July 25, 2017 | UHCL Staff
To Colleen Steblein, art isn’t something fragile to be left untouched on a shelf. For her, art should be amusing and colorful, and it’s to be pulled, touched, twisted and truly enjoyed. You won’t find any dark colors, somber figures, or depressing themes in her collections. Inspired by memories of a happy, toy-filled childhood in Dallas, Steblein’s whimsical art is all about play.
“It’s funny, but I have an obsession with toys,” Steblein said. “My pieces are hand built and often incorporate other media or kinetic elements. Plus, they take a long time to make. So if I’m going to spend all that time making them, it’s going to be something I have fun with, or I’m not doing it!”
Steblein, who received her master’s in humanities with a concentration in ceramics from University of Houston-Clear Lake earlier this year, said she has to touch things in order to be creative. “I started my early career as a graphic designer, way back when you actually moved the elements of the page around by hand,” she said. “Computers made my graphic design degree obsolete, but I still wanted to manipulate things by hand, not sit behind a keyboard.” She turned to ceramic art as new outlet.
The influence of her early days as a graphic designer are evident in her work, currently on view as part of the 2017 UHCL Graduate Student Exhibition till August 11 in the Art Gallery. “I really like black outlines with pops of color. I use that often in my work and it comes from my experience in graphic design.”
The pops of color—specifically primary colors—go back to her memories of a happy childhood in Dallas, manifested in her love of recreating her favorite toys. “Color is important,” she said. “I usually choose primary colors because they’re toys. I do a black underglaze, which goes back to my graphic design days, and then I wipe it off for a vintage look.”
“I know a piece is going to be right when I get the giggles,” Steblein said. “They don’t start out with a name, but they often name themselves. It sounds silly, but it’s true.”
Older generations might recall playing with Fisher Price Little People figures—the ones with the round bottoms that fit uniformly into the Fisher Price school bus and cars. Steblein fondly remembers playing with her collection of figures. “I loved the original Little People when I was a kid. They were so simple,” she said. “When they were redesigned, they became too ‘busy’ for me. I like the graphic simplicity of the old Fisher Price toys.”
Pointing to the little blonde girl in her collection, she said, “I loved this one the most when I was little.” But Steblein definitely put her own signature on her collection of Fisher Price Little People. “I taught art in Dickinson ISD for 18 years and I encountered great kids of every race, so that’s how I made my Little People,” she said. “What they become is inspired by the form I throw on the pottery wheel. Ideally, they should have the same sized bottom like the originals, but mine have different bodies,” she explained.
“I wanted to do a bride and groom and I decided to make them Hispanic,” she said. “The original plan was to color all the flowers pink since I thought that would be a nice contrast against the white dress,” she said. “But through some wonderful conversations with others at my studio who are from Mexico, I learned that the flowers had to be white in accordance with their customs. I loved having these conversations and learning about another culture in a way that only art can communicate.”
For Steblein, the best and most time-consuming part of constructing her toy works of art is hand-building them. “My work is always hand or slab built. I don’t use the pottery wheel much,” she said. Noting her rendition of a once-popular pull toy in her current collection, she said, “The spring in the middle of this little dog came from my husband’s grandfather’s chair. I love vintage things, reusing objects, and mixed media in general,” she said. “I’m working on more pull toys where the pieces move when you pull. Sometimes an entire piece is inspired by a very odd object that I find, like the chair springs or even just a stick.”
Steblein said she spends long periods of time hand-building her toys, hoping to convey her sense of fun and love of childhood to those who see it. “I want people to have a moment of fun when they see my work,” she said. “Someone else will own it but they’ll never get to play with it the way I did.”
Along the way, Steblein said she encountered some critics who did not appreciate the element of fun expressed in her artistic vision. “Someone once said my work wasn’t scholarly enough,” she said. “But two of my professors here at UH-Clear Lake, (Assistant Professor of Art and Design) Clay Leonard and (Assistant Professor of Art) Jason Makepeace, were always extremely supportive and they validated my work. I’m really grateful for their encouragement.”
“Colleen is a very talented artist who has invested in her work and her own ideas and through that hard work has resulted a very successful body of work,” said Leonard. “Her work really began to resonate when she explored her own history of play and started to push her work with this concept. The kinetic interactive objects blur the lines of art, toy, and play while being able to engage an audience with ceramic art in a new way.”
Steblein added that Dr. Leonard had forced her out of her comfort zone as an artist. “I never really liked working on the pottery wheel before, but he pushed me to learn how to work on it. I realized I don’t like it as much as I like hand building, but because of him, I learned enough about the pottery wheel to make an informed decision about my feelings. I appreciate my UHCL professors for their support of my work and for pushing me as an artist.”
UHCL’s College of Human Sciences and Humanities offers a bachelor’s degree in art and design with concentrations in graphic design, studio, and teacher certification. To learn more, visit www.uhcl.edu/human-sciences-humanities/departments/communication-studio-arts/art-design.
