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:

Balancing Color & Contrast

November 26, 2018

We are going to be dropping in on some big names this week and next to see what they are up to and what they have to inspire us with.

First up: Bonnie Bishoff. Her focus on jewelry these last couple years has been a journey through a variety of styles as she moves from working primarily in veneers on furniture with her partner J.M. Syron to smaller and more intimate work. But regardless of the style, her quietly strong and confident sense of color and pattern mark each piece like a signature. These lovely earrings are paired almost solely by color scheme although they do work within a limited set of variations in composition, visual texture and shapes.  Each variation relays a slightly different mood, adjusted through the level of contrast in value and hue. The subtlety of this communication is what really brings home how masterful her color work is.

You can see what I mean by looking at the body of her work. You can do so by jumping onto her Instagram page and the website she shares with J.M. Syron.

Circularly Supported Rectangles

November 23, 2018

I hope all my fellow US folks had a beautiful Thanksgiving with lots of family and maybe not too much food. How can you do all that shopping today if you’re still stuffed from the day before? No shopping for me today. I’m running off with the family to enjoy some downtime. I thought I’d leave you with these little beauties to contemplate.

These are by Cecilie Hveding, a metalsmith and enamel jewelry artist in Norway. She works in a number of different styles but this set really struck me as having a lot of parallels to the approaches often taken in polymer. Layering her materials, much as we often do in polymer, she has really showcased the color and luminescence of enamel on simple rectangular pendants. What works as a bail is a beautifully simple solution to keeping the clean lines and balanced shapes of the almost picture-frame-like compositions. The circles are not only functional, allowing a cord to be looped through for a simple pendant connection, but they also contrast with the dominance of straight lines, then allow an echo of that shape in the dangling bead at the end which works with the open circle as a kind of bookend set for the design.

So if you’re not out shopping or having to work today and want to discover a new artist, jump over to Cecilie’s website to look at the broad range of her work.

Getting Squared Away

November 21, 2018

Did you see the announcement on Monday that The Polymer Studio subscriptions are now available online? Check out our new website, www.tenthmusearts.com, to subscribe or just see what we’re up to or get a head start on holiday shopping with subscriptions, books or back issues of The Polymer Arts (Don’t miss out on the “All Issues Still in Print” package available for 40% off … that’s over $100 you’d save to have all available issues while we still have them!) available as gifts.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. I don’t have a theme for the week unless it’s rectangles and squares. You know, like magazines are rectangles and books are rectangles and this piece is rectangular with squares inside it. Rectangles and squares have such a solid dominant feeling. They are great shapes for work that you want to project boldness and confidence. This mixed-media piece of metal and polymer was created by Angela Garrod whose work of late seems to be all about the exploration of metal with polymer.

If you look at her Flickr photo stream, you can see the transition and how the new material is challenging her and giving her opportunities to stretch her design skills and creative muscle. You can see the influence of other artists, whether intentional or not, such as Sonya Giordon and Vicki Grant, coming out in her recent designs as she works toward a new facet of her own voice.

In this piece, she calls on her hallmark work with texture, deftly but subtly echoing the organic roughness found in the metal and the polymer. The contrast between the materials is all about support where the metal gives structural strength and a background canvas to the polymer squares, whose job as focal points runs second only to its work of imbuing the piece with atmospheric color.

To get a full picture of what Angela has been up to, jump over to her Flickr photostream, her Facebook page, and the gallery on her website.

 

Its Time! The Polymer Studio Subscriptions & Bonus Gifts

Today we’re going to do a little bit of business but it is exciting business!

I am so pleased to announce that subscriptions to The Polymer Studio are finally available online. I appreciate your patience while we worked all the kinks out in our new website but yes… there is also a new website! Tenthmusearts.com will house all of our publication information, purchasing, the biggest polymer resource list in the world, and your account if you’re a subscriber. We are very excited about the beautiful new layout and worked to make it as easy as possible to navigate but if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to write us.

If you subscribe now, before the end of the month, or you are an existing subscriber to The Polymer Arts rolling over into the new magazine subscription, you will receive a couple of gifts to thank you for your support and to hold you over until January when the first issue comes out: bonus discounts and a video magazine!

Bonus Discounts! Subscribe before the end of the month and we will send out an email with exclusive discounts worked out with some of your favorite online polymer shops. As we enter the holiday season, you can use these discounts to purchase gifts as well as stock up on your own goods all while supporting small independent businesses run by polymer artists and enthusiast like yourself. You’ll get discounts and deals from the likes of Christi Friesen, Shades of Clay, Linda’s Art Spot, Nemravka.cz, Helen Breil, ilove2Craft, Lisa Pavelka, The Whimsical Bead, and Tenth Muse Arts. Give us 1 business day to get that discount email to you.

Video magazine! What is a video magazine? It’s just what it sounds like—a collection of videos on a number of related subjects, collected much like articles in a magazine. This is an idea I started looking into earlier in the year and I will wrap up my first trial edition to share with all new and existing subscribers—you get to be my exclusive viewers who can help me shape this into a possible future publication or bonus material for magazine subscribers. Not sure where this is going yet but it sounded like fun for us all!

For this trial video magazine, you get to hang out with me in my studio and Tenth Muse headquarters for a behind-the-scenes peek at how we put together a magazine, as well as seeing a number of product demonstrations and technique tips. I’m still working out details on the other cool things going into this but I guarantee it will be a great time and should hold you over  some until the magazine comes in January. So subscribe now if you’re not already on our subscription list so you don’t miss out.

For more information about the new magazine or to purchase books or back issues, go to the new website at www.tenthmusearts.com.

Out of the Fire

November 16, 2018

3.3Following this week’s fire theme, we’re sharing this post from the January 2015 Polymer Arts blog archives.

We’re going to head to the orange and yellow side of the warm spectrum today, with a beautiful sculpture by Canadian artist Ellen Jewett. The warmth in this piece feels more like the warmth of sunlight with the white and yellows and coppery oranges. We see that sense of glow here as well, from the gradation of the colors, although most of the color change seems to be between the laid out elements and not in the clay. Mica clays also help to radiate a sense of bright light. This is to show that the visual illusion doesn’t come just from the soft change in color, as in a Skinner blend, but in the way we visualize the play of light. Light changes quality as it hits different surfaces, which, in this case, are the feathers of this dragon-like phoenix. The variety of the surface gives it a liveliness not unlike a dancing fire.

Ellen creates all kinds of very fantastical creatures with very dynamic forms and proportions. I suspect either her educational pursuits in biological anthropology and anthrozoology contribute to these amazing pieces or the same artistic drive to create pushed her to pursue her unusual combination of studies. It is quite worth taking a break to spend some time in her Etsy shop.

 

Fiery Ripples

November 14, 2018

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Following this week’s fire theme, we’re sharing this post from the September 2014 Polymer Arts blog archives.

A piece with shibori style ripples, fire, and crackling? How could I resist? The creator of this richly textured bracelet seems to go by nothing more than morskiekamni over on LiveJournal. This particular clayer dabbles in a little of this and a bit of that with a fair amount of miniatures and a lot of floral in there.

So, this bracelet comes as a bit of a surprise in the line-up of work. But, a lovely surprise. The cracks ripple across the base layer of orange, as well as along the edges of the flames. The whole surface looks to be in flux, and I find it hard not to get lost in intricacies; it’s an awful lot like staring into and losing yourself in those campfire flames or the fiery embers of a fireplace.

Yes, I usually give you a little something to work on come Saturday, but I couldn’t help but share this lovely piece first. If you are looking to try something new, how about creating using a ripple blade? The ripple blade looks to have fallen out of fashion in polymer within recent years, but I seem to be seeing it in use a little more just recently. Here is an older page full of still fantastic ideas for rippling up some really beautiful polymer! Enjoy!

 

Artist on Fire (September 2012 Archive)

November 12, 2018

Tenth Muse Central (AKA my house) is under mandatory evacuation orders so we are quite out of sorts and have been since the wee hours of Friday morning because of the Woolsey fire in California. I am staying with family an hour north and all people and furries are safe and sound but needless to say, it has been hard getting work done both because I am very distracted, hoping my home will be spared, and because my setup that allows me to dictate much of my work while my arms are still healing doesn’t work so well in a crowded house. So, this week, I am resurrecting a few older blog posts to lighten the workload and, with fire on my mind, we will make that the theme. Fire is frightening but also awesome and beautiful. I like the idea of celebrating its beauty while we wait to see if Mother Nature will be kind to us. So enjoy these fire-themed posts from past years. Our first is from September 2012.

 

Impact. It’s pieces like this, not overly complicated but with an intensity of color and dynamic patterning that add definite and strong movement to the work, that really define the word eye-catching. But that isn’t even the most impactful thing about this piece.

The artist Adriana Allen has suffered from debilitating arthritis since childhood. But it has never stopped her. “Every item I create is a victory over an unforgiving disease … when it hit, it hit hard. I never gave into it. Every piece I create reminds me of this fact …  the disease cannot stop me from doing what I love.”

Such courage and from it, such beauty.

Going With the Flow

November 9, 2018

Here is a slightly different twist on organic jewelry (pun intended).

I love the flow in rhythm of natural organic formations especially plant and geological ones because of the sense of movement they often have. The work of Germany’s Lydia Hirte is an example of those formations brought to adornment. Mind you though, this is not polymer but paper, although the concept of stacked and shuffled layers is not at all unknown in polymer and a connection and source of inspiration between the two materials is readily found.

Lydia works in ways similar to what I have heard from many polymer artists. She likes to let the materials steer the design. In her words:

My ideas arise from working with the material and my observations of what happens when forcing the bundles of card[stock] by my hand in different directions. I always use the same basic shape. For me, as an artist, it’s also very important to generate tension in the material when working.

I am mainly looking for spatiality, direction and movement and I am always aiming at linking wearability with sculptural form.

To see more of these wonderful types of forms, go on over to Lydia’s website.

Doreen Strings it Up

November 7, 2018

The organic, both flora and fauna, have long been the focus of  Doreen Kassels’ work, which usually takes the form of sculptural pieces, ornaments, or wall art. However, this year we’ve seen beads and pendants and the like and then a few weeks ago this lovely piece popped up on her social media feeds. This was a delightful surprise—a chunky necklace consisting of a series of very organic beads, redolent with her signature colors and forms.

This is a feast of tactile as well as visual sensations. I imagine the wearer would get tons of comments, compliments, and requests for a closer look. I also imagine the wearer would not be able to stop touching the beads, with all the wonderful shapes and directions of the forms for fingertips to wander over.

You can see what else Doreen is up to on her website or follow her on Instagram.

The Mushrooms are Coming

November 5, 2018

Still in a bit of an organic mode over here. Maybe it’s the season. The changes of fall make everything look new and exciting again. So maybe all the mushrooms in our yard are always there but I’m really noticing how many different mushrooms we have popping up.

Our yard isn’t the only place mushrooms are emerging. They show up three times in the new Polymer Art Projects—Organics and there is also an art exhibit “The Arts of the Mushroom”  in Oakland, California that opened recently last week and looks amazing (open until December 9th if you are in the area). I also discovered a mushroom lover’s group on Facebook that I just had to get in on. Mushrooms forms are amazing!

And then these popped up on my screen. I’ve never thought of mushrooms as cute but these little guys are changing my view on that. They were created by Cheryl Lee Myers of Elemental Urchin. Each fungus face has his own expression and personality. It drew me to look for more of her work and I found her Instagram page and these cute corals as well so I thought I’d share them both. Also take a look at her work in her Etsy shop.

What new things are you seeing outside your door these days? How might it inspire the things you’re creating?

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