Adventures in Form
Maybe it’s just me, but 2016 seems like a year of new exploration for many polymer artisans. It’s like the year of trying something new. Not that some of the artists I’ll share with you this week don’t regularly explore, but these are kind of fun and a bit surprising.
This tile, by Connie Clark, is what really got me thinking about this. She posted this on her Facebook page with these comments: “I have been wanting to branch out beyond making primarily jewelry with my polymer art work ... Working in a larger scale has had some appeal but there are some mechanics and logistics that I need to work out along the way … I have been looking at a lot of other artist’s work in various medium including ceramics, painting, mixed media, paper, fabrics, polymer and more and I’m seeing a whole lot of tremendous inspiration. I was lucky enough to see some work in person by a ceramic artist named Vicki Grant in a gallery in Asheville NC and her work was something you could spend hours marveling over. Here’s to the journey of learning and discovering something new!”
The first of her explorations are 6″x 6″ tiles, although she wants to go larger, but, since she created these at a retreat, she was restricted by the oven sizes available. She says she plans to go larger once she has it worked out. I say, yes please. I would love to see more work like this. Such great texture and added dimension having that center piece come forward to house a cluster of crystals. There are little details all over this piece so take your time taking it in.
You can see the other tiles she’s posted so far, as well as see how different this is compared to other pieces she’s done, by checking out the photos on her Facebook page.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Try a form you’ve never created in before. Take a look through books you have or search Pinterest, Flickr, Etsy, or whatever you prefer to come up with a completely new form. Have you ever created hair pins, ear cuffs, cell phone covers, coasters, bookmarks, book ends? There are a lot of possibilities.
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