Spotlight on Janet Meabon
Janet Meabon, Michigan-born but “a California girl from the age of two,” dreamed of becoming a fashion designer and took all the art classes she could as a youngster. But she says she never managed to master the art of drawing “hands and feet, a must for fashion designers.”
Marriage interrupted her art studies in junior college and took her to Army posts in Oklahoma and Germany. When she and her husband later returned to California and a new opportunity for art studies, Janet realized “that I would literally be a ‘starving artist’ since I couldn’t create on demand.” She ultimately got a Library Science degree and became a junior high school librarian for five years in Alta Loma.
“We moved to Tehachapi in 1984,” Janet says. “I worked at the Veterinary Hospital, the Bear Valley gate, and finally in Accounting at the prison. I medically retired after 16 years.” Her artistic pursuits through the years have included weaving, counted cross stitch (for which she designed her own patterns), ceramics, rubber stamping, and paper arts.
In 2005, Janet says she happened to go into the Bead Depot in Tehachapi to ask how to use polymer clay to make something for a paper project she was working on. “I stayed to watch Cheryl Harris’s beach bead demonstration. The store owner – artist Teresa Winchester – “suggested I take Christi Friesen’s [polymer clay] dragon class,” Janet says. “I thought, ‘No! I do not need to get involved in another craft!’ But I did and I am. I was instantly hooked.”
Janet is also now a peer of her mentors, having recently joined CrossRoads Gallery as a member artist (Teresa and Christi are both are long-time members of the Gallery). Many of Janet’s award-winning pieces have been recognized in the national magazine “Polymer Clay Café” and she is a regular contributor to local shows and fairs.
And she is still honing her skills. “I take all the polymer clay classes I can,” Janet says. “Beads, canes, sculpting, and surface techniques, I want to learn it all.”
She still especially loves Christi’s classes. “I learn how to make her simple and whimsical animals, and then I create my own realistic figures after much research. I like to put wild animals on geodes, and use other stones and minerals with my creations.”
Summing it up, Janet says, “I am so glad that I finally found my artistic niche with polymer clay.”
CrossRoads Gallery is glad too, for Janet’s artistic creations and displays add yet another welcome and sometimes surprising dimension to the art medium known as “polymer clay.”
