The Party is in Full Swing. Come join us!

 

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:

The Silver Scene

December 19, 2018

 I love how silver can be representative of snow in winter even though it’s gray and not white. It’s that clean simplicity, I think, that echoes the simplicity of a landscape under newly fallen snow. That’s why think this piece by Wiwat Kamolpornjiwit makes me think of wintertime.

Wiwat’s mastery is often in his simplicity although a lot of his work isn’t simple. For instance, he does not usually treat the surface of the clay but rather goes for smooth shiny layers, accented with simplified or symbolic motifs of natural objects like flowers, leaves, trees, etc. In this piece, those motifs are nothing but pokes in the clay but we get an entire scene out of it. The rolled wire accents are like flowers popping out of a pot, and add a touch of energy outside the frame of those repeated shapes, breaking the line the top of the half-circles make. It’s not complex, but it’s not all that simple either. It’s just those little touches that give it a sense of sophistication and make it a satisfying design.

If you have not seen Wiwat’s work, or haven’t looked at it lately, you can find it on his website.

Silver Inspired

December 17, 2018

So here we are, a week before Christmas and I thought it best if I can share some things to put us in that holiday spirit. As for me, I think I’ve had enough of Santa Clauses, Christmas wreaths, snowmen and candy canes. Not that there’s anything wrong with those motifs but you’re seeing those everywhere right now. So I get to thinking about the season in a more noncommercial way and, perusing through my collection of art to share at a future time I found myself drawn to the silver pieces. There’s something about the stately near whiteness of silver that feel so appropriate for this time of year. Its quiet and yet bright manner are also seen everywhere in silver bells, silver ribbon, silver tinsel, and even outside our windows for those of us who get to admire a snowy night landscape. I don’t know if that wholly explains what I’m doing with silver this week but that’s going to be our theme.

This is a piece that started me thinking on it. It’s a recent necklace by Celine Charuau. I had been thinking stars like on the top of Christmas trees or the radiating ones often found in nativity scenes but this is what I ended up finding. It’s not a star but is a beautiful radiating piece full of texture and still presenting that quiet, stately feel.  The lines in the urchin are followed by the lines of the silver pieces radiating from the center and, combining with the silver color, gives us a sense that it is heralding some moment or celebrating an occasion. It may seem like a stretch but it feels a little like Christmas to me.

Of course, Celine’s work is often quiet and stately, using pale or subdued colors and lots of silver. You can see more of her work on her Flickr photostream.

 

 

Found Mediums

December 14, 2018

Our last look at using polymer and other materials this week will be with Debbie Crothers. She posted this lovely assemblage of elements this week on Facebook and I just had to share it.

Debbie is well known for her surface design work and posts tons of her experiments and beads but it can take a while for her to come around to putting the pieces together into finished jewelry. I understand inclination. The textures revealed and the blooming of colors that happens as you manipulate and add to the polymer on your worktable can be intoxicating. I know I just want to keep trying new things but at some point we gotta do something with the elements we’ve created.

So I’ve been excited to see this whole slew of finished work popping up on her social network feeds right now. But she isn’t just using polymer elements. This dynamic piece includes polymer spikes, recycled beads, and a recycled ring. Debbie is also a thrift store hound (something else we have in common!) which can be such a fabulous way to find additional bits and bobs to add to polymer jewelry and other assemblage work.

Take a closer look at Debbie’s recently assembled finished necklaces and earrings on her Facebook page and her website. And don’t forget to stop by her shop for some fun tutorials to keep you busy and entertained this winter.

(Right after I wrote this, I found that Debbie wrote her own post about her “Upcycling Jewelry” so for more on the subject, jump over to her blog here.)

Material Flow

December 12, 2018

Here is another wonderful mixed-media piece that makes you really stop and ask, “Is that really polymer?”

The work is by Sue Savage who keeps a low profile in the polymer realm but is highly regarded for her jewelry. She works in metal, precious stones and polymer but although the polymer is usually the focal point, you don’t think of it as polymer clay when you look at the design. You see how well integrated her mokume polymer cabochon is here. The black dots in the polymer are inversely echoed in the reflected white of the stones placed around the keyhole frame of the piece. The handmade metal frame itself works primarily on the diagonal as do the lineup of the dots in the mokume, set around but not hugging the polymer cab. It makes for a lovely balance and flow.

The design could really have worked with any stone as the focal point but the use of polymer allows her to create a dynamic type of “stone” that might be difficult to find and probably harder and more expensive to work with. Her use of polymer in her pieces allows for a wide range of design without the limitations of what is simply available.

Take a look at the many other designs mixing metal and polymer on her website here.

A Pinch Here

December 10, 2018

Polymer clay is well-known for how well it plays with other materials. Pushing that mixing of mediums seems to be the next great horizon for the polymer community as a whole as we seem to see more and more crossover of mediums in polymer art.

Polymer artists have played with inclusions mixed into polymer nearly since the inception of polymer as a fine art material. In a kind of flipping of the tables, Melanie West brings a source of the fine arts to polymer clay when she works her inclusions into the clay. Melanie searches out and acquires high-grade dry paint pigments which she mixes into her polymer clay, creating these incredibly rich colors and densely grainy visual textures, as you can see here in this lovely bracelet.

Having dabbled a bit with natural paint pigments and polymer in the past, I have a fairly good idea of just how tricky it can be to mix in the right amounts as different color pigments have different grain and dispersion characteristics. Melanie shares her processes in her intense technique-driven classes and workshops so you may have a chance to learn about her pigment inclusions if you’re lucky enough to grab a spot in an upcoming workshop.

If you’re interested in joining Melanie for one of her workshops, keep an eye on her upcoming schedule on her website and follow her for workshop news and her fantastic inspirational artistic finds on her Facebook page.

Spikey Blue

December 7, 2018

Even here in Southern California there is quite the nip in the air and winter is making herself known all across the US and in other parts of the world. To match this weather and season, I thought I’d go with icy blues to wind up this week of blues and what a piece we have here to contemplate.

Maud Traon has taken gem-setting far beyond the classic expectation. These marquis-cut stones are installed not so much to be admired for their beautiful icy blue color but to generate energy and a sharp boldness that verges on the dangerous. This ring could possibly double as a weapon!

All kidding aside, you can see how this unusual setting reflects a gem’s organic origin where the crystals form in a variety of directions at the behest of various geological forces. They do not sit in the Earth, cut and clear and ready to sparkle for us but are surrounded by other elements, many that are dark, dirty, gritty and swallowing them up.

These were my thoughts before I found this explanation of her approach on Maud’s website. It seems her objective has been met when viewers like us read similar sentiments in the work:

 Maud’s work sits in direct contrast to the standard approach to jewellery of setting highly cut stones within a traditional fixing.  The stones are set in a manner that reflects their natural structure, glitter is treated as an equal to precious stones and the object in its entirety appears to have fallen out of a natural wonderland.

If you find this work intriguing, head over to Maud’s website to look at other pieces in the series as well is the variety of approaches she takes under this organic philosophy.

Refereeing Blues

December 5, 2018

Today we’ll contemplate blues and beyond with the joyously colorful work of Anarina Anar.

Although the oranges dominate  with their bright hues and fill the largest and terminal shape, I think the blue grounds all the colors here. Sitting in the middle like a color referee, the calm blues blush purple on one side as if the purple circle above has been allowed to drain into it. The bold oranges, on the other hand, are given a definitive border of dots that say, “Hey, you can play with us but stay on your side.” The oranges concede to have a bit of purple in their territory with an ode to the blues within the purple ring so that we have a visual connection between all the pieces and color players on this playground.

Yep, I just personified colors as if they were characters in a story. And why not? They really are, more often than not, integral to the telling of they story within any piece. Here they are central characters that give the necklace its lively spirit.

Color is at the core of all of Anarina’s work as you can see with a quick jaunt over to her Flickr site and her Etsy store.

Off-Center Blue

December 3, 2018

I seem to be in a blue mood. Not blue as in sad but rather, I’ve been picking out a lot of blue artwork lately and with yesterday being the first day of Hanukkah, blue seems to be the color of the week so I’m going with that as a theme.

This first piece from an artist in the Czech Republic who goes only by the name of Hira in her shop on Fler.cz. Hira is quite the exploratory artisan. There are numerous styles and techniques in the work displayed in the shop. You can see the influence of many different artists, such as the Melanie West style cane seen here, but there are sincere efforts to design with the artist’s unique aesthetic.

Bright, deep blue on black is always a dramatic pairing but with the added bright green moving into yellow in this cane, we have a fairly energetic piece even though the color palette is limited. Then there are the yummy tactile textures adding a bit of background buzz to the high energy feel of this piece.

You really should take a look at Hira’s shop and the variety of work she does. There is careful attention paid to the finish regardless of the style and there is a satisfying balance in most all the pieces. Hira also knits! So go ahead and take some time out to check out the work.

Silhouettes of the Past

November 30, 2018

I think everyone knows Jeffrey Lloyd Dever‘s work but he’s not as prevalent on the social media networks as a lot of other polymer artists. So sometimes, when his work does pop up, it feels so entirely refreshing and new. And sometimes it doesn’t even seem like his work but he has such a definite signature, especially in his forms and the way he arranges them.

I remember talking to Jeff in Racine, Wisconsin at the Racine Art Museum’s In-Organic exhibition in 2014. His installation piece, Whence from a Darkling Heart, a jacket with black shapes arranged on it and below it, was front and center when you walked into the exhibition space. Jeff asked if I knew it was his work when I walked in. I said of course I knew and told him I would be surprised if not everyone else did too. He was surprised. He thought it was so different that people might have wondered whose it was. I think it’s hard, when looking at our own work, to see what our signature style is.

But here’s another piece of Jeff’s, absent his familiar combination of sunset colors or a dominance of blues, and it seems very obvious that this is his work. Or maybe you would see it and wonder if somebody was emulating his work. But no, this is all Jeffrey Dever and I would say it’s the shapes, the immaculate finish and his careful consideration of balance that makes it so obvious.

The thing about going predominantly monochrome like this is that you are challenged to set color side and heavily consider all the other design elements. The forms, the size, the juxtaposition and contrast of elements, and the way the work is finished become paramount considerations. These other design elements must be attended to with care to make it work. Not that those design elements should not always be attended to with care but sometimes, with color, you may be tempted to let the color carry a piece because a bold or well-chosen color palette will still result in a piece that people admire. It’s just that the work can generally be taken up a notch or two if the other design elements are deemed just as important and are given just as much consideration as color.

And this is why this piece works so well. There is contrast in the form of black shapes but the base shape is the same in each one so there is a connection between them all. The red ball adds the drama with his heavy contrast in color as well as surface treatment and shape. Still, the ball’s roundness is an echo of the curves in the pod shapes. Just imagine if the red element was a square. It would lose so much. But it could have been a triangle, with the points of the pods and the points of the triangles echoing each other, although it would’ve felt very different.

Jeff has some other very different forms he’s been working on which you’ll see more of when we get the Polymer Journeys book out in February. In the meantime, you can take a look at his website to see what he’s been up to over the past couple years.

Color Pendulums

November 28, 2018

Sarah Shriver is well known for her caning, so it is fun to see what she does when she branches out from canes.

These pendulum pendants put a spotlight on Sarah’s focus on color. It is a very different look and feel for her but if you look at the forms, she is still working in similar shapes but without the canes. There looks to be more freedom of form for her. Her canes are generally laid on flat or slightly domed surfaces whereas here, the forms bulge out from their silver bindings, washed with color around the edges to accentuate that roundness in the shapes.

The design may seem simple at first until you consider the components. There is a definite contrast going on here that may be hard to identify at first. The roundness and gradient wash of color are soft elements but the bulk terminating in an arrow-like point that drives inexorably downward gives them a definite boldness. This combination is at the root of the sophisticated feel of these uncluttered designs.

It looks like she has worked on these designs for about a year. You can see her progress and some of her other designs and work on her Instagram page and on her website. And if you are in Northern California next week, consider dropping by her open house in San Rafael on December 9.

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