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One piece at a time

Photo by Tamell SimonsMixed media: Paper, clay and photography will take over the walls of the Edinburgh Gallery this Friday.Left to right: Judy Wong, Fiona Rose Rodriguez-Roberts and .Kendra Ezekiel.

n a garage next to random pieces of furniture and gardening paraphernalia, pieces of art in clay are being moulded. Judy Wong creates when and where she can.

?My ?art studio? is actually a none too glamorous garage,? she said. ?Half of it is sorted as my work area and the other half is stuffed with old furniture and gardening equipment.

?You?re right, we?re all very busy and it would be so easy to be distracted from doing any artwork, but if you give yourself a deadline, and there is nothing quite like having an exhibition opening as the deadline date, it gives you the incentive to work, as you don?t want to face people and have no work to show them.

?In some respects it?s all Kendra?s doing, this exhibition came about when she asked me whether I would like to work towards a show sometime in the future and it seemed like a good idea at the time, as it was so far away.

?Then as the time draws nearer and your ideas are still in your head or sketched down on paper rather than properly realised the pressure and stress to make is very great but saying that when I am in my garage/studio I love spending time on my artwork.?

Sculptural forms in clay is the medium Ms Wong is using in this exhibition.

?I?m using clay to produce sculptural forms,? she said, ?and I work on a few pieces at one time so it?s hard to judge how long it takes to make one piece, though it is quite a long time.

?With clay you have to think of technical issues such as drying times, as this can affect the clay work, you can get cracks and things can warp if not dried out properly.

?It?s quite unpredictable at times, and the artwork can be very fragile and may break ? these are the dilemmas of working with clay.?

Describing her work she said, the artwork is just one piece made up of several pieces put together.

?Before this I exhibited sculptural forms made in wire, namely fish and decorative handbags and paintings using gouache,? Ms Wong said. ?This is a departure from this but it?s going back to what I trained in and this artwork isn?t what I would call commercial. ?The theme and inspiration are interlinked and it is family, it?s a personal, but a universal theme.?

When asked what did art mean to her, she simply answered: ?Too big a question to answer!?