Mt. Lebanon artist impresses with clay creations
Evan Tillie Pettler also is a painter.
Evan Tillie Pettler shows off a frosted doughnut earring as an example of Tillie’s Clay Treats.
Cookie earrings
Taco earrings
An array of Evan Tillie Pettler’s creations
An array of Evan Tillie Pettler’s creations
The typical clay craft project often turns out to be a bowl or mug, or in the days before political correctness, an ashtray.
Evan Tillie Pettler thinks along smaller lines.
“I always made stuff tiny,” she said. “Depending on what I made, I’d use it for my dolls. I’d make food for my dolls.”
A petite individual, herself, the Mt. Lebanon High School junior works by hand to produce intricately detailed pieces that are minute enough to serve as earrings and pins, and decorate the likes of necklaces and bracelets.
And in keeping with the tradition of her dolls’ delectable delights, many of the miniatures depict food items, leading to the name of her crafting venture: Tillie’s Clay Treats, which got it start when she was just 12.
“I was playing with clay just for the fun of it, and my brother suggested that I make jewelry for something called Pierogi Night in Lawrenceville,” Evan Tillie, now 16, recalled.
Her diminutive versions of the potato-stuffed products went over so well that she decided to keep concentrating on clay. One of her early sources of exposure was in the Pittsburgh Craft-O-Tron Machine, a repurposed cigarette dispenser that displays local crafters’ products.
Since then, Tillie’s Clay Treats have been carried in several stores, currently including the Artsmiths of Pittsburgh in Mt. Lebanon and Wildcard in Lawrenceville, and she is online with Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/tilliesclaytreats. During the summer and into the fall, she usually spends her weekends setting up at fairs and festivals throughout the area.
“Almost every show she does nowadays is juried,” her mother, Kimberly, said about the common practice of selecting the most qualified of vendors.
As far as what she creates, Evan Tillie has broadened her horizons, so to speak.
“I used to do mainly food, but now I’m doing more cutesy things, too: holidays, planets, cacti, little aliens,” she said. “There are only a couple of things I use molds for. Usually, I just do it with my hands.”
The process of shaping small lumps of polymer clay into realistic-looking representations of foodstuffs can take as little as five minutes for something as simple as, say, a pear or one of those pierogies.
Making others involves layering different colors of clay to produce such delicacies as tacos, cheeseburgers and ice cream cones.
“I have to bake the cone, then put the ‘ice cream’ in afterward and re-bake the cone,” Evan Tillie explained. “This is a lot more labor-intensive.”
She can take the occasional shortcut, such as making a whole pizza or cake and then cutting it into slices, just like the genuine articles. But overall:
“It’s hard to find time to do this,” she said. “So that’s why I’ll take hours at a time and make a ton at once, and build up inventory.”
A good source of sales is her school.
“I’m definitely known as the artsy kid,” Evan Tillie said, “and I get special orders from teachers and students. Everybody definitely knows about this.”
Speaking of school, she is taking advanced placement biology and environmental geoscience, and she also attends sporting events as a cheerleader.
And she doesn’t limit her artistic endeavors to clay. A colorful painting of a fantasy scene, for example, sits on an easel overlooking the dining room table at home. She also has taken glass-blowing classes.
As for her future, she has a little while to go before deciding on a definitive course of action. And as for Tillie’s Clay Treats:
“This is something nice to do on the side for now,” she said. “I enjoy it.”