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check out my artist website here :)

Clare Kramer

Clare Kramer

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"Diver" sticker available now in a limited quantity 🩵

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A bit of unsolicited feedback that you can take or leave. Your "diver" sculpture is beautiful and I can see that you use text in a lot of your pieces, but imo it works against you in this one. Text can be great as a thematic anchor within an abstraction, but your "diver" piece is fairly literal or illustrative to begin with, so the text cuts away the journey of interpretation entirely and shrinks the possibility for the viewer to form an emotional connection to the piece, as there is little room for subjectivity and little mystery to meditate upon, as your artistic intention has been so overtly labeled. It's worth considering if the poetry you want write is already being expressed through your visual art.

I would encourage you to ask yourself questions around how you engage with art and how you perceive an artist's intentions. Do you seriously think I would spend the time and resources to make an artwork that is just about a pearl diver's hand, and write diver on it to make sure that everyone knew what it was?

A couple questions for you to ask yourself if so desired, off the top of my head:

Why would I, the artist, write diver on the hand if it's already clear that it's referencing a pearl diver? What could a word on a body part, mimicking a tattoo, mean in the contexts of identity, action, and individual purpose? What could a pearl diver represent emotionally or culturally? Why is the hand not attached to an arm?

I would gently suggest that you are making a mistake in assuming work that appears literal is shallow or flat and leaves little room for interpretation.

Is it possible that said work being heavy-handed and literal is actually a conduit for further exploration past the obvious for those with the ability to imagine an artist's intellectual and emotional context, not just their own?

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"Knife," 2026.

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"Knife," 2026. Driftwood, matte medium, gel medium, thread, czech glass beads, garnet beads, pearl powder. Measurements are approx. 10.75 x 4.4 x 1.5 inches.

This ongoing body of work draws from two fairytales; the first is The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. This sculpture an interpretation of the knife the little mermaid is given to use against the prince who didn't love her back. Even with a broken heart, she can't bring herself to use it, and instead chooses to die herself.

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"Wish," 2026. Freshwater mussel shells, raw silk, matte medium, pearl powder, czech glass beads, colored pencil, gloss gel, freshwater pearl. Approx. 3 x 3.5 x .5 inches

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"Diver," 2026. Photo transfers onto cotton, freshwater pearls, fish hook, thread, colored pencil, gloss medium, gloss gel, polyfill. dimensions: slightly smaller than my hand :)

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from "cleaning up the spill"

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the cover of my new zine :)

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the first 2 pages of my new zine

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the last three pages of "love letter" :)