Local Artist Showcase

Tricia Hamel

Tricia Hamel of TJH Designs and former owner of Collage Fine Handcrafts has always had art in her life in some form or another. Five years ago she joined the Southern Connecticut Polymer Clay Guild. One of the members, Diane Gregoire, started a project called “Bottles of Hope.” While going through chemo for breast cancer, Gregoire decoratively covered little med bottles that she got from the nurses. She began to pass them out to other cancer patients as gifts of hope. The response was amazing and the demand became overwhelming, so she asked the guild for help. Six years later the project has spread from guild to guild, state to state, and presently to other countries. The bottles are never sold, always donated.

Tricia says she never knows what direction the clay will take her. It can be sculpted, carved, painted, sanded and polished. It can be layered over glass, wood, metal and even Paper Mache. Polymer clay can imitate wood, amber, ivory, jade, metal and just about anything else. Many of the techniques used are borrowed from other arts: millifiore cane work from glass-making and mokume-gane from Japanese metal work.