(Please Read) Ch-ch-changes … And a Chance to Win a Box of New Clays
May 29, 2014
Inspirational Art, The Polymer Arts magazine news
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 …
Change Over And Win! … This is pretty simple and pretty fantastic for you … help me out as well as get in on a drawing for one of TWO different sampler boxes of New Clays or one of TWO $15 Gift Certificates for The Polymer Arts. All you need to do is sign up to get blog notifications with our new service.
To sign up for email notices and get in the drawing … just click on this link and sign up for email notifications for this blog. Signing up now will help us make a smooth transition for you and ensure your daily dose of inspiration gets to you!
http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=TheDailyPolymerArtsBlog
Avoid Double Notices … If you are presently getting notifications by email, you can take yourself off the old service right now so you don’t get two notifications each day over the next week while we switch it over. Just click the link you see at the top of an old email notice (this one if you are reading this by email) and select ‘Unsubscribe’.
Deadline for Drawing … Sign up for email notifications by Monday, June 2nd, to be entered to win! We’ll draw names on the 3rd and notify you by email and announce the winner on the blog on the 4th.
*The blog mailing list is not shared nor even used by TPA for any other mailings. You will get nothing but the blog notifications by signing up for email. I promise. 🙂
If you would like to switch to a Reader notification or update your RSS feed. You can do so here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDailyPolymerArtsBlog
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!
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.
Perfection in Canes
May 27, 2014
Inspirational Art
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.
Beauty in Perfection
May 26, 2014
Inspirational Art
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!
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.
Intricate Eggs
May 25, 2014
Inspirational Art
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.
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.
Density Vase
May 24, 2014
Inspirational Art
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.
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.
Outside Inspiration: Patience in Black
May 23, 2014
Inspirational Art
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!
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.
Spot on Gems
May 22, 2014
Inspirational Art
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.
Monochromatic Intricacy
May 21, 2014
Inspirational Art
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.
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.
Patience in Contemporary Art
May 20, 2014
Inspirational Art
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.
At each conference, there are Polymer Clay Awards. At EuroSynergy 800 entries were juried to find the most significant 40 works for the IPCA Awards Exhibition. Georg Dinkel took Best of Show with his I-reliquaries and shrines, dedicated to Apple products like iPad and iPod. Best in 2D Art went to Fran Abrams for her “Warmth of Fire” and Laurie Mika for her “Circle of Life”. Best of Jewelry was shared by Angela Garrod for her “The Final Frontier”, Cornelia Brockstedt for her “City Skies”, and Annie Pennington for two of her pieces “Phagocytosis Brooch” and “Tucson Squiggle Brooch”. Best in Sculpture was awarded to Penne Mobley for “Pensive Prince”, Claire Fairweather for “Spring Trio”, and Joyce Cloutman for “Woodland Elf”. And pictured here, one of the Best in Functional Containers was this bowl by Emily Squires Levine.
Emily, a 2014 Niche Award Finalist, designs and creates one-of-a-kind accent tiles, bowls, and eggs. Using sophisticated color palettes, she fashions unique canes to form her exciting polymer clay art. Take a look at her use of pattern, shape, and color. How can you incorporate some of her distinctive juxtapositions into your own work? You can see more of her work on her website or Facebook page.
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.
Read More
I am in the slow process of extricating myself from Europe. I spent the last 4 days with the very creative and enthusiastic Anke Humpert. We played as well as worked on several upcoming articles and came up with way too many exciting ideas that, we hope, might become a reality someday. But for now, as I leave the European continent on my way to Iceland where I will stopover for a day, I am taking one last glance back at Malta.
We had one in our group at EuroSyngery that was from the beautiful island, Nevena Ilic from Swiegi on Malta. She creates lovely polymer jewelry in many of the colors and textures I now associate with the small but vibrant country. The red that so often colored the Malta cross and the dark aging of limestone that many of the buildings there are constructed of can both be found in this pendant.
Nevena only started working with polymer clay in 2011, but like many of us, once she found it, it became the focus of her creative work. For her it is “an instrument of communicating my inner-self.” You can see more of her interesting forms on her 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.
We’ve seen designs from Portugal and Switzerland using Dan’s pin as inspiration for different versions playing off the same idea in his Broken Internet Project. Now let’s take a look at another pin submitted by an artist from Greece, Anarina Anar. She uses some of the same design elements but presents them with bold colors in a more playful, organic manner. What other elements do you see that are likely drawn from Dan’s pin?
As with the other pins we’ve seen, Anarina’s personal and distinct artistic voice takes over so completely that it would not likely have crossed a viewer’s mind that one pin helped inspire the other. Take a look at more of Anarina’s distinctive work on her Flickr site or in her Etsy store.
This is all we get to peek at for now. Dan and Tracy will post the rest of the set when they get back from teaching around Europe so keep an eye on their Facebook page as well as here for more to come.
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.
So you saw Dan’s pin that started this different version of the inspiration centered project on my previous blog (see it here.) Now he has sent me three of the resulting pins to share with you until he is back and can get the whole project up on their own website and Facebook pages.
The next one we get to peek at is from Sandra Trachsel of Koniz, Switzerland. Her design stays closer to Dan’s form but departs in a couple very distinctive ways. Do you like where she’s taken this?
As with yesterday’s piece, it’s both fun and enlightening to go back and look at Dan’s pin and see where Sandra’s and his are similar and where they have approached it in their own ways. As you can see from Sandra’s work, it is easy to identify her caning and color preferences as found on her Flickr page.
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.
Read More
So you saw Dan’s pin that started this different version of the inspiration centered project on my previous blog (see it here.) Now he has sent me three of the resulting pins to share with you until he is back and can get the whole project up on their own website and Facebook pages.
The first is from Cristina Almeida who lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Can you see what she pulled from Dan’s work to create her own personal version?
Go back and look at Dan’s pin and see where they connect. Then take a gander at more of Christina’s work to better understand where her style and aesthetics meet and what she drew from Dan’s work on her Flickr page and blog site.
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.
No, this post is not a rant about the vagaries of the world-wide web, problematic wifi connections, or website issues but rather, of all things, polymer art! If you recall from Synergy last year or from the blog posts or article about it, there was a rather groundbreaking experiment known as The Broken Telephone Project conceived and directed by Dan Cormier. He sent a pin he created to an artist who created a pin inspired by his who then sent their inspired pin onto another artist who then did the same thing until 8 pins were created based on another artist’s work.
It was such a successful and insightful experience, that Dan decided to expand on the project for this year’s EuroSynergy. He made it a primarily European project, enlisting artists from the UK to Russia but instead of the artist sending pins onto the next person, he sent them all a pin he had made and each of them created a wonderfully different piece from that same inspiration. These artists didn’t know that they were all working off just Dan’s pin so it was a bit of a surprise as he presented the final pins in today’s presentation in Malta. Here is the pin that started what Dan is calling a radial project.
Are you curious to see what the other pins look like? Well, I am trying to get Dan’s okay to publish more than just his pin but I haven’t gotten my permission list yet. I’ll be running down to the final gala dinner and see what else we can share in the coming days. Perhaps next week we’ll have a lot of very, very new art in the form of pins to share with you. Let’s see what I can sweet talk him into, just for you, my dear readers.
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.
I have been taking a lot of shots of the art being worn by the attendees, or as we keep noting here, of people’s chests because between pins and necklaces; that is where most of the jewelry is so what choice do we have, right? It has made for some funny moments. I had a great time with a trio of gals from the Czech Republic during one of our breaks. We couldn’t stop laughing as I tried to photograph their jewelry. I was trying to compare the work and they were standing next to each other comparing, well, other things that were ending up in the shot. They were so fun.
Martina Malaskova
Pavla Čepelíková
Dana Phamova
My grandmother was from Czechoslovakia and I had learned a few words in the language when I was a child so I do have a soft spot for people from that part of the world which is probably part of the reason I chatted it up with these gals. Their fun and happy demeanor can be seen in the type of work they made and wore this week. Take a look at more of their work on these pages:
Pavla Čepelíková: www.saffron-addict.com
Dana Phamova: www.fler.cz/fruitensse
Martina Malaskova: www.lca-jewellery.com/home_en.php
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.
Down in the vendor’s hall here at EuroSynergy, there are artists selling their beautiful work so we are getting the rare chance to see the craftsmanship and beauty of dozens of very skilled artists up close and personal. That in itself is very exciting but there is also the huge variety of new clays and new tools coming out from big manufacturers and small. It’s like Christmas comes early for polymer people!
You may have heard that there are some new clays coming out but did you know that there are new varieties by three big manufacturers? I am lucky enough to have a sneak peek back at the TPA office but to see all of the new products in one room is kind of overwhelming.
Both Polyform and Staedtler have brand new lines of clay as well as tools. Premo Souffle and a batch of truly new products are just streaming out of the creative centers at Polyform. Iris Weiss and Syndee Holt were demonstrating the new tools and sampling the new soft colors of Souffle at their very busy little corner of the room.
Staedtler’s new professional color wheel based system with a thoroughly tested color mixing system along with some really high quality new tools and supplies were drawing people in just as much.
I was personally most thrilled to meet George Desmare and his lovely wife from The Clay and Paint Factory who brought the lines of Cernit to the show. I know they have been working on getting these new lines out to more retailers which I find thrilling. The colors and lines of clay are very obviously different when you just look at the color palettes.
I can’t tell you more now as we are in the process of gathering all the details about the new products for out “Clay Report” that you’ll find in the next issue. So you have your peek here and then be sure you have an up to date subscription so you’ll get the Summer issue of The Polymer Arts due out at the end of the month.
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.
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