Plaster Art Inspired by Maine Marshes and Beaches – Liz Ames
About Liz Ames
Liz Ames is a consummate art educator. Her own artwork is influenced by living along the coast of Maine. Her artwork is influenced by her favorite places in the marshes and along the beach. Liz enjoys collecting things brought in by the tide and casting them with materials that are natural and biodegradable and/or recyclable.
Plaster Relief Art Inspired by Maine’s Coast
Liz Ames talks about her lifelong interest in the small details of the natural world, from the curve of a shell to the movement of seaweed underwater. Through her plaster art, she preserves those delicate coastal forms in realistic detail.
Plaster casting has been used by scientists for hundreds of years as a way to study nature in different stages. Liz was inspired to explore the process after watching her husband, a restoration plasterer, work with the material. With research and experimentation, she began adapting the technique into a more artistic process focused on the Maine coast.
Liz begins each piece by creating a composition with seaweed, shells, and other natural items collected from the ocean. She recreates the arrangement in a mold, then pours in a special mixture of high-grade plaster. Once the plaster dries, she sands, seals, and finishes the piece with wax to create a patina that brings out the fine details.
The finished work becomes a plaster relief sculpture that can be hung on a wall, placed on a shelf, or displayed as a reminder of Maine’s marshes, beaches, and coastal landscapes.
Sustainability is central to Liz’s process. She is careful to use natural materials whenever possible, including packaging that can biodegrade or be recycled. For Liz, the goal is to create coastal art with a lighter environmental footprint.
Through her plaster relief art, Liz Ames preserves the quiet beauty of shells, seaweed, and shoreline textures while honoring the natural world that inspires her.
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Pamela Ferris-Olson (00:12): Women Mind the Water Podcast engages artists in conversation about their work and explorers the connection with the ocean. Through these stories, Women Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures. Today, I am speaking with Liz Ames, a native Mainer, who is a consummate art educator, among many other things. Liz's artwork is influenced by her favorite places along the shore, and the many things she's collected there. Liz is founder of Echos and Stone, a shop on Etsy that features her castings of sea creatures. She is extremely proud of the fact that the materials she uses are natural and biodegradable or recyclable. Welcome, Liz.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (01:03): Let me start by asking you about your journey. How did you become an artist?
Liz Ames (01:09): Oh, that's a great question. I grew up with a mom as an art teacher. One of my aunts is an art teacher as well. I think that when you have creative people around you, that help foster that creative energy and really push you to think differently. I'd say that my journey as an artist started from day one. I think it has a lot to do with people telling you that you're an artist as well. I think that's really important with my students at school as well. I think that everybody has the ability to be an artist, but I became an artist because I was able to have that opportunity to allow myself to try a whole bunch of different media. I was introduced to museums at a very young age as well. It just was always around me and I've always loved it.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (02:19): Tell me how you arrived at what you do in terms of your art.
Liz Ames (02:24): Yeah. That's kind of a funny journey. As an art teacher, I have to be extremely knowledgeable of most subjects in art. I'm always dabbling in all sorts of different things. My students at school can learn a whole bunch of, a whole variety of materials. I also, in that way, need to be frugal because of that. The base of my art currently in Echoes and Stone is a combination of different plasters, which happened to be a more affordable option in terms of creating. Also, my husband is a plaster and drywall contractor. It has been around me for about a decade or so, and I just... As he was researching his job and we were learning more about lime and limestone, and the fact that it's derived from the ocean itself, it's from ocean creatures. I just loved that connection to bring in artwork that was not only created from the earth, but was also...
Liz Ames (03:50): The imagery on it is exactly from what it was at one point in time. It's cool to think of it as an ancient artifact or a fossil that has re-become a fossil. I've done a lot of drawing and painting and I actually did a lot of figure drawing in college, but I found that my drawings and paintings, I've almost become like too emotionally attached to. It was really hard for me to produce something and sell it immediately. I really had quite an emotional attachment to my artwork. To find a medium where I can, especially my relief sculptures, where I can cast, I can create a mold and then cast it and get about three or four casts out of that one mold, I can actually keep one for myself and then I can decide to sell the other ones if I wanted to.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (04:46): I'd like to know more about your process. How do you choose your subjects and how do you go about creating each piece?
Liz Ames (04:54): I have always been connected to the ocean as a native Mainer and especially coastal Maine. I grew up in Arundel, which is about 15 minutes from a couple of different beaches. My parents had a house that they bought in the '80s on a dime, because it had burned a bit, in Port Clyde. I had connections to both Southern Maine, coastal Maine, and the mid-coast. The beach was really a playground. All of my best memories as a kid growing up were kind of flipping over rocks in tide pools and seeing what scurried out from underneath them and just creating Mandela's out of things in the sand or all sorts of different ways that you can be creative at the beach.
Liz Ames (05:46): What I wanted to do is I've always, if I'm not at the beach, I'm thinking about the beach. When I started creating artwork, especially with the lime plaster, I wanted to create those same kind of feelings that you get where, because seaweed is such a funny material, you can't really bring a piece of seaweed home because not only is it a little bit smelly, but it's just not something that I can do. I wanted to create something that kind of captured the essence of the seaweed in the water. When I was researching plaster and kind of where it's evolved from in terms of not only like a house material, but scientists and botanists back in the day, hundreds of years ago, used to use it to cast kind of botanical life and kind of the essence that like seaweed gets dry when it's low tide and when it's wet, it really kind of creates this almost like underwater forest.
Liz Ames (06:52): I wanted to create artwork that really kind of brings you back to the ocean and kayaking through the islands and kind of pushing yourself through that wet seaweed and what you see in tide pools and what you see when you look down in the Maine oceans. That's kind of how I got my subject.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (07:16): I'd like to hear the story behind a particular piece that you've created, one that reflects your connection with the ocean.
Liz Ames (07:27): That's a good one. They're all so different, but a lot of them are similar in a lot of ways. I will probably describe one of my larger seaweed pieces that incorporates seaweed and shells. Basically, these are relief sculptures, so it's flat on the backside and then it kind of, there's a three-dimensional quality to it on the front side. I'm thinking of one in particular where the seaweed kind of cascades around the top. Basically, in the actual artwork, I've placed the seaweed in a very certain way that kind of looks like it's being pulled by the ocean, but also have added elements like oyster shells and muscle shells to kind of create that kind of tide pool effect. I create in kind of a minimalist fashion where I like to create something where your mind can kind of make up the rest of it.
Liz Ames (08:37): I thought for a while about adding color to my imagery, but I thought that it would be more interesting actually, if your mind actually created what colors you might've seen in that moment, or you remembered in that moment. I also liked the idea of the fact that my pieces always change, specifically my relief sculpture pieces, because depending on where your light source is in your house, the shadows cast off of those relief pieces of seaweed and shells, those shadows are going to be different all day long, depending on how the sun is in your room. They change constantly, which I really enjoy that they're constantly changing.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (09:20): How is your art and expression of who you are as a person and your view of the world?
Liz Ames (09:26): I would say that my art is an expression of me as a person, because I've always kind of felt a deep connection to our coast. I know the impact of pollution and over fishing and all of those different things, because I see it very locally. I've been very lucky to have been born so close to our coast, but it's also been interesting to see the impact of even overpopulation of seals. Let's say in Southern Maine, there's been a huge influx of an overpopulation of seals. We found a lot of sick ones on the beach. I just think that when people are connected to the ocean or if they have an appreciation for the ocean or the place that they live, specifically Maine.
Liz Ames (10:26): In my case, I think that it's important that whatever you're creating is not only going to kind of showcase things that you love, but the materials that you use are not going to be harmful. I know a lot of artists recently have gotten into resin and I don't know if they've looked into the negative effects of resin and I'm just trying to be as eco-conscious as I possibly can in my creations. That would be why it's an expression of me and my view of the world.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (11:06): How would you like others to react to and use your art?
Liz Ames (11:10): I think that I would really like people to kind of react to my artwork the way they do to ice cream. When you're getting an ice cream, you're like, this is amazing. I want them to remind them of maybe a special memory that they had of the ocean. I want them to use my artwork kind of however they feel it should be used, I guess. I would personally put it in a location where it was kind of sunny, so you'd be able to see the cast shadow all day long and see it change. If people want to put it in a darker corner, that's fine too.
Pamela Ferris-Olson (12:02): I have been speaking with them. Liz Ames for the Women Mind the Water Podcast series. The series can be viewed on the womenmindthewater.com, and an audio version of this podcast is available on the Woman Mind the Water website and then iTunes. A special thanks to Jaine for her music, Women of Water. This is Pam Ferris-Olson. Thank you for listening.
