Sculpting Daily: A Polymer Clay Workshop with Frode Bolhuis

Inspired by Frode Bolhuis’s Daily Sculptures project create your own polymer clay sculptures!

In this week long workshop, we focus on gaining confidence in creating sculptures using polymer clay, inspired by Frode Bolhuis’s Daily Sculptures project. You will explore both the technical and artistic sides of working with this versatile material. Starting from scratch, we build up skills through clear instructions, hands-on exercises, and playful experimentation.

Throughout the sessions, we’ll work on developing our understanding of form, texture, and color, while learning practical techniques such as armature building, surface treatment, and finishing methods. Mistakes are welcomed — experimentation is key — and you will be encouraged to work freely and intuitively.

We’ll create many small study objects to loosen up and discover possibilities, as well as several more detailed figure sculptures where you can apply your new ideas and artistic voice. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a personal collection of sculptures, as well as the skills and inspiration to continue working independently.

Materials required: Polymer clay, pasta roller. We will have a small quantity of these available to rent, but we recommend that you purchase your own so you can continue to work with polymer clay after the workshop.

No prior experience is necessary — just curiosity and a willingness to dive in!

Spaces strictly limited to 30; reserve your space by emailing venuehire@derbymuseums.org. Over 16s only.

About the Artist:

Frode Bolhuis creates sculptures that feel like small, self-contained worlds. His figures are playful, colorful, and seem to carry traces of forgotten myths, ancient stories, or half-remembered dreams. Each piece invites the viewer into a space where the familiar and the Mystical meet.

Bolhuis’s artistic journey began early. After studying with sculptors in England and later at the Minerva Academy in Groningen, he initially focused on large-scale public works — sculptures designed for parks, hospitals, and schools. Yet over time, he was drawn to a more intimate, daily practice: smaller figures that could be shaped quickly, instinctively, without the heavy machinery or long planning processes that public commissions demanded.

Since 2022, he has been working on The Daily Sculptures, a personal project rooted in ritual and spontaneity. Nearly every day, Bolhuis creates a new figure by hand, using materials such as polymer clay, textiles, wood, wire, and found objects. He does not begin with a sketch or a clear concept; instead, he lets the work emerge organically, led by intuition and the feel of the material. This open-ended approach gives each sculpture its own unique life and character.

The resulting figures are lively, tender, sometimes a little strange — and always deeply human. They seem to exist somewhere outside of time: carrying echoes of ancient idols, tribal masks, or futuristic beings, yet at the same time unmistakably personal and contemporary.

For Bolhuis, the daily act of making is both discipline and liberation: a way of staying close to the raw energy of creation without being held back by expectations of grandeur or permanence.

Frode Bolhuis lives and works in Almere, the Netherlands, together with his wife and three children. His practice continues to evolve, but at its heart remains the same quiet commitment: to create, to explore, and to give form to the mystery of life.

Bursary places available!

Two bursary places are available for artists working within a ten-mile radius of Derby City Centre, for whom this workshop would be transformative to their practice. To apply, please send your CV, a statement of practice, and a link to your website and social media to venuehire@derbymuseums.org, by June 2nd. You will be informed if successful by June 10^th.