“Retelling and reshaping stories helps us to understand how we are entangled, where we meet, and how our differences may be viewed as disguises of our sameness." Kristin Berjornarud
Gwenda Blackwell (who uses the artist name of “Lapilli”) lives in the small NSW village of Nundle.
Her practice is inspired by a fascination for the figurative form both real and fantastical and the telling of stories.
Made from various types of air-dry clay, Gwenda carefully hand-sculpts every element using many and various mixed media to enhance her vision of these wondrous beings.
Gwenda is inspired by the landscape and intrigued as to how much our stories are deeply bound in the history of the land. Presently her works speak in a language that is a weaving of myth, folklore, symbolism and poetry – shaping the visible and invisible.
Gwenda was a finalist in the 2022 Wollomombi Sculpture in the Vineyards Prize, the 2021 Greenway Small Sculpture prize and 2021 Wollombi Sculpture in the Vineyards Prize.
“We need story, we need deep mythic happenings, as much as we need food and sun: to set us in our place in the family of things, in a world that lives and breathes and throws us wild tests, to show us the wildernesses and the lakes, the transforming swans, of our own minds.”