She Sells Seashells
Janice Plihal has been active in the arts community for the last forty five years. She started her career as a fiber artist designing one-of-a-kind garments that were shown throughout the United States and Canada. From the beginning, Plihal has always been fascinated with form and function as well as the interplay of texture, shape, and color. She is best known for her work with Designed to Wear, the internationally acclaimed showcase of wearable art. A fundraiser for the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, Plihal produced, directed, and choreographed the juried event for eleven years.
Her passion for fiber took her to Menucha along the Columbia Gorge where she studied with Angelita Surmon and began immersing herself in the art of handmade paper. She apprenticed with both Peggy Prentice and Lillian Bell during their workshops throughout the 1980’s in Portland. These experiences led her to produce a series of collage work with her handmade papers in which she combined fiber, threads and remnants from her clothing line.
When she purchased her first home in the early 1990’s, her interests transitioned from fiber to furniture and interior design. With a strong design background she learned quickly that she could apply the same design principles to furniture and interiors. She began salvaging found objects and architectural elements to create one-of-a-kind primitive furniture pieces which she sold at Stars Antiques Mall in Portland, Oregon for the past twenty years and now at Burleson Antique Mall in Burleson, Texas with her cross country move.
Over the last twenty years she has been traveling with her husband to Hawaii and Florida. While he was surfing, she began collecting shells from the different beaches and a large collection of shell, coral, and beach glass took center stage in the displays in their home. With a great photo from their holiday, she began searching for an appropriate frame. Ultimately, she fashioned her own from the shell collection she had amassed over the years. Friends saw the work and began requesting similar pieces for their beach photos. The three dimensional shell collages inspired a new body of work for Plihal. The parallels in her fiber collage and her shell art show her keen sense of design and a sense of intimacy with each piece created. There is a tendency to view the work from a distance and appreciate the sculptural quality, but on closer examination, one sees the intricacy and subtlety of details which make each piece so unique and endearing. “I like to think of the pieces being submerged at the bottom of the ocean, slowly becoming encrusted with layer after layer of shell and glass. The success of the picture frames led to mirrors and decorative boxes and suddenly the trips to Hawaii became a necessity for more shells! My husband has even helped pick shells after a long day of surfing!! What started as a way to unwind during holiday has actually turned out to be a new passion for expressing my love of form and function,” states the artist.
Plihal works full time out of her studio at her home and describes the new venture as ‘incredibly calming and exciting’. A Midwestern farmer’s daughter, her first experience with the ocean was at her grandmother’s home in Nebraska where a conch shell sat under the legs of a secretariat desk. On arriving at the house, she would always run to grab the shell and hold it to her ear to hear the sounds of the ocean. “ It was such a comforting memory that when I bought my first home I inherited the desk and immediately purchased a conch shell to set underneath. It is a fabulous memory and I love seeing it every morning as I come downstairs…I never knew the true calming effect of that sound until I moved to the West Coast in 1978. Even with the recent move to be closer to family in Texas, they found property one block from a lake and continue to appreciate the beauty and benefits of being so close to the water. My husband and I laugh that while he is a water baby, I have to have my feet on the ground; it’s just that now, that ground has turned from soil to sand.”
Her work has been featured in a number of stores along the East and West Coasts as well as being featured in Country Living, Traditional Home, Romantic Country, and Coastal Style. Custom work is always welcome.
