SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - ArkLaTex Artistry’s Brittney Hazelton talks with Chang Liu, a China-born, Shreveport-based artist who creates whimsy, fun, and fantastical glow resin art.
Resin artist, Chang Liu started her LLC, Blanket Fort Creations with the hopes of bringing fantasy, whimsy, and imagination to people in an interactive way. Liu crafts unique glow-in-the-dark sculptures of creatures, imaginative scenes, and funny pieces in framed resin.
“The general idea is to bring art out to the people, that can be touched and handled and enjoyed in a real-life scenario,” says Liu.
Liu, originally from China, Liu met her husband Phil Goodfellow, and eventually, they moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, making it their home. Both she and her husband are artists and they often vend at events locally under the name, Blanket Fort Creations.
Why the name ‘Blanket Fort Creations’?
During the pandemic, Liu came up with the name of her company, Blanket Fort Creations.
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“My daughter and I started a tradition where, after we do spring cleaning, we take all the bedsheets in the house and we make a gigantic blanket fort and it stays up, its basically an open sandbox for whatever adventures we come up with,” explains Liu. " So, the idea is that everything is possible in this blanket fort.”
How does Chang Liu describe her own art?
“If I could put it in words, I wouldn’t have made it glow. I wanted something that.. when I experienced art, I was always told art was meant to make you feel something. Not necessarily happiness or sadness, but even curiosity, whimsy. Um, I have the uncontrollable urge to go up and poke something, and if art can make you want to do that then I think its done its job,” explains Liu. “So, in my particular case, I wanted to instill so much curiosity in a person that they can’t help but walk across that courtyard and ask, ‘What is this thing?’.”
Is it hard to work with resin?
Liu describes resin as persnickety, meaning fussy and requiring a precise and careful approach.
“Everything down to our humidity here, our oddly warm summers, and honestly, I think our pollen count may be contributing. There are times I don’t know what happened, and I’m going to blame the pollen,” says Liu. “My first six months of things were of questionable setting, and a lot of them did not make it to the booth. These days I’ve gotten it down to a pretty practiced habit, I can do it almost with my eyes closed.”
Recently, Liu has been experimenting with different recipes and creating unique formulas of her own.
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" I will have to bring you some to see, it’s a formula of my own. It’s a stable soft set resin,” says Liu. “So, you know how you look at something and your like, ‘does that squish? Can I poke it?’. So, the answer is yes, it does squish and you can poke it.”
She says plans to start adding them to her products, so you won’t know if something is squishy or not when you poke it, you’ll have to find out.
Because she can’t get the details she wants in the mold you can buy, so Liu turned to making her own molds and partners with other creators with 3D printers to fabricate them.
“I’ve also started making molds out of everyday objects. I have a trilobite fossil that my husband found on the beach,” explains Liu. “I made a silicone mold with that and a glow-in-the-dark cast of that fossil.”
How important is safety gear?
No art or craft is worth sacrificing your health for, so, always take precautions. The resin itself has strong fumes and you want to have safety gear and an area with good circulation.
“I’ve had a lot of parents who come up to me and have bought their kids a little resin kit at Michaels and the first thing I have to tell them is if they’re that young, you may not want to expose them to those chemicals with or without protection,” explains Liu. “I usually let my pieces set for 48 hours before taking them out of the mold and its a month before they make it to a show or an event where I am selling things. And, during that time they are just off-gassing. I use goggles, a rebreather. Even after I can’t smell them, my dog can smell them. Minimum guidelines say thirty days.”
Safety equipment Liu suggests:
- Elbow-length disposable gloves.
- Up to 97% Isopropyl alcohol and anything that touches the skin, use that immediately. Eye protection
- Rebreather, not just a mask.
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