Art world report·Global
Artsy profiles Lara Kluczynski, the UK artist sculpting wearable hats
Artsy has published a feature on Lara Kluczynski, a self-taught UK multimedia artist whose hand-sculpted wearable hats and headpieces fuse fashion with sculpture. Her theatrical, surreal work blends decorative frieze-style elements with fantastical animals, balancing tradition against kitsch.
Artsy has published a feature on Lara Kluczynski, a self-taught multimedia artist in the UK whose hand-sculpted wearable hats and headpieces fuse fashion with sculpture. The profile turns a spotlight on a practice that probes the boundaries between art forms, staging the interplay between viewer and viewed. Kluczynski's style is theatrical, surreal and playful, threaded with hints of antiquity and comedy. She works with decorative frieze-style elements and fantastical animals, balancing tradition against kitsch, and draws on vintage fashion, photography, theatre, architecture, nature, drag and pop-surrealism. Her stated aim is to spark curiosity and optimism — a feeling of childlike possibility. Much of her output takes the form of sculpted headwear, including pieces such as a ceramic carousel-horse bonnet offered for pre-order through her CraftGlamour platform. She has also shown in online group exhibitions, appearing in the Poetic Tiger Gallery's Fables of Time with the work Dionysiac Peace, and featured on the Creative Pulse podcast's 137th episode discussing how her style has developed and where she finds inspiration. The Artsy feature places Kluczynski within a current of emerging artists who treat craft, wearability and performance as continuous rather than separate categories. Working outside formal art education, she has built an audience through experimental materials and a distinctive visual language — precisely the kind of independent practice Artsy's editorial coverage has increasingly made room for.
