Magic Clams & Fishbowls

While my work has undergone various changes of style and medium over the years, certain forms have continued to interest me. One form which has occurred in my still-life paintings on and off for the past thirty years, and which epitomizes an elusive ineffable quality that is the quintessence and ultimate subject in all of my work , is a small fishbowl containing a magic clam.

Magic clams are clamshells filled with a system of paper flowers, leaves and small paper floats that are closed, then sealed with a simple strip of paper. The paper dissolves slowly in a glass of water and the shell opens revealing a red paper flower. It appears as if by magic.

When I was a child my mother used these magic clams as party favors. I can still vividly remember believing that they were magic. It is that unique time in childhood when there is magic that these paintings evoke, celebrate, or simply stand in as a beacon or a muse. A period where all is possible and every child is an artist. And for those transcendent moments in the imagination and during the creative process, when one feels that ineffable sense of magic and mystery.

- Tamara Elizabeth Krendel