First Friday Santa Cruz

Artist Profile

Artist Profile

Chelsea Wagner

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Mixed Media

I am an artisan of wood. Shaping pieces into interesting beauty and craftmanship. I live to find that awe that inspires people's wow. My art is one's own evolution and the best how is when other artisans ask.

Wood a simple medium. Exposed to it by my father a cabinet maker and contractor. Yet, my mother provided me with my first inspiration. I won first place in the state for a fourth-grade scratch art drawing. It came with a second award for most inspiring young artist. It was my mother whom agreed to let my teacher enter the drawing and she was quick to encourage me when I won the prize.

Creativity is in my families DNA. Linage traced to the 14th century, is full of artists and craftspeople. I excelled in creativity yet, father insisted that I use it in a more traditional manner. From teenage models, the carpenters' union, the state apprentice champion and then the youngest contractor in the state at age 18. Yet yearning to follow my mother's encouragement. I created hyperbolic curved skylights and whimsical fence lines. Now to a more focused purely emotional expression of creativity within the medium I am most familiar with.

First and Second place winner 2022 Santa Cruz County Fair.