In her three-year long career of polymer clay artist she created numerous figurines of both ordinary people and celebrities, such as MBE Sir Eddie Spence (ex-royal baker to the Queen) or His Holiness Sadhguru. Rashmi Bhatia started her creative brand, Aura Figurines, only in 2018, but she has had a much longer history of working with different mediums.
Rashmi has always had an artistic streak but for practical reasons she studied management instead. It turned out, however, that art is her calling, so she later received a degree in interior design, which was the beginning of her creative journey. At this point she was still far away from polymer clay, as she initially worked with pastry and her first creations were amazing cakes.
She baked the first one from scratch when her daughter was a couple of months old and then there was no looking back. She mastered the decoration skills like icing, piping and sugar-paste modelling. She even went ahead to win The Homebaker of the Year Award, 2017, held in Mumbai by Hospitality First.
Playing with sugar-paste awoke the artist in Rashmi and she moved on to sculpt people replicas in gum-paste. However, humidity and temperature changes used to ruin her work, making the hours she spent on the figurines futile. She happened to discover polymer clay and its benefits for sculping life-like figurines and immediately appreciated the versatility, sturdiness and durability of the cured medium.
“My handcrafted polymer clay figurines have found loving homes in India and abroad, over the past three years. It gives me immense joy to recreate people’s loved ones,” she says. The Indian artist plans to create more artistic human sculptures, a challenge which - as she hopes - will push her skills further and bring more life into her work. Take a moment to appreciate Rahmi’s incredible sculpting skills on her social media.
