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:
Newly Striking
April 4, 2018 Inspirational Art
This new work by Monika Duchowicz is not so much shiny, like Monday’s post, but it is certainly striking.
You may have had your first in-depth introduction to Monika’s work in our Summer 2017 ‘Color’ issue. Her tutorial on painting with polymer for journal covers is truly amazing. She is still painting polymer covers but this piece moves out in a somewhat new direction being that this is more constructed than painted.
She also found a beautiful journal to put it on. It is a very Gothic and dreamlike combination of her composition and the journal cover’s spine and back. She describes the bird as a Phoenix although she notes that this is not a typical Phoenix with the all-white plumage and only fiery colors inserted into the background. And why not? We can make our own versions of any myth.
She posted several different views of this journal which you can see on her Instagram page. Also take a look at her work in her Etsy shop.
New and Shiny
April 2, 2018 Inspirational Art
Thank you to all you readers who cleared out our damaged stock this past week. We sold out of nearly everything in the first 24 hours but there are a few books left for $10 each and the regular back issue sale of 35% off the cover price is still going on in my Etsy shop through tomorrow, April 3rd. Jump on over to get a great deal on our print edition back issues and book.
In looking around at what people have been creating recently, I’ve noticed a lot of shiny, new work. This piece by Betsy Baker, although recognizable in her grungy but still elegant surface texture, has some added bling not commonly seen in her work.
The luscious variegated green texture is in heavy contrast to the shiny green gems but the consistency of the green color palette inevitably brings it all together. The simple circular form and symmetrical layout of the gems do much to bring calm and serenity to the highly textured composition.
If you’re not familiar with Betsy’s work, you can see many of her lovely pieces on her website and on her Instagram page.
An Orderly Spring
March 28, 2018 Inspirational Art
First … we are doing a bit of Spring cleaning ourselves this week with our big Annual Damage Sale. Our stack of imperfect, slightly dinged up, but perfectly read-able issues and books are available on Etsy as of today. Just $4 for imperfect magazines and $10 for imperfect copies of Polymer Journeys! And we took off up to 35% on our other back issues (discount good through April 3rd). We do this only through my Etsy shop–it’s a first come kind of thing, so hurry. Half of the imperfect issues will sell out today if tradition holds.
Part of spring cleaning is spring organizing, right? Well, maybe this piece will inspire your organized side. Mervat Radwan put some of her organizational talents into this well-arranged pattern of brilliant color and tantalizing texture a few years back but I only recently spied it on Instagram. The simple shortened bib style of the necklace allows us to focus on the intricate patterning and color but as a clayer, you can’t help but admire the carefully consistent and skilled placement.
I imagine she laid out this pattern before starting—how else do you get such even lines and spacing? My recent exploration of techniques for tiny bits of clay has made me come to appreciate this type of work even more than I did before. You can read about my adventures and learn a number of techniques, like you see in Mervat’s work, in our latest magazine, the Spring 2018 – Big and Small issue, which you can get on our website here: www.thepolymerarts.com.
I was not able to dig up a lot of information about Mervat, quite likely because I can’t search her Arabic text online. The image came to me through the Polymer Clay Tribe Instagram account. I also found this Google plus page and this YouTube video in which Mervat is interviewed on TV, but if anyone has more information I will add it to the posts. Just write in the comments or reply to the blog email if you get that.
Spring as a Work in Progress
March 26, 2018 Inspirational Art
Spring has sprung, and we are seeing all kinds of colorful, foliage-focused artwork as well. Bonnie Bishoff just completed this wall piece called Murmuration. We see leaves moving like water in a series of flowing, organized lines. Behind it, the more conventional colors of water swirl and rush in opposing directions to further energize the composition.
This is just another example of Bonnie’s penchant for movement. It’s why she made the cover of our movement-themed issue in the summer of 2016. Get a copy to check out her gallery page and short biography as well as to take in all the articles about adding movement to one’s designs if this is of interest to you.
I look forward to seeing what she will do with the framing and hanging of this piece. But for right now we’re just privileged to get this sneak peak. You can follow Bonnie on Instagram and the work she does with her partner, J.M. Syron, on their website.
Creepy Cool Street Texture
March 23, 2018 Inspirational Art
This surprising piece here was part of a street art exhibition from the curious mind of Cityzenkane. I am used to seeing very colorful and shiny work from him, some of which you can still see in parts of this street installation, but the predominantly black forms make the texture and shapes far more important and impressive when the shimmer and color are not distracting from his sculptural work.
I feel like Cityzenkane worked primarily with polymer in the beginning but then turned to other clays and resins that can be worked in larger forms, creating molds of his polymer sculptures in order to realize his amazing Giger-esque outdoor compositions. I could be wrong and these polymer-to-cast pieces could be what he has done all along. Either way, his uncured sculptures, ruined once cast, start with polymer and eventually work their way out into the streets of urban areas, mostly in the UK and Europe.
It’s really hard to show what this is like in one image so I encourage you to take a look at the YouTube video he has about his process and the event. You can also take a closer look at his range of work on Instagram and this website, and his progress through time on Flickr.
Street Totems
March 21, 2018 Inspirational Art
Travis Suda is not a polymer-specific artist, really, nor does he readily identify as a sculptural artist. He is actually a graffiti artist who took part in an art show in which these totems were displayed. It sounds like he has created a series of such pieces but I could not find them online anywhere so we have only these two to enjoy. And to be truthful, I am not absolutely sure these are polymer but they certainly look like it.
This work reflects the influences of the indigenous Northwestern Amercian people’s totem poles as well as the imagery of the native peoples of the Southwest. He is not, however, pulling directly or even emulating the imagery and forms from these regions but rather, he is trying to embody the attitude and purpose for which these figures were formed in their culture. For instance, as Travis himself says regarding the Hopi Kachina, “Often these Kachinas were said to contain the spirits of certain deities, natural forces or animals and these acted as a conduit of communication with the unseen world. I’ve made each one of these sculptures with the same spiritual intention.”
He also creates new and captivating textures with the undulating lines and forms that are fitted together like some challenging new puzzle. If you find Travis’ sculpture intriguing, you might like his street art too. You can find his shared images on his Facebook page and Flickr page.
Alien Texture
March 19, 2018 Inspirational Art
This week I’m going to have us wander off into the weirdly wonderful. The weird part comes from what and where I have been finding these treasures while the wonderful is about the amazing texture on this sculptural pieces.
Maryana Kopylova sculpts the most fantastical alien animals that, unlike how I imagine encounters with real aliens would go, do anything but drive you away. Some have adorable, huge eyes while others are hauntingly beautiful in their unfamiliar forms and appendages. I think we can say that this creature here is both cute and beautiful, sporting an array of alluring tactile textures. The big baby blues don’t hurt either.
Maryana sculpts and then paints her pieces with carefully matched-up colors softly applied in a gradation of natural tones. The highly textured surfaces and variation of color give this creature of her imagination a realistic, natural look. So even though much of the color could have come from the clay, the natural feel would have been very hard to accomplish.
Mariana parades her alien dolls on her Instagram page and on Facebook.
Paper Cranes for Days
March 16, 2018 Inspirational Art
There is nothing quite like a challenge to really push one to try out really different things in a design, especially if you are doing one a week for a year or some such challenge.
Cristian Marianciuc, however, went nuts and created one artistic paper crane every day for, not one year, not two years, but for nearly three years! 1000 days to be exact. That’s 1000 variations on the origami paper crane and most of the variation did not come from the paper but from the additions he brought to his little creations. And his efforts were well rewarded, not only because he now has this wonderful collection but because it caught the eye of the editors of the Colossal blog and got him this little article here.
Just take a look at the article to see a small sampling of all the ways he added to the cranes. And if you really want to go down that wonderful rabbit hole, start with his Instagram page. No material or curl of paper seems to be safe from his mad craning. But how wonderful it is.