Intricacy and Patience
May 19, 2014
Inspirational Art
I always admire work that looks to be done with infinite care and patience. I can spend a lot of time working out the smallest details in a piece and do feel I have a fair amount of patience but some of the work that I have been running into lately has kind of blown my mind. It may have started with George Dinkel’s presentation at EuroSynergy earlier this month. George does some of the most intricate sculptural work in polymer. Images of his winning IPCA Awards entries have been circulating so I imagine many of you have seen those but maybe not this one. He even has a video on how he made this very intricate shrine, “iPad TonSchrein.”
You can find the video on his website. Look through the other pieces on his site and be sure to scroll down for the short videos that show you all the details on the pieces. It’s pretty incredible.
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Cellular Flow
May 18, 2014
Inspirational Art
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the exact patterning in these fine little earring by Norway’s Liudmyla Heggland under a microscope in high school. Was it plant material? A water sample? I’m not sure but I am drawn to it. I like the lazy energy of the flow in the canes and lines as they move around the oblong beads. They feel like a Sunday on a slow Spring afternoon, don’t they?
Liudmyla creates intricate seed beaded designs in her jewelry as well, combining the orderliness of planned beading with the more spontaneous look of her predominantly marbled polymer. Look for more cellular inspiration on her Flickr photostream.
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Complimenting Brooches
May 17, 2014
Inspirational Art
Loretta Lam has an obvious influence of nature in her work. These pins reminded me not so much of microscopic cellular formations as the growth of micro-organisms on plants and rocks. They naturally complement the pod and leaf forms and their surface patterns.
Loretta Lam is being featured in the Color Spotlight article in the upcoming Summer 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts due out the first week of June. But while you are waiting for that, check out her website for more beautiful nature inspired pieces.
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Outside Inspiration: Luminary Cellular
May 16, 2014
Inspirational Art
Stoneware and porcelain might not seem to be natural choices to depict biological elements but somehow Andrew Dewitt manages work that is fluid, graceful and looks nearly alive. This Black Fringed Porcelain Luminary was created using high-fired translucent porcelain with gloss and satin glazes. It is just one gorgeous piece among many that are highly organic and primarily cellular in design.
I was thinking that for those of us playing around with translucent clays, this piece could bring on just a flood of ideas. I know I’ve got a few thoughts swirling around in my mind from looking at Andrew’s work. Take a journey through his gallery on his beautiful website.
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The Summer 2014 Issue: Let There Be Light
May 16, 2014
Inspirational Art, The Polymer Arts magazine news
The Summer 2014 issue is just about done. It is presently due to be released the first week of June. Here we have a sneak preview of the cover with a bright, reflective necklace by Silvia Ortiz de la Torre:
You can look forward to a ton of great, in-depth articles–
- Designing with Light in Mind
- Creating the Illusion of Light
- Luminous Landscapes Technique
- Luscious Liquid Clay Glazes
- Putting Sealants to the Test
- Lighten up: Taking the Weight out of Big Beads
- Controlling Photographic Light
- Grabbing the Internet Spotlight
- The Mobile Polymer Studio
- The Clay Report: What’s new, what’s best, what’s out there.
- They Love Me Not: Creating Success from Failures
- … and more!
We just sent out renewal notices so if you got that, don’t hold off renewing any longer. The mailing list for you to get the issue when it is first mailed out will be put together this coming week so renew and get it first!
www.thepolymerarts.com/Subscription_ordering.html
We’ll resume our exploration of cellular formations in the next post today!
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Just Dots
May 14, 2014
Inspirational Art
If you ever did petri dish tests in biology class or left the tomato sauce too many weeks in the fridge, you might recognize the patterning of this next piece for our microscopic week. This is a simple but visually high impact bracelet by Mathilde Colas. It’s not often that we think of mold or mildew as inspiring much beyond disgust but all of nature has a beauty to it. The delicate dots and rich colors against a stark white background make for a calm but dramatic beauty here.
It seems obvious, looking at her body of work, that Mathilde Colas is heavily influenced by nature in all its forms, from the color of spring flowers to the decay of late autumn. Take a look at her work and read up on her thoughts on her blog website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Gane Cellular
May 13, 2014
Inspirational Art
As we continue our look at designs inspired by microscopic imagery, this necklace by Jael Thorp from Champaign, Illinois, brings to mind plant material under a microscope. This necklace is one of Jael’s Jewels and was made by the mokume gane method. She calls this her mini mokume gane set. They have an organic fluidity that almost vibrates with life.
Jael works with color to fit her mood. You have to wonder what kind of wonderful mood she was in here. To see more of Jael’s work, visit her Art Fire shop or her Flickr pages. You can read about her process on her award winning blog site “Jael’s Art Jewels Blog.”
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Polymer Under a Microscope
May 12, 2014
Inspirational Art
The organic forms, colors and patterns of nature inspire the work of many polymer artists. There was quite a bit of this at EuroSynergy, the microscopic looking variety especially and it has been on my mind since then. So this week, let’s look at items that could be drawn from what we might find under a microscope.
When thinking of cellular imagery, Christine Dumont’s work comes to mind first. We enjoyed a number of wonderful talks at EuroSynergy and I had the opportunity to take a close look at some of her more recent work although I didn’t get any photos. However, Christine takes such wonderful photos of her work so let’s look at her images instead. This pendant is a slight departure from others in her “Cellularia” series. She usually layers the perforated clay, lining the holes in precise rows to create a three dimensional surface. Here we have just the one layer of very organically spaced holes giving it even more of a cellular look.
Christine is known for her wonderfully helpful site, Voila as well as her beautifully finished work. Enjoy some time on her beautiful website and do check out Voila.eu.com if you haven’t yet or haven’t been there recently.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Color is Not a Modern Obsession
May 11, 2014
Uncategorized
Do you have trouble mixing colors or deciding which colors look good with other colors? Pantone Color Formula Guides, invented by Lawrence Herbert, have been the standard for mixing colors since 1963. The Pantone Matching System, a book of standardized colors in a fan format, was invented for identifying, matching and communicating colors accurately. But did you know that the system for actually mixing the colors to make different hues and tones was invented more than 270 years earlier? In 1692 an artist known as A. Boogert hand wrote an 800 page book about mixing watercolors. The book, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau, was never reproduced, even though it was intended as an educational guide. You can see the entire book on the e-corpus website.
There is also another system called Color-Aid Paper, developed in 1948, that provides you with a set of 314 or 220 color swatches (or glorified large paint chips). It was originally used as a backdrop for photographers, but when Josef Albers started using it to teach design classes, it became a standard tool in the graphic artist’s toolbox. These pieces of paper can be cut, torn, and collaged into designs and compositions, that can literally keep you up all night with glue-covered fingers and way too many X-Acto blade cuts. If you haven’t ever experienced the joy of Color-Aid Paper, it will set your creative juices flowing and free up your imagination like no other. So much color … so little time!
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Some of you may have noticed that there have been some odd things going on with the blog posts lately, especially the email notifications. You may be receiving them much later than usual or they are not showing up at all. Yes, we are having technical issues over here … because the blog has just gotten too big! I actually saw this coming and started working on setting up new services for us a couple months ago but its been slow going. However, we are set now. I could just use your help …
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See You Monday … Because of the problems we’ve been having and to allow time to make the changes and updates needed, there may not be another blog post until Monday. I’m sorry for that. But I promise we will be back to our regularly scheduled postings and pretties next week!
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A lot of people cane. A lot of people cane well. But perfectly undistorted canes applied in such a way that you don’t think canes, but rather just “wow!”. These almost photo realistic sunflowers were created by French artist Magali Chauveau. Such skill and patience makes a huge difference in what this cane could have been had it been rushed. That and the meticulous finish on the beads brings this from a nicely designed bracelet up to a stunning piece of art jewelry.
And this isn’t the only thing she did so well with these flowers. She put her skill and eye for design into a whole line of pieces.
I had to share them all. But she has many more beautiful gems to share with you as well as tutorials on her blog and several books in print. To see more of her work, take a look at her Facebook page or view her books on Amazon.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
This week, I just want to put up some examples of perfectly executed and finished work, to focus on skill and craftsmanship and look at how that attention to detail and care in handling can be, and often is, at the center of what makes a piece work.
Daniela Klein is not a master artist, not yet, but her efforts point to really excellent potential. Looking through her Flickr photostream, you can see that a good looking finish is important to Daniela but execution has had its challenges at times. But then, in her timeline you see two pendants and the couple of pieces that come after, that show an increased attention to the fine tuning of the pieces final look. The two pendants were created in a class with Dan Cormier’s, one of our community’s absolutely perfection obsessed craftsman. This pendant, although made in Dan’s class, doesn’t look like a Dan Cormier piece but the techniques are recognizable. The color choices and lines follow trends in Daniela’s past pieces making me think she followed her own creative muse in the class but made a great effort to emulate the fine finishing details that are a large part of Dan’s signature look.
As far as I can tell, Daniela’s work is only present on her Flickr pages right now. But take a look at her journey there and then keep an eye out for her in the future!
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I know we already looked at some filigree this week, but I couldn’t resist sharing these detailed filigree eggs by Czech artist Monika Brydova. From looking at these beauties, it probably won’t surprise you to know that Monika also loves quilling. These designs are reminiscent of the technique used in quilling, except here we have coiled polymer instead of paper. She designs the filigree eggs, bakes them, and then enhances the color with her own techniques. She uses a pasty pigment in a beeswax and orange oil base that is applied to the surface of dark colored items to give them a shimmering metallic effect, which changes color according to the incidence of light on the subject. She will also accent with Pearl Ex powders, and if applied after baking, she sets them with a spray fixative…and voilà…you have these intricate eggs with old world charm.
Monika has many examples, tutorials, videos, and materials and supplies for sale on her website. She explains this technique in detail and even has a video clip illustrating the process. You might want to give it a try on some of your own work.
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Intricacy in construction can be achieved in a variety of ways. The simple repetition of a single type of element can create rich texture but like everything we talked about this week, takes a bit of patience. Ukraine artist, Iryna Osinchuk-Chajka, created this intriguing vase in this manner, applying small petal shapes over and over, for rows and rows, to complete the design. This piece is part of her home decor line. She take vases, office organizers, soda cans, and any other shape that interests her and then applies these repeated shapes to the surface, to create the enticing texture.
When you look at Iryna’s Flickr Photostream, her Etsy shop, and her live journal, you can see how much she is influenced by nature, particularly florals. Have you ever tried one of these layering techniques in your work? It is time consuming, but the results can be well worth the effort.
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I am a sucker for nice recycled work. Reducing the impact on the environment and creating amazing art in the process is, well, a beautiful thing.
This bit of work you see here is amazing. I thought it looked like an intricately carved tire. Upon close inspection I saw that, yes, it actually was an intricately carved tire! And so beautiful. I can’t imagine how long it took to do this but when seeing things like this, I feel like a bit of a wimp. Polymer is so immediately responsive–we can make highly intricate looking pieces quite quickly with stamps and textures. Even our work with hand tools is relatively easy. What if we just took a little more time, a touch more care; what if we spent days and weeks creating the most beautiful thing we could imagine instead of finding the shortcuts? What would we end up with?
The amazing artist with what must be an endless supply of patience is Belgium’s Wim Delvoye. Wim works in a wide variety of rather random materials, not just tires. If you like the intricacy and detail here, you need to see his stainless steel carvings–they are similar to the tire but with dozens of layers. His front page is cartoony and fun but the work underneath is quite sophisticated. Enjoy!
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If you would like to add more three-dimensional and intricate surface designs to your work but coil and filigree don’t appeal to you, how about dots and spots and needing nothing more than a ball ended hand tool?
These goldfish designed by Kseniya Dolgopolova were stylized after the 1993 Avon brooch inspired by actress Elizabeth Taylor. Kseniya’s pin design was fashioned from polymer clay, rhinestones, glass pearls, glass contours, and bronzer. The limited color palette is charming with all those sparkling accents. A lot of sparkle can cheapen the look of a piece but here, it looks quite elegant. Exceptional craftsmanship, certainly involving a lot of patient work, as well as the limited palette play a major role in this piece being so successful.
You can see more of Kseniya’s very detailed and perfectly finished work in her Etsy store and on her Live Journal pages.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Today, let’s dial it down to something more attainable for us mere mortals. We don’t all have quite the level of patience to accomplish what we saw the last couple days but perhaps we could approach that with techniques where intricate work can be accomplished on a smaller scale.
If you’ve been following this blog for long, then you have probably noticed my admiration for filigree style work. Even when monochromatic, the lines and textures of dense polymer filigree can be so mesmerizing. Luana Sgammeglia uses this coiled filigree technique to decorate necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and even handbags. Even though this technique looks intricate, it can be made relatively quickly once you get into the rhythm of it. You just need to be patient and steady. Doing this kind of work can be quite zen like actually!
Have you ever tried incorporating coils into the surface design of your clay? You can either roll the ropes by hand or use a handy-dandy extruder. If you have never worked with coil filigree, there are some good video tutorials on YouTube and a number of free image tutorials floating around the web as well. You can enjoy more of Luana’s work on her Flickr photostream or on her Pinterest site.
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I met Alev Gozonar in Malta as well, but it wasn’t until after I got home that I really got to see the extensive and painstaking nature of her work. She creates these incredible wall pieces with thousands of extruded cane sections. There is an easily recognized intention in the choices she makes, packing canes with slight but important variations and applying them with varying depths. Her pointillism approach creates stunning images at a distance but she also doesn’t shy away from celebrating the individual cane patterns, applying larger canes to the composition to illustrate the source of her primary elements which also break up the surface patterns. Instead of just seeing the one incredibly created image, your eye gets to wander and enjoy variation and pattern for the sake of pattern as well.
To see the details of this piece as well as the other many wonderful pieces she has created, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and take some time wandering through her website. It’ll be like taking a nice stroll through a fabulous gallery without having to play hookey at work.
Thanks to Randee Ketzel for sending me the link to the great photo above.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
