Changing Things Up
Well, here we are … first post of 2017 and I find myself, again, focused on how to make this a year full of useful information and inspiration for everyone who so kindly drops in on my mental meanderings. To that end, I have decided to make a couple tweaks.
I’m going to have just one Inspirational Challenge a week, at the end of the week, so those who were feeling bad that they couldn’t do all three each week (not that I expected that myself!), will feel some of the pressure come off and we’ll have the weekend to work on them.
The other thing is to prioritize studio time in my schedule for myself. This will greatly be assisted by the fact that as of next week, I will finally have the space for a dedicated and properly equipped studio in California, the state I will now be calling home as I move into our new house. I still have my space in Colorado but will be there only once a quarter or so. Not traveling nearly every month will certainly help with getting more time in the studio too.
To further assist in my New Year’s resolution to find more studio time in my day, I might change up the posts a bit, as long as I can still give you great content. Just want to see what I can do with very short formats. Then, after the move I’ll put together a survey and get your input on what you’d like to see in the blogs, newsletters, magazines and books. If you have specific ideas that you think I should put to a vote in this survey, write me directly at sbray(a)thepolymerarts.com before the 14th of January.
In the meantime, let’s look at some clever designs this week that take common or familiar ideas but give them an interesting tweak. These beads are, I believe, variations on using the same striped sheets of clay but arranged in different patterns. It is hard to believe these could all be from the same initial pattern but look at each piece closely and you’ll see a bargello like concept used to arrange each one. It’s rather fascinating to identify what Jana Honnerova did here. It’s rather like some kind of brain puzzle. But it brings to mind what we can get out of pushing our arrangements.
Jana’s hallmark seems to be taking one thing and seeing what else can be done with it, both with her own techniques and the techniques she has learned from others. See whose influences you can identify in her work and what she does to change up the approach of other artists on her Flickr photostream.
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