Simple Art, Striking Effect

Renee Bliss Anderson’s artistic mediums are simple: recycled newspapers, water, flour, glue and house paint.

But what she creates with these materials is truly a testament to giving old things a new life.

Bliss Anderson, an ARTrails artist, has been creating large, whimsical paper mache spheres for five years now. Before then, she said she had never really made much art. She was an attorney and her husband, Keith, is a doctor at Washington Orthopaedic Center in Centralia.

“I got completely burned out on it,” she said. “I’m on my fourth or fifth career now.”

After leaving her law career, Bliss Anderson founded Bliss Studios near downtown Centralia. For the last five years, most of which she has shown at the Galvin School House.

Bliss Anderson said she was always attracted to the medium of paper mache, especially because it allows the artist to create three-dimensional images.

“I can’t reproduce things flat,” she said.

She developed a technique she said she has not seen anywhere else where she uses yoga balls as the form for large, brightly colored paper mache spheres. She first covers the yoga ball the with plastic wrap and then layers on the paper mache using a slurry of flour, water and glue painted onto recycled newspaper. Some of the larger sized balls will get as many as nine layers of paper mache to ensure they are structurally sound. They are finished with a smooth layer of masking paper purchased from the hardware store or sometimes toilet paper because it is very absorbent but creates a strong finish. When the final layers are dry, she makes a hole to remove the yoga ball and then begins designing a pattern.

Bliss Anderson prefers covering her paper mache works with repeating patterns. She uses some basic templates for larger shapes but draws the patterns on free hand. She takes her inspiration from shapes and patterns she likes, like those found in mandalas. But mostly, she said the shapes and images come from her own imagination.

“It’s kind of hard to explain, actually,” she said.

Knowing she was going to make a large body of work, Bliss Anderson said she was concerned that all of her sculptures be painted with hues that stay within the same color palate. She chose several complimenting colors of Sherwin Williams house paint so she could buy large quantities of the same color.

“That way they’re all going to have a similar feel,” she said.

She puts small amounts of her chosen paints in small squeeze bottles and carefully applies them to the drawn on patterns. She then hangs them to dry on a line in her painting room. She said the work can be tedious at times, especially when she sometimes paints and repaints the same pattern many times.

“Painting a sphere you can’t do it all at once because you’ll smear the back side so that’s why it’s important to have several pieces started at once,” Bliss Anderson said.

Bliss Anderson sometimes deconstructs the spheres to create different shapes. For instance she may cut off a side and place it back in the same spot upside down to create a concave spherical shape on one side. She also sometimes cuts pieces off a smaller sphere and adds them to a larger sphere or uses pieces of paper or cardboard to add raised texture to the sphere’s surface. But no matter the technique, Bliss Anderson said she seldom strays from the spherical shape.

“I don’t know I just love circles and spheres and I love patterns so that’s what I create,” Bliss Anderson said, adding with a laugh “I’m sure a therapist would have fun with that one.”

Bliss Anderson would like to eventually make her creations waterproof so they could be used as yard art. Her next experiment will be using recycled sheets painted with resin in place of the paper mache to make a weatherproof surface.