The Party is in Full Swing. Come join us!
May 31, 2023
Polymer community news, The Polymer Arts magazine news
What party is this? The latest project from little ol’ me, Sage. The Sage Arts podcast is more than up and running… I have 25 episodes up as of this posting, ready on your favorite podcast player (New to Podcasts? Click here to find out how easy it is to enjoy them!) and a new one coming out every week.
What’s This Podcast All About?
This podcast is all about feeding and exciting your muse. By enlightening or reminding you about important and maybe unconsidered aspects of creating and living as an artist, I hope to help you find more joy and satisfaction in what you do, sharing ways to create with authenticity and fearlessness, while supporting your uniquely defined version of success.
Now what the heck does that all mean? Well, let’s look at what this is and what this is not…
It IS…
… a way to consistently feed your muse
… all about you. Myself, my guests, and my guest co-hosts speak to the issues, curiousity, and hurdles that you as a creative deal with on a regular basis.
… focused on creating a more fulfilling, joyful, and meaningful artistic journey.
… a conversation that goes both ways with lots of opportunities for you to be heard.
It is NOT…
… all about polymer clay or any one medium, as it’s important stuff for all artistic folks.
… focused on “how-to” or the latest tools and materials.
… just interviewing successful artists and talking at you. Rather it is like a coffee house chat or other friendly gather and I include you, the listener, in every way I can.
I created this podcast to supercharge your creativity, motivation, and artistic style through novelty, story, conversation, and community. Everyone has how-tos and ways to increase your sales – valiant and necessary stuff, of course! But what does your muse need? What does your work and your love of your art need to thrive? That’s where I want to help.
I aim to give artists ways to further hone their unique voice, increase their joy and productivity, and create a version of artistic success that is meaningful, satisfying, and anything but ordinary.
Come Join the Conversation
If you have something to share, would like to be a guest (for a chatty interview), or be a guest co-host (you and I banter on a particular subject) drop me an email me via my contact page on the show website: https://thesagearts.com/contact/ or send a voice mail (use the red button on that same site, bottom right corner of any page.)
And join me on social media!
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thesageartspodcast/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheSageArtsPodcast
And don’t forget to click “FOLLOW” or that little arrow on your favorite Podcast player so you get notices of new episodes. New Episodes come out weekly on Friday evenings, barring natural disasters or other bits of interference, of course. I hope you’ll join me there, on The Sage Arts podcast!
There are new artists and creatives joining every day with tons of great things to say…
“Just what I needed!”
“I just binged-listened … and I can’t wait for more!”
“There is so much validity in your presentation…”
“Looking forward to all the thinking and creating that they prompt.”
Taste test on my RSS website: https://rss.com/podcasts/thesagearts/
Or on the podcast home website: https://thesagearts.com/
Or start with this episode:
Outside Inspiration: A Felted Landscape
November 15, 2013
Inspirational Art
Another fantastic ‘canvas’ for landscape composition is an object that is “in the round”. That term simply means something can be viewed all the way around its form. What do you work in that can viewed that way? Big beads? Earrings? Vases?
Vases, bowls, boxes and containers of all kinds can be used as landscape composition pieces, with the advantage of being able to develop multiple scenes because they will be viewed from multiple sides. Here is an unusual application of felt in a very colorful, abstract landscape built around the form of a pot.
Sharon Costello will felt just about anything, it seems. Her website features figures, wall art, clothes, lampshades, masks, and covered objects like this vessel using both wet and needle felting methods. Have some fun on her site this afternoon seeing just how inventive one inspired artist can be with her felt. Then ask yourself as a polymer artist, what do you see that you can take back to your studio?
Scene Around the Wrist
November 14, 2013
Inspirational Art
Okay, enough with the necklaces for now. The idea of working a landscape around a piece is a concept suitable for any form that has a stretch of space to cover, which means most three-dimensional forms.
So how about a cuff bracelet? It’s perfect, right? Laura Timmins certainly did a wonderful job creating a cuff and a scene to go about the wrist in this “Sea Floor Cuff”.
A cuff bracelet really is an open canvas for whatever scene or story you might want to tell. There’s no stringing or engineering of the design. Just apply whatever ‘scape you fancy.
It looks like Laura has been busy with her wholesale orders so she hasn’t posted much lately, but it’s always worth a peek at her Flickr pages to see a retrospective of her work. She is always inspiring if not a little daunting with her impeccable finishes. Something to aspire to!
Landscape in the Abstract
November 13, 2013
Inspirational Art
The sense of open space we get from landscapes or any kind of broad outdoor scene can be relayed in abstract as well as literal interpretations. The draw of landscapes is in the flow of change, and maybe even the idea that a story lies in those changes as we see them shift across the length or width of a piece. And if not an actual story, there is at least the possible background to one. Or so that is always how I’ve looked at landscapes of any kind.
We’ll look at one more set of landscaped beads, but this time of a purely abstract nature, where the change in color makes up the variations across the necklace. Nathalie (who prefers to be called Nat and is under Pluie de Perles on both Flicker and CanalBlog) created this simple but effective design to showcase her lovely color scheme and purely abstract ‘scape.
Nat actually created this some 6 years ago, about the time I did my piece I shared on Monday. She did quite a few of these kinds of landscape necklaces with hanging mokume tiles that year. You can see more on her Flickr pages. Scroll down her Photostream page to get to those prior years.
The Landscape of Space
November 12, 2013
Inspirational Art
Landscapes aren’t just about land. Or maybe I should use the term only when talking of land, and should rise to the suggested use of such terms as waterscapes, skyscapes, and moonscapes for other varieties of terrain. But what about vast stretches of scenery for which we don’t have a term? The necklace below is a “scape” of some sort. Maybe a spacescape?
Silvia Ortiz de la Torre always amazes with her ingenious designs and fearless colors. The fitted design of these hanging beads steps just outside of what she commonly does. Silvia is a master of the dramatically sophisticated through highly saturated color and heavy repetition, but here she’s gone a little darker in color and has added all kinds of variation, while still keeping it anchored through the repetition of the mirrored base shapes arranged around that “A”-like center bead.
There is less of a connection between the pieces here than the dragon-scape you saw yesterday, but they are all still related and make up an appropriate scene with the randomness of points we see in the stars.
Enjoy a bit of time on Silvia’s Flickr photostream or her Etsy site for a nice blast of color this Tuesday.
The Allure of The Landscape
November 11, 2013
Inspirational Art
This week I wanted to talk about landscapes. Not so much the category of visual art that denotes representation of broad outdoor scenes, but more the use of the landscape orientation–designs that run along the horizontal with individual or separate components that are visually a single, continuous image.
To start the week off (and because I have a very long and hectic day ahead getting the files done for the next issue), I have here an older piece of mine that’s still one of my favorites, using kind of a tile choker design. The wing spread of the dragon-like image and the suggested distant scenery goes all the way around the necklace. I made this back in my more purist polymer days, so everything except the small glass beads is polymer, including the wire-like lines around the faux enamel and a piece of my elabradorite in the center.
Chokers with tile beads make creating a continuous scene fairly easy, since there isn’t too much in the way of complicated planning to get the pieces to sit properly. I’ve made a lot of these types of necklaces, changing up the size and shapes of the tiles as well as making long enough for a necklace instead of a choker, but I think keeping the basic design simple as I did here made this one of the more successful ones when it comes to the visual “landscape” created.
Alright, back to getting the Winter 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts whipped into printable shape. Enjoy your Monday. And for our USA readers, if you have the chance on this Veteran’s Day, consider giving one or a handful of our service men and women, past and present, a warm hug and thank you for doing what they’ve done for us all. And since I’m not likely to get out of the house with all this work … a warm thank you and e-hug from me to all the service people reading. You are very much appreciated.
Personal Impact and Contrast
November 10, 2013
Ponderings
Instead of a quote this Sunday, I wanted to share a photographer’s artwork. Richard Renaldi works in contrast. A very unexpected and heartwarming kind of contrast. And he aims to make an impact, if not on the state of the world itself, then on the lives of 2 or 3 people at a time, which he then shares with us.
Before I explain further, look at this photo here. What do you see? You are certainly seeing a contrast in age and ethnicity, but in order for contrast to work well, some commonality needs to be present. In a photo of people, our first instinct is to find that commonality in the relationship between people. You would probably start to consider who these people are, how they know each other and what they mean to each other. There is certainly a story here. But it’s not one you’d expect.
Richard Renaldi‘s photographs are all about our perception of relationships. These two women actually have nothing at all in common. Minutes before this photo was taken they were complete strangers, plucked off the streets to pose as themselves with someone that, up until that moment, meant nothing to them. But by the time the little photo shoot is over, most of Richard’s subjects find they feel connected to that stranger, all because of one moment of allowing them into their personal space and being part of an artistic endeavor. What goes on is better explained in this short video about Richard’s process, including the words and reactions of some of his subjects.
All art has the capacity to impact another person’s life in some way. Often times a gifted piece of jewelry comes to symbolize the love of another person or the importance of a particular moment. A person who buys your sculpture may do so because of the joyful times it reminds them of, or just because the beauty of it warms them when they look at it. Our art can affect people in a myriad of ways, but it’s not important whether it will or not– it’s simply that it has the potential. That concept is a good thing to keep in mind as you create: value the work you put into your art as much as you hope the person who will end up with it will value it, too. You just never know what it could end up meaningful to someone.
When Your Buyers Impact You
November 9, 2013
Inspirational Art
Adriana Ayala didn’t set out to be a Day of the Dead artist, but buyers liked what she did so much with a requested piece that she found herself making more and more fun and decorative skulls like these below. Great little pieces, aren’t they? The only thing was, Adriana, a resident of California but originally from Venezuela (where there is no Day of the Dead tradition), knew very little about the holiday, where it came from, or even what it meant to its observers.
This eventually lead her to do a large exploratory piece about the holiday and its origins. Her exploration and the resulting art pieces are the subjects she covers in the article she wrote for our Muse’s Corner personal experience section of The Polymer Arts magazine. Instead of picking and choosing the aspects of the holiday that were most enjoyable, Adriana represents the whole of the tradition, from its dark sacrificial past to the modern day celebrations of life. You can read about her little adventure and see the interesting piece she created when the next issue comes out at the end of this month.
Outside Inspiration: Color Contrast
November 8, 2013
Inspirational Art
Yesterday we talked about the one aspect of color that actually removes the importance of what many consider the defining characteristic of color–hue. So, knowing how important color is to most of us in this community, I thought today we’d treat you to a little color overload.
With color, i’ts not too hard to go overboard and go from harmonious contrast to chaos. The point between those two is a very fine line. So how can you tell if you are heading for the precipice of chaos? Well, for our outside inspiration Friday, let’s examine some extremely colorful glass beads that amble up to that point, but delightfully avoid heading over that cliff.
These juicy beads are the creation of Israel’s Michal Silberberg. She uses almost every color of the rainbow in these, setting up a whole array of contrast between all the various colors. There are quite a few other contrasting elements here as well–round on square forms, thick lines running side-by-side with dotted lines, small and large circles, and statically centered nested circles on top of energetic moving lines. For all that, it doesn’t feel like she’s gone overboard. Do you know why? Hint … it has to do with a lack of contrast.
The trick to using contrast well is balance. If everything contrasts, there is no order to anchor the viewer. These beads work because of an element with no contrast, a bit of restraint and some adherence to order. Okay … can you identify the element that is not contrasted? It’s a characteristic of color. What’s that? Saturation you say? Well, yes! That’s it.
All these colors are heavily saturated and bright. Even the black is just black and the whites are just white, with no grays. This consistency in saturation makes using every hue in the rainbow workable. There is also some restraint in the use of other elements, like only using circles and squares rather than a myriad of shapes. And then there are the two different types of lines–dots vs. solid lines–which follow the same paths, making them feel related. If she had increased the contrast in either of these areas, she would have tipped over into visual chaos.
Alright, back to working on the final details to get the next issue off. Go enjoy your weekend. Keep an eye out for contrast and note how it works in the the designs you enjoy. Becoming more aware of the elements as you observe them will translate to being more aware and more in control of such things when creating your own work. You can start by checking out more of Michal’s wonderful bead designs in her Etsy shop. A big dose of color on a Friday is always a good thing!
Value in Contrast
November 7, 2013
Inspirational Art
The lead article in the next issue of The Polymer Arts is about contrast, all types of contrasts. One of the harder to grasp ideas in the realm of contrast is color value. The difficulty comes in identifying differences in value. Value is the variation between light and dark. Generally we can see that yellow and purple are not only opposite colors, but also quite different in value–yellow comes across as light, and purple appears to be dark. But what about green and red? Or chocolate brown and royal blue? Or mustard and periwinkle? Even though the value difference can be hard to decide on, value is still perceived in an overall design. If you’re having trouble, there are a couple tricks to help you figure out how much value contrast you have in a piece.
One, if you are having a hard time identifying colors with value contrast in your piece, then you likely don’t have much value contrast. That may or may not be okay, depending on how you want the piece to come across. If your piece is looking boring or flat, increasing the value contrast would be something to investigate. And if you want to identify the value differences so you can decide what to change, a really easy way to do this is to take a black and white photo of your piece, or change a color photo of it to “grayscale” in your favorite photo editing software.
Value is easy to find in work that is created without color. This lovely necklace by Nathalie of 100% Bijoux is all about value. Without color, the contrast between black, white, and gray is all she has to carry the drama in this piece, and she does that quite well. It’s a great example of how important value can be, and the contrast is easy to see without the distraction of color.
We discuss many more elements of design that can be contrasted to add interest and drama in the upcoming Winter 2013 article. We’ll be putting the mailing list together early next week for that first batch that mails directly from the printer, so if you haven’t gotten your pre-order in or your subscription yet, it takes just a few clicks to order on our website. If you are a subscriber but are wondering if your subscription is up yet or not, we did send out the notice to all readers whose subscriptions are expired Tuesday morning (it might be in your spam folder if you’re thinking yours is expired). If it’s not there, you can also check your digital access emails (for digital subscribers), or write my assistant Lisa at connect@thepolymerarts.com and she can look it up for you.
The Impact of the Past on the Present
November 6, 2013
Inspirational Art
One of the articles I personally looked forward to the most out of the articles in this next issue of The Polymer Arts is on the influence of past cultures on our work. Some of the influence and connections we have are very subtle or so ubiquitous that we don’t recognize their ancient roots, like the use of swirls, hand prints, or even hearts. But then there is the more obvious imagery we connect directly with past civilizations, like runes, hieroglyphs, Celtic knots, and cave paintings. We have a strong connection to these images and symbols, some of us more than others. I thought it’d be great to explore how such influences have appeared in polymer and how they can be used by readers to tell stories and create themes in their work. I was very lucky that Dayle Doroshow was interested in putting this article together. It’s a great piece.
In the past, I have been particularly interested in Luann Udell’s work using prehistoric images and aged textures. I haven’t yet had a theme in which I thought I could share her work with you all, but here we are! It’s not colorful work, but once you spend some time looking at what she does, you’re not likely to forget it.
Does this piece intrigue you? If so, take a little time to look at the sculptures and mixed media wall hangings that Luann has posted on her website as well. I would have liked to post a wall hanging, but the small image size used in these posts was just not going to do them justice.
