Helga Stentzel’s Crunchie shows her Household Surrealism Style. Photo: Artist

Helga Stentzel’s Household Surrealism Style allows her to turn almost every household item into art. Her innovative use of old clothes and household materials articulate her creativeness and humorous personality.  

By KAZAD

LONDON-London-based visual artist Helga Stentzel is an innovative artist who sees art in everything around her. Food and other household commodities incite her creative sensibility, forcing her to expose their hidden personalities. Nothing is beyond limits for this artist.  Clothes, kitchen utensils, books, bread, cabbage, corn on the cob, eggs, and washer and dryer are just a few of the household items Helga Stentzel transforms into art.

Stentzel describes her art as Household Surrealism:

To me, household surrealism is about finding magic in the mundane, seeing beauty in imperfections, and connecting to our reality in a new way. I love noticing playful similarities – be it a sweater on a clothing line looking like a horse or a slice of bread resembling a dog’s head.

Helga Stentzel works are series and each one provides insight into her creative mind and the avalanche of ideas that manifest in colorful characters and silly scenes.  One of Stentzel’s popular series is the Clothing Line Animals Series. Works in this series were created from used clothing: T-shirts, napkins, pants, sweaters, hats, and pegs, to name a few.   

Pegasus was created from an assortment of clothing, including a hoodie and pants. The tail of the black horse is a white napkin with vertical lines. Although Pegasus looks like a real horse at pasture, it is not. The construction and assemblage of Pegasus reveals Stentzel’s creative prowess at creating illusions and deceiving the eyes. Other works in the series are Smooothie (Cow) and Hang-On, a bear lamenting the disappearing snow in the Arctic. Smooothie and Hang-On were recently converted to NFTart to raise money for charity and other environmental causes.

Brad Pet: The Playful Puppy

Stentzel’s Edible Creation Series is as witty and innovative as her other creations. The series included Brad Pet, a crouching playful puppy made from bread sliced into different shapes. The puppy’s adorable small tail pokes out behind his body in a way that would make anyone fall in love.  Also in the series is Crunchie, another adorable puppy made from lettuce.

Household Surrealism Style is Food for Thought

In her Food for Thought Series, the artist explores edible everyday items to give them new meaning. An important example is The Real Egg Plant. The artist did a play on words and replaced plant garden eggs with chicken eggs. To give the eggs credence and better articulate the creative idea behind the work, the artist attached stems to the chicken eggs to make them look like plants. The finished work convincing and will anyone take a second look.   Other works in the series include Byte Sized and My Kind of Grapes made from green gummy bears.

The collection of works in Stentzel’s various series shows the artist can turn almost any material into something new.  But her creations are not as easy as they look. Each piece the artist creates goes through a rigorous process, including thoroughly observing and documenting her ideas in the thick notebook she carries around with her.  But that is just the starting point. “From this moment onward the stories and visuals start buzzing in my head: What will this horse look like? What’s her name and character? Does she like racing with other horses? – the list goes on and on!” she said.

The next step in the creative process goes through several stages starting from collecting the materials, visualizing the assemblage, and realizing the desired shape and pose.  After putting the materials together, the process still has to go through several final stages.

Helga Stentzel Draws Illusions and Colorful Characters

To make her creation realistic and personable, Helga Stentzel occasionally hand-draws the eyes and mouth of her character. Sometimes she uses pieces of paper and other materials to pull off the illusion of facial expressions and personality. After she is satisfied with her creation, Stentzel photographs her work in different scenes and backdrops for authenticity.

As with many other creative works, not all of Stentzel’s creations are successful. But the artist does not let failed ideas dampen her spirit. Instead, they serve as an inspiration for her. You can see more of her works.

A Humorous Person

Helga Stentzel’s works reveal a lot about her personality as a humorous person with a great sense of humor. Born in Siberia, Russia, Helga Stentzel has a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from Omsk State Institute of Technology and Advertising from Central Saint Martins. The artist worked in advertising for several years and ran a children’s clothing business before becoming a full-time artist. Stentzel is very observant, and that has become an essential part of her creative process.

Helga Stentzel’s childhood experience continues to shape her creativity and humorous approach to articulating her creative sensibilities.

Stentzel’s concept of Household Surrealism emanated from her childhood experience of assisting her grandmother in identifying forms on carpets, birch logs, and other objects. That childhood experience continues to shape her creativity and humorous approach to articulating her creative sensibilities. Helga Stentzel works across a wide range of media including illustration, photography, video, and stop motion animation. As a result of hard work, Helga Stentzel continues to make a mark in her artistic career. In 2020, she won the Snackable Content Awards “Food Art Creator of the Year,” an achievement that proves she must be doing a lot of things right.

Helga Stentzel’s art in the Household Surrealism Style is witty and humorous. What do you think? Share your thoughts. Leave a comment.