leads to my pairing
images that may seem arbitrary but have a story when together. Every plate has a back story! I love
searching through books and magazines for pictures, that is what it is really about… the hunt! I am a bit obsessed with what it visually means to be a girl in our society and I tend to explore that in many of my plates. They are really a way for me to play with imagery, textures and color that has a very playful result.

I thought this line in your Etsy profile was really interesting: "I majored in ceramics but just can't handle the seriousness of it..." Will you elaborate on this for us?
Well, ceramics as a subject is pretty serious! There is such a strong history of the medium behind you when you create a ceramic piece, it overwhelmed me sometimes. When I was a child I never would have guessed that I would have majored in an art form that is typically thought of as brown by most! I could never embrace the history of the clay I used and for years - I was trying to make the clay do something it wasn't meant for.

I turned away from it and eventually buried myself in paper and glue and images of happy pretty things. But I always returned to my deep love of ceramics and eventually found a way to express myself in unglazed porcelain and colored slips that satisfied my unclaimed girl-ness and my love of mud. The plates have always been my escape from the art school attitude I was surrounded by. People were always surprised I had time to make so many plates, but they didn't understand that I needed to make them to stay sane.

How do you define the difference between "Art" and "Craft?"
I tend to separate them by the item's function, which probably relates to my ceramics background. If it is something to be physically used (not just looked at), I usually think of it as craft. If it is created primarily to be looked at, I usually think of it as Art.

I feel like the term “craft” has a negative connotation, but this is generally to be blamed on ignorance. Or someone overusing the term. Something I LOVE about my plates is that I basically take their function away. I rarely use the ones that I made for myself! They are hanging on my wall! So what are they? Art or craft? By my definition I am still not sure, this gets me into trouble at art/craft fairs when they ask me to define my work! I always say "Well, that is subjective..."

What are some of your favorite creative spots in Portland?
I love the parks. I love the Goodwill Bins and also Portland Craigslist. If you have said "Free Magazines," I probably took them.