Exploring boundaries
Hoover resident and marble artist Lorraine Singh said that ever since she was a kid, she’s loved creating various forms of creative or experimental art.
“I’m always interested in learning new processes or techniques,” Singh said. “How I can take something to the next level? What can I do with it just to explore boundaries?”
Singh started off in ceramic sculpture and tried regular sculpture and painting before finally finding her niche in one particular form of art: marbling.
“My friends like to say that I’m a little wild with it,” she laughed. “For me, I like a lot of contrast, that’s the most interesting part of marbling.”
No marbled work is the same, she said, and it can be fascinating how various colors make individual works look completely different.
Singh describes the process of marbling as an art form where you float different colors of paint in water and get creative by raking or combing different swirls and design patterns into whatever medium you are marbling.
“[When I marble] I keep going and going and going with it, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ve only lost a sheet of paper, that’s it,” Singh said. “I’ve learned maybe I need to pull back more and that probably is the biggest challenge for me, learning when to stop.”
She became fascinated with the marbling process the first time she saw it on a video online, and decided to experiment. For about a year, Singh said, she played around with it.
“I was OK [at it], but it wasn’t anything to write home about,” she said.
Singh then started to take a few workshops and perfect her own personal process in a studio at home through trial and error. Singh said she mostly uses acrylics in her art, but occasionally changes it up depending on the effect she’s trying to achieve. Her background of painting has aided in her use of colors, she said.
“I’m still learning, obviously we’re never quite where we want to be,” she said. “But I started getting better and getting some results I really like.”
Singh officially launched her Etsy account, The Marbled Bee, in February 2017, where her main focus was selling travelers notebooks. She said that since then, she has mostly stuck to marbling sheets of heavy-weight watercolor paper and leather notebooks, which have been popular among some locals and fans of marbled products on Etsy.
She said the name The Marbled Bee originated from thinking about being ‘busy as a bee’ as an artist creating and making something beautiful, just like bees gathering pollen.
“They make something with delicious honey for us to consume and they have a fantastic work ethic, so I was just thinking about taking bits and pieces from them with my colors,” Singh said. “There’s just something about it that harmonized with me. It just fit.”
For the last two years, she’s also showcased and sold her work at Riverchase Loves Artists, an art show held every year at the Hoover Country Club.
Singh said she’s started to branch out and push herself to do larger paper or canvas pieces, in addition to experimenting with various fabrics and felt. The difficulty in scaling her projects up, she said, is that a lot more factors come into play, and she only has the width of her arms to guide her art. Despite that struggle, she’s excited to get the opportunity to be creative with it.
“I encourage people if you have something you want to do or want to try, you should do it,” Singh said. “Everyone is creative, and creativity is one of the best outlets in the world, whether it is knitting, painting, marbling, writing or making a movie.”
To see Singh’s work, go to etsy.com/shop/TheMarbledBee.