Bored with the fashion industry in 1979, Cec LePage picked up a block of Del Mar acrylic in her studio and began to carve.

“It was opaque and white and very luscious,” she says.  “It was the stuff they made artificial bones out of.”

Before long, she’d moved on to blocks of Lucite, a clear, bullet-proof acrylic used for bank windows, applying colored pigment with a cloth, and no brush strokes.  

“I’m really a colorist,” she says.  “I apply the pigment with a fabric that I treat.”

She finds her inspiration in everything from letters to ocean breezes to the sounds of Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet.  She manipulates color, light and texture to create individual pieces – no two are exactly alike.  She favors illusion and the play of space, with clarity and volume.

And she has a sense of humor.  Asked to develop a flower installation for a Burberry store in Tokyo, she immediately took on the challenge.

“They wanted something permanent and I showed them an idea,” she says.  “I made hundreds of glass vases, upside down and willy-nilly, and hundreds of flowers for them.  I created every bouquet.”

All the client had to do was open up the crates and install it.

“Start to finish, it was well thought out,” she says.  “That’s how I work – I almost go backwards.”

Sensual, soothing or sculptural, there’s one descriptor that will never be applied to her work:

That would be boring

For more information, go to http://www.LePageNY.com