Sugar Artist Spotlight: Kelly Lance
- Anna Weisend
- 26 Aug 2020
We'd like to introduce you to the talented Kelly Lance! Here she is in her own words:
The first time I really remember doing something "arty" was when I was four or five years old. It was one of those rainy cold Saturday mornings with
nothing to do. My Mother played records (yep, I`m that old) and we would
draw the pictures in the music. After that my parents signed me up for art
lessons with a private tutor and I spent the next several year`s worth of
Saturday mornings with her instead of outside playing. Sometime around
this same age I started baking, making some of the most unusual (ie awful)
cakes and "goodies" ever produced, but my Father, God love him, just kept eating them and saying "Mmmmm, that`s great Sweetie, keep going".
Later on I became an ardent seeker of artistic knowledge (read: total pest to
anyone who would teach me anything). After I was married, I found that I
wanted lovely things, but also had a desire to eat. One of the "lovely things"
was an expensive pair of beaded earrings, the purchase of which would have
indeed made a significant dent in available funds. My Husband, Scott,
bought me three small tubes of beads, a book and some thread and said
"Make them yourself". That was all it took. I became an art addict, stealing
time from regular household chores to bead or sew in secret, hoping that no
one would notice the layers of dust building up in my living room.
Not long after that, my best friend moved home from California. We were
complaining one day that we never got to do anything together because we
were both too busy. Her mother told us to take a class. We both wanted to
take cake decorating - my early attempts at birthday cakes for our daughter,
Heather, were folk art at best; and Sonja just HAD to make morning glories.
That flower was not offered until the third series of Wilton classes so we had
to take courses one and two first. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound - we
took all the classes and both ended up teaching for Wilton for several years.
From there I have taken any and all sugar art classes that have come my
way. I regularly attend the International Cake Exploration Societe`s annual
convention to watch and give demonstrations and try to take in cake shows
and Days of Sharing in my area.
Kelly no longer has a website but you can finder on Facebook. She also has two books available
Mostly I like to spend my time having way more than the legal limit of fun in
class and hanging out with The Scott and our dogs. Art has always been a huge part of my life as has cooking and baking. It did not really occur to me to
combine my interests until I wanted to make birthday cakes for my daughter. Unfortunately, I found that I had Rembrant visions with only folk art abilities. A friend and I started taking Wilton classes as a way to spend time together and I got hooked in the first 5 minutes. After taking all three series, I taught
the Wilton Method classes for 5 years. Another instructor introduced me to ICES where a whole new world opened up and I branched out on my own.
Kelly no longer has her website but can be found on Facebook. She also has two instructional books available on Amazon's Kindle Store: Woodland Picnic and th Algernon. An adventure In Fondant and Sugar.
Please enjoy some of her work below: