Simple Color Mystery
December 20, 2014
Inspirational Art
Okay … here is a piece that I have hung onto for a while as I tried to find the person who created it. I have not, yet. It’s not a particularly complex piece, and although, I like the silver as an accent, I so rather wish the feather-like pieces were handmade or more organic or smooth and simple. The flow of color in the clay just calls for either something that matches that organic movement or has a calm stillness in contrast to it. But, nonetheless, the colors in these simple earrings are arresting.
So, this is the challenge I throw out to you all. Who knows whose creations these are? Help me find the artist and give them credit, and then back to your last-minute shopping and holiday parties!
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: Felted Color
December 19, 2014
Inspirational Art
I’m going to break a kind of rule here and show you a collage instead of just one of these colorful felted pieces by Japanese felt artist, Atsuko Sasaki. Because isn’t the collection just a beautiful composition and delightful explosion of color? I also thought you would find it more intriguing when you could see the variety of forms and color this very precise felter pulls together. And this way, I didn’t have to pick just one.
I think the possibilities of how this could inspire a polymer artist comes across much more from this grouping, too. The felt here has a saturation of color commonly seen in polymer, but in bold forms; the kind of which we don’t see so much from clayers. However, everything here could be done in a polymer version from the appliqued dots within dots to the inverted mushroom caps, to the alternately patterned material popping out through slashes in the fabric. Do they give you any ideas?
I originally found this collage and this work on a great little blog called Folt Bolt, but you can find more of Atsuko’s handbags, mufflers, vases and sculptural objects on her website. By the way, these pieces are quite big. You can see handbags and mufflers modeled in photos on her 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.
Dreaming of Summer Colors (& New EU Taxes you should know about!)
December 18, 2014
Inspirational Art, Polymer community news
Shall we get the not-so-nice stuff out of the way first?
The New Not-Well-Thought-Out EU Digital Tax Laws hit Worldwide on the First of the Year
If you haven’t already heard, the European Union has new laws regarding selling digital products and services to European buyers, and it goes into effect January 1st. Unlike past VAT taxes that rarely, if ever, affected micro businesses and solo sellers, this one affects everyone who sells any digital goods or services TO Europe because this new law is based on where the buyer resides, not where the seller works. Yes, even you, you seller of $3 PDF tutorials! It’s a tad insane, and most of us small, struggling businesses and artists just found out in the last couple weeks that we need to register with the EU, implement new bookkeeping & documentation storage for at least 10 years, update shopping gateways and our websites, and possibly change who/what we sell through, and we need to have it all ready before the year ends in order to offer digital goods and services to Europe in 2015 and forward. Or, we can change to whom or how we sell digital stuff. Ugh!
I wanted to inform you all of this, so you have a chance to find out if this affects you as a seller of PDF tutorials, eBooks, patterns, subscription or member services, online advertising, or automated online services of any kind and allow you time to figure out what to do. AND, to be heard if you agree that this tax is detrimental to micro and solo businesses.
Please Help. Take Action to Fix this.
Get informed, and sign the petition to have a threshold set, so small, unique sellers don’t have to pull out of Europe or go out of business because they can’t afford to comply. You can find out more about the issues with the new laws on EUVATACtion.org and get the official summary of them on www.gov.uk.
The only possible salvation for many of us will be a service who can take care of the nightmare of documenting, setting up calculations, collecting and remitting the tax for you for all of the 28 European countries involved. There is only one viable service I have found so far, and they even offer it for free (up to 20 EU transactions a month), if they can integrate through your Paypal or similar payment service. If you think you’ll need this, write them at www.taxamo.com to find out if they can work for you.
Prices will Go Up; Buy or Renew Now
This sudden news does not give us here at The Polymer Arts enough time to make the changes needed to collect VAT on our digital magazine sales, so we will be using an exception in the law and will have to individually email digital issues of The Polymer Arts to European readers as of next month. This will be costly labor-wise, so we’ll have no choice but to increase prices for these manually sent issues. But, this will cost the European buyer far less than paying VAT. So, if you’re in Europe and you haven’t renewed or bought those back issues in digital that you were thinking of getting, now would be the time to do that. Just go to our website, www.thepolymerarts.com/Subscribe.html, before the end of the year when prices for European digital purchases will go up.
Back to Color …
How about today we have a moment of color indulgence with color maven and polymer pioneer, Lindly Haunani. Aren’t these colors just yummy. I know that’s not the most technical artistic term, but that about sums it up!
This image is a preview of what she’ll be teaching at Maureen Carlsons Center for Creative Arts. The workshop is entitled “Joy Garden: Translucent Polymer Innovations”, and it’ll be held Sunday, August 9th – Friday, August 14th, 2015. Yep, it’s about time to start planning for summer fun, don’t you think? Okay, maybe it’s a ways off, but you probably want to grab a spot in this workshop sooner rather than later and for those of us seeing snow out our windows, it’s kind of fun to dream about summer isn’t it?
Lindly’s blog and website, as well as her book and DVD set, are a wealth of information on color. Just jump over to her website to get links to all her wonderful stuff.
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.
Painterly Color
December 17, 2014
Inspirational Art
Although polymer is certainly a wonderful medium for precisely applied or built-in color, I have to say the painterly effects that we are seeing a lot of these days are so intriguing. The approach and application usually involves the inclusion of another medium, which opens the color quality to a wide range of possibilities beyond what the clay itself has to offer.
Margit Bohmer has been playing with pastels and polymer for quite a while. I can’t recall off the top of my head anyone else that has been quite so exploratory with this combination. Much of her work looks like color-stained wood or stone. The way she forms, carves and antiques her beads results in a rough, almost tribal quality; although, contemporary shapes do regularly emerge. Considering those characteristics, I thought this fun and beautifully colorful piece really stood out in her collection on Flickr. The wavy line contrasts rather strongly with the scratched tube beads, but with all the pieces treated with the same painterly color application it all comes together.
Jump over to Margit’s Flickr photostream or Etsy shop for a non-stop painterly color parade.
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.
Our Interaction with Color
December 16, 2014
Inspirational Art
Today’s piece pays homage to one of my favorite painter’s of the last century, Wassily Kandinsky, whose birthday happens to be today. Kandinsky is considered the first artist to create purely abstract art and was one of the foremost Expressionist painters, as well as being an artistic theorist. He was especially concerned with our personal reactions to color, as in how we interact viscerally with what we see. He wrote in his book Du spirituel dans l’art (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), “Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye, which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an “inner resonance”—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.”
Isn’t that just lovely?
This necklace was created by Cecilia Leonini of Italy. To honor Kandinsky’s thoughts and not influence your reaction, I’m not going to comment on this piece. How do you find yourself reacting to it, to the color, form and imagery? Do you see what Kandinsky was referring to in terms of our interaction with color?
You can find more of Cecilia’s work in her Etsy shop. I only just discovered her through the Polymer Clay Artist’s Guild of Etsy which I am a member of. If you sell on Etsy and aren’t a member of the PCAGOE, do consider joining–start by clicking here. This group was key in encouraging and inspiring me when I was still new and uncertain, and many are what we affectionately refer to as the midwives of The Polymer Arts magazine, helping to form the concept and vet ideas for its creation and content when it first started out. They are a wonderful support group and a wealth of information and inspiration!
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 Indulgence
December 15, 2014
Inspirational Art
Do you ever have those days when you just want to sit down with a box of chocolates, a bag of pastries or a giant pizza with everything on it and just enjoy a little over-indulgence? Of course you do! I’m kind of feeling that way this week, but more about color than candy. Actually, I’ve had enough candy and pastries (gets rough on that account this time of year, doesn’t it?), but bright, saturated painterly color, I have not had enough of lately. So this week, let’s just indulge. We all have enough going on with holiday plans, shopping, selling, making trips to the post office and such. Let’s not get too serious and just enjoy some pretty things.
A quick jolt to the system came across my screen the other day in the form of this incredibly bright and mesmerizing bracelet by Viviane Depasse. She created this during a class with Carol Simmons this past April. Why is that not so surprising? This presentation does not have Carol’s precision kaleidoscope arrangements, but I, myself, am very much enjoying the meandering color. It is like the epitome of the phrase “eye candy”. It is bordering on overly-bright, but like really sweet candy you keep eating anyway; it’s hard not to keep looking.
Viviane posts her work both from classes and independent exploration, as well as her thoughts on her blog Mon Jardin Merveilloeufs.
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.
Do it Again
December 13, 2014
Inspirational Art, Ponderings
The one article in the Winter 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts that seemed to greatly affect both the readers and the participants in the creation of its writing was the piece by Anke Humpert, “1,700 Pieces of Jewellery“. If you haven’t read it, you really need to. Anke developed a game based on limitation and a challenging process rather than a single challenge concept, and she invited several dozen artists to participate in her first run of it. That alone is a reason to read this; perhaps, in order to get ideas about developing more in-depth challenges for yourself or for your guild.
The thing that struck me, and I’ve had numerous comments back from readers on this and it obviously struck the artists that participated, was the step that required the participants to re-do the piece they made for the challenge. Yes … after the participating artists completed their piece, Anke asked that each of them make their piece again with changes and adjustments that came about from an evaluation of the initial piece. There was something about being given that bit of instruction, or, as I’ve been thinking of it, permission to start over and try again, that was a key illuminating moment for most of the artists. I know for myself, I plan on doing that exact thing when I get into the studio here shortly, maybe even making the same piece 3 or 4 times to see what I come up with. Many of us make just one piece, and then after that attempt move on, especially when it doesn’t work; when really, we could learn so much from trying to create a better version; to evaluate our work with a purpose; to see if we can create the improvements considered in that critique.
The image here is Sonya Girodon’s two pieces and her evaluation notes. There are more comparisons, notes and comments in the article that will get you thinking. Would you be up for challenging yourself to re-do a piece in this fashion as well?
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: Beautiful Empty Frames
December 12, 2014
Inspirational Art
Yep … back to frames again today. There are just so many beautiful pieces with unique ways to incorporate frames.
Here, we have earrings by metal jewelry artist Nisa Smiley that are more than just frames. In actuality, what the open spaces frame is negative space. That negative space is filled with whatever your imagination comes up with or with the background beyond. Open metal work like this feels airy and light, which matches the wing imagery here.
Nisa works her pieces to bring elements of nature to the metal. She says “When creating a piece of jewelry, I strive to combine five elements of nature that speak most strongly to me: color, pattern, texture, organic shape, and metal. My sense of design recognizes these patterns, textures, and colors to be the ultimate complement to the human figure.” Can you discern the five elements she is working towards in this piece?
Although these frames may seem a bit delicate to create in polymer, open work and the framing of negative space is still a viable idea to work into your pieces when that airiness or space for the imagination are desired. You can see a bit more of this along with beautiful stones and colorfully treated metals in more of Nisa pieces 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.
Open Silk Screen
December 11, 2014
Inspirational Art
Before we just run away on the subject of creative framing, let’s take a quick look at some of the other items that are getting so much attention in the present issue of The Polymer Arts. The article on silk screening is just amazingly in-depth, and yet, makes it all seems so easy. Tonja Lederman took the reins on this one when I sent out a request for this kind of article earlier in the year, and boy, did she deliver. Not only do you get all the basics, she also gives out a ton of great tips, options for paint (many of which you probably never would have thought of) and resources for all the materials you’d need.
The reason I wanted to see a silk screen article was because it seemed like a lot of people I have talked to and that have written me had no idea where to start in order to try this technique. I figured if we could create an article that can get just about anyone started on it, we’d see a lot more wonderful work using this technique. I was originally inspired by one of the magazine’s very first gallery artists, Els Van Haasen, a Dutch polymer artist. I just thought the light touch of silk screen added a beautiful, delicate visual texture to her carefully finished pieces. This pendant has that same quality from the seaweed silk screen plus a glow from the blended clay colors. The open edge and domed shape gives the simple composition a kind of full and broad feel.
I know there are of polymer purists who might feel a cane or Sutton slice should have been used instead of paint, but it would have been a very different effect. The silk screen adds that visual texture and touch of complexity without disturbing the treatment of the clay. There really would be no other way to do this.
Els’ style and light touch with this technique can be seen on her Flickr photostream where there are many more examples of silk screen accented pieces along with a lot of textural and form exploration to glean inspiration from.
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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One of my more highly recommended ideas for new inspiration to try this year is to use a variety of other mediums with polymer. The versatility of polymer leaves open a vast number of compatible mediums to combine with, to accent with or to be accented with. Even if you are using other mediums with polymer now, why not try something new to you? It could open doors to entirely new ideas.
Annie Pennington, Associate Editor over at Art Jewelry magazine, mixes all kinds of mediums together. Polymer, fiber and metals have been her staple materials for a while but with them she also uses other things such as colored pencils, acrylics, and paper. None of her pieces are really well-seated within any one material category, but then why should they be restricted to that kind of categorization? This brooch does not jump out at you and say, “I am polymer!” and I think it is better for that even. We see the brooch, its form, color and textures, before we start to consider the materials. Granted, discerning the materials used in a piece is primarily done by other artists, but knowing the piece transcends such distilled defining gives us as fellow crafters a greater appreciation for the work. Don’t you think?
A little time on Annie’s website will show you many more examples of not having any one medium restrict or define the work. You might also take a look at our Summer 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts, Mix it Up, for more mixed media inspiration. You’ll also want to ensure your subscription is up to date so you’ll get our Spring 2015 issue, with the theme of Diversity, where we will offer tons of new ideas for trying different mediums and processes in polymer to get your year off to a very inspiring start.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
We definitely have a penchant for making jewelry in this community, but have you tried other forms to see if you have an affinity for other forms? Non-jewelry forms can be very freeing as engineering them is often less complicated. There are a lot of people trying their hand at home decor objects, decorating furniture, covering sculptural shapes and applying polymer to clothing.
One of the most interesting explorations in this area this last year, at least from what I’ve seen, are the vessels Donna Greenberg has been busily creating. I don’t even know how to explain her journey, but she has really been pushing her form and application of her clay treatment in some really intriguing ways. I’m going to leave it at that and give you this beautiful close-up of one of her newest creations to get your interest piqued. Then go on over to the Donna Greenberg Arts page on Facebook to see the many pieces she’s made and her journey itself.
Then I might suggest you spend a little time on Pinterest or Flickr seeing what else people are up to these days. Perhaps you will find a form that you just must try this new year.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
It’s that time of year, isn’t it? When we start thinking about how we’ll do things differently in the coming year. A lot of us will be considering what we can do to increase our sales, make our work vs art lives easier, improve our skills or simply get inspired to do something new to invigorate ourselves and our work. Well, I thought I might be able to help with the last bit here. It is what I try to do daily on this blog, but this week let’s just pull out a few pieces of work and talk about how the pieces might be used to inspire you to try something new.
For instance, how much variety to you have in your beads? Do you stick with primarily one shape or one type of treatment for them? Do you mix up the canes or texture you apply? If you feel like you’re in a bit of a rut in your bead making, shake it up by challenging yourself to a bit more variety. Here is an example of this from MaryAnne Loveless, who created these large hollow tube beads with a ton of different applications. She uses canes, textures, pressed clay bits and hand tooled marks. There is some dimensional contrast in all the beads, but some have more than others, which creates a wide variety of surface designs.
Varied surface design is MaryAnne’s forte, so if you want more inspiration in that area be sure to take a look at her Flickr photostream and her blog.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
To end my week of favorite things, I’d like to share a nice little tutorial on a landscape surface treatment. I am rather partial to landscapes as they can represent so much. They can be calming, dreamy and make us feel small in the enormity of open land before us. But mostly, for me, landscapes feel like the beginning of a story. Maybe I’ve just watched too many movies that have opened on a wide open landscape, but I do like to think about seeing all the possibilities in that openness.
This French artist, who goes only by the name Joelle, is a crafter of many materials but seems strongly drawn to textures and organic color palettes, both of which you can see in this tutorial of hers. I enjoy the mix of additional mediums to get her textures and create little focal points. Switch up the colors to your own preferred palettes, and create a landscape that could hold your own story.
You’ll find the step-by-step tutorial on Joelle’s blog, along with the many other creative projects she gets herself into.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
I don’t know how long I’ve had these candy-colored goodies on my list, but every time I see them they make me smile. There is something so playful about the forms, colors and what must be an amazing tactile texture, yet they don’t exactly come across as toy-like. I think it may be the very energized color pairing on each that make them too pretty to be a child’s plaything.
These were created by Demi Chao, who was a Birmingham School of Jewellery graduate student at the time she created these. I cannot find a note of what these are made of, but a close-up shot I found looks like rubber. Do you wonder where she got her inspiration for these though? Here it is in her own words:
“Just like the organisms in the natural world, this series of brooches are colorful and textural. They are inspired by the microscopic photographs of pollen cells and sea corals which possess vibrant colours and peculiar shapes. They always make me want to touch them. Therefore, the idea of making playful and tactile jewellery came to mind.”
We do tend to play with our jewelry anyways, sometimes nervously, sometimes while daydreaming or thinking deeply. Why not create work that our sense of touch responds heavily to? I know I have a number of designs in my sketchbooks specifically focused on the pieces’ tactile nature, but I never did anything with them. When I see these, I know I need to revisit that idea.
Take a look at more of the delicious color combinations and other organic forms on Demi’s website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Today’s piece celebrates both the holiday and my love of this incredibly talented sculptor. Forest Rogers imbues her work with some of the most fluid, dynamic and ethereal choices of form and detail. Her work can be equally ethereal and disturbing, but her pieces are never anything less than wondrous. This is all my humble opinion of course, but I think many people agree.
For today, just enjoy the faerie herald here, and when you have a quiet moment between festivities, do go visit her blog and website for sculpture that just pulls at the soul.
For those of you that celebrate the Christmas holiday, a very Merry Christmas to you all. To all my readers, regardless of what this day means to you, thank you so much for joining me so often and allowing me to share the many beautiful things I find in my searches. Being able to do this is the best gift, and I am gifted with this every day! How wonderful.
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 know, I know … this is not polymer, but there was some question about that as it was posted on a few Pinterest boards under polymer. And that colorful inlay could be polymer, right? It could, but it’s not. It’s painted. The reason it was popping up under polymer searches was because it was posted to the polymer tutorial site, claylessons.com, in a message posted to encourage people to visit the Daily Art Muse blog (let’s see how many plugs and links we can fit into one blog post, shall we?). So there is the polymer connection.
But why am I featuring a non-polymer piece today? Because it’s nearly Christmas and if I can’t break some rules now, when can I? Well, yes, I do break rules on occasion for no reason at all, but let’s say this is because it’s a holiday week. And because this piece is gorgeous. It is all carved wood by wood artist, Joey Richardson. The detail is amazing. The form and intricacy are so fluid and natural you might wonder if it’s not alive. It also reminded me of my favorite gourd artist Mark Doolittle (we needed another plug and link here, right?).
But wait, there’s more! More incredible work like this that is (although more links will certainly happen). After holding onto this, waiting for the right themed week to share it in for nearly a year, I finally found out who the unattributed artist was, opened her site and just got lost there. I don’t know how Joey has the patience or hasn’t ruined her fingers with all this fine carving, but I am grateful that she does. What a treat. Treat yourself as well by heading over to her site and be sure to read her About page. Her feeling about her sources of inspiration really fit the season.
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 love creating polymer components, but I have never been that big on the stringing and adding findings and all that. I enjoy making something that didn’t exist before it came into my hands; although a couple store-bought ear wires can be integrated into a design, they are still not wholly mine. So I started making my own ear wires. Much better but not quite as much fun as polymer. Then I saw basic gauge earrings made from polymer on Etsy some years ago and thought … ah ha! No ear wires at all. You create a whole piece, and then it goes into your piercing. Cool. Let’s try that. And that is how gauge earrings ended up becoming my primary form sold through my Etsy shop.
I don’t get much studio time these days so I don’t create and sell gauges, but I occasionally stop and see what other people are doing with them now that polymer clay gauges have caught on. These have been my favorite by far. They are created by a pair of artists, the Ukraine’s Ira and Evgeniy Abramov, who run a shop on Etsy called RybaColnce. The concept is simple but wonderful. The traditional contrast of black and red with the beat of those repeated slices into the clay to reveal the hidden crimson inside covers some of my favorite approaches: contrast, repetition and things hidden. Plus they are both serious (like edgy serious) and fun at the same time. Yes, they might not be the most comfortable pair to put in, but they’d be worth it!
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 am going to use this week to pull out some pieces I’ve been holding onto but haven’t found a place for in our themed weeks. Just a few of my favorite pieces and artists to drool over this holiday week.
I am not sure what in this is polymer, but it’s in the description of the work so I’ve been hanging onto it. If you read the Fall 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts, then you probably saw (and maybe read?) my article, “Ravages of Time”, on faux deteriorated surfaces. So yes, I have a thing about rust and patina and anything that represents a passage of time and the later cycle of life for inanimate materials. Knowing that, you can probably figure out why I am drawn to this piece by jewelry artist Tish Collins. The piece is titled “Time Machine”, which I easily interpret as the passing of time as shown by the disintegration of elements seen in the rust and patina here. But that is just my take on it. Then again, isn’t that what the purpose is behind art–to pull from it what resonates with you and put your own story to it? How would you read this?
Polymer is not a primary medium for Tish, but I do urge you to look at her jewelry, both with and without polymer. She has some beautiful forms and compositions to share with you 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.
