About Shelley Daniels Lekven
Shelley Daniels Lekven began sculpting at the age of six, when she and her siblings started building a town out of modeling clay on the dining room table. “Claytown” became the centerpiece of their childhoods. Just before graduating with a psychology degree from UCLA, Lekven wrote a poem called “Lily Pond” that follows the vivid imagination of a little frog as she daydreams about her future. She decided the poem would be fun to illustrate in clay for a children’s book and worked on the illustrations while pursuing a career as a freelance 3D artist in San Diego, New York and Los Angeles. This led to Lekven’s work as a character sculptor on The Nightmare Before Christmas and Toy Story, and as the sculpting supervisor for James and the Giant Peach. She’s currently working on a sculpting how-to book to demystify the process and spread the joy of creating in clay.
