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:
Variation on a Disk
March 18, 2015
Inspirational Art
A week’s exploration of the domed disk form could not be presented without discussing the variations of hollow lentil beads. Especially not those with peek-a-boo windows. This is a popular and rather classic look that is so easily formed in polymer and has so many possible variations. This form has to be Betsy Baker’s favorite. And she does it so well, with tons of variation, especially in the area of layered domes and layered pieces to create domes.
This piece has a dome with a window, as well as another with a window so large as to make it more like a bezel. The interior objects that initially draw our attention reflect the texture and color of the fabric-like central dome, which then brings us back out and around to the outer textured gray that echos the darker gray interior. We find ourselves doing a lot of visual wandering for just a pendant, but that is what makes it such a nice piece.
If you’ve not explored Betsy’s wide range of domed focal beads and other fabulous pieces, you can do so on her beautiful new website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Convex Disks & Beaded Bezels
March 17, 2015
Inspirational Art
The domed disk, used for nesting as in yesterday’s post, is also commonly used to present a surface design with dimension and substance. We do love our domed, hollow, lentil-style beads, don’t we? But, here we have a beautiful example of a domed shape used as a center point and a raised form for some lovely beading.
This is from Katka Václavíková, working as Kat-ja, an artist from the Czech Republic who is an enthusiastic beader but looks to be taking her polymer quite seriously these days as well. The beauty in this piece that really caught my eye, aside from the nice color palette, was the way the polymer design was integrated with the beading. It is not just in the physical joining of the bead bezel, but also the type of polymer cabochon. Look at the design on the polymer surface–it is very much like a beading pattern; the way the stringing crosses back and forth and repeats in a steady, structured rhythm. It made this particular polymer focal piece a completely natural and well-suited pairing for the decorative bead work.
Kat-ja has a shop in two parts on Fler.cz; an Etsy-style site for arts and handicrafts in the Czech and Slovak Republics. She sells supplies for beaders and clayers, as well as handmade beads and cabochons on her supply side under Kat-ja Materials and her finished jewelry under her Kat-ja shop. It’s a well-rounded business model that looks to be keeping her busy!
Correction: Katka wrote to let us know that actually the cabochon created was created by Iva Brozova. So it was a collaborative piece with well collaborating materials! Great work ladies.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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A Proliferation of Disks
March 16, 2015
Inspirational Art
There are certain forms or elements that make a regular and popular appearance in various types of art. Sometimes they appear so often because the form is something the material and associated tools are particularly suited for. Sometimes they have simply been a large part of the culture in which the art form originated or grew. In polymer, one of the ones we see so very, very often are disks, especially domed disks. I was looking over my little collection of links and images and noticed that there are just tons of that kind of thing. It looks to be growing in popularity and variation, too. I can’t say why that is true, but I thought we’d look at how this type of element is currently being used in polymer.
We can’t start with the idea that maybe these forms are cultural because we see them in polymer art from all over. This set is from Russian artist, Olga Sypkova. She calls them “Mars Flowers” and uses the basic form of a concave disk to create flower like pieces that do have an other-worldly feel to them. Here, the disks are used as the base of a stylized image. Either the imagery Olga was after determined the need for the disk form or the form suggested the imagery, but either way, the disk form is integral to the look of this set.
Olga works in a similarly rough, organic and yet, very feminine style. Her beautiful pieces can be found for viewing and for sale in her Livemaster shop.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Outside Inspiration: The Mode of Metal Clay
March 13, 2015
Inspirational Art
Since the spring issue’s theme was Diversity, there is plenty of ‘Outside Inspiration’ in this issue, but it’s focused more on how other materials can be combined with or can inspire polymer works. So, the obvious choice for this Friday was to choose one of the mixed media artists and share work that didn’t make it into the dense articles that make up that section of this issue. That was a hard decision to make since all five artists were my first pick choices for each type of mixed media work (and they all said yes to contributing! How lucky we all were in that!), but the one collection that really struck me as pushing beyond polymer more than any other was probably Celie Fago’s. Her work leans heavily on metal clay as a material but to the point that when combined, it is hard to tell what is polymer and what is metal. Which then leads to a very simple question … does it really matter what is what?
The take away I most hoped people would get from reading that section of this issue is to see that the material is not as important as the outcome. Choosing to work with another material in addition to, or even instead of, polymer is showing great respect for your creativity and self-expression. Some materials will simply deliver your ideas better than others, and if we look only to polymer to do that, we can miss out on wonderful new modes and forms of expression. I think this is where Celie’s work really draws strength; in its focus on the form and texture regardless of the material. Her work has such an ancient feel as if every piece has been through years of existence; that it was precious and valued by its creator and its wearer. The colors, bright or subtle, have some inner light that adds to the spiritual quality of them. The type of material is not a contributing consideration in the admiration of the work. Unless you come to wonder just how she creates the textures she does. Well, I won’t spoil it if you haven’t read the article yet. It’s a beautiful piece with an interesting story of her journey and philosophy behind what drives her work.
The piece here is, I believe, all precious metal clay. I just love how every single surface, edge, form and point of construction was considered and very obviously and consciously designed. There is so much going on here, so take a moment to get a closer look by zooming in or going to her website to look at the original photos. And while there, take some time to wander and check out the many other beauties on the site. Also, take a look at her upcoming classes both at the Bead and Button show in May and at her home studio. What an opportunity that would be!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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The Source of Her Quilling
March 12, 2015
Inspirational Art
The big, information laden and in depth technique tutorial in the spring issue is on polymer quilling. Quilling with paper has gotten quite popular and has gone beyond the realm of basic decoration into some truly museum-quality wall pieces. The art intrigued Beth Petricoin, and she wrote me last year to query about whether our readers would like to see this done in polymer. She had started working on the technique in the summer of 2013 and was needing that push to perfect it. So, with an enthusiastic “Yes!” from me, she worked on it until she streamlined the process and had developed several different approaches in order to provide a great variety of possibilities. The article in the spring 2015 issue includes these with everything from choices of substrate or none at all, closed and open quill work methods, and plenty of tips and tricks to get our readers started on this fun and beautiful technique.
In this article, we were able to show both simple and very complex pieces using this technique. What we didn’t have room for was the piece that rather started this whole journey for Beth. But, you see it here now. I believe this was her first full-scale attempt with this technique back in 2013, and it’s really quite well done. I love how the sky versus the ocean, both in shades of blue, are delineated by types of forms—round and rolling, accented with bubbles in the ocean while the sky is simple waves and white clouds. Zoom in on the turtle as well to see the whorls in the shell. There’s a lot of detail in this.
You can read about this first piece along with the Native American Indian story that inspired it on Beth’s blog. Take a look through some of her other entries and catch the broad range of her work with a little perusal around her Etsy store.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Alcohol Primaries
March 11, 2015
Inspirational Art
I think the brightest article we had in the spring 2015 issue had to be Jan Montarsi’s “Expanding Your Color Range with Alcohol Inks”. In this article, Jan not only shows us the best way to use alcohol ink as a colorant for the clay, but also gives us recipes and insights into developing a pearl and translucent clay color range far beyond what is available straight out of the package. Additionally, he offered a great Skinner blend style technique for creating graduated colors with alcohol inks. He has based his newest color expansion on a set of alcohol inks he has been able to determine will work as wonderful primaries for color mixing. It’s an intensely packed article that color junkies really need to get their hands on.
If you have been watching Jan throughout the last four plus years, you’ve seen the intense and gorgeous pearl colors he creates and combines within his various techniques. Because of everything Jan stuffed into this article, we didn’t have room for a show of his work using this coloring approach, so I thought I’d share a bit more of his range today. This necklace was a test using extruded pearl clays. I wish my tests turned out this luscious. This is not even a recent example of where he has gone with his coloring and pearl techniques, but it is a beautiful show of just what can be done by mixing a wider range of pearl colors together.
To see the wider range of Jan’s work, take some time and visit his Flickr photostream. Then be sure to read the article and set aside some exploration time with alcohol inks!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Of Pencils & Pastels
March 10, 2015
Inspirational Art
One of the key aspects of the spring issue was in introducing readers to materials that currently are not commonly combined with polymer. In our “Color Diversity” section, we were lucky enough to get primers on using two other art materials that artists Margit Bohmer and Penni Jo Couch have been playing with—that being pastels and colored pencils, respectively. They both had so much information to share that we didn’t have room for a gallery of other examples by other artists. We do encourage all our readers who find themselves intrigued by the colors and possibilities of these mediums to investigate them further. I know we did, and there is some beautiful work being done with both materials.
What is even less common than each of these materials being used with polymer is using the two additional colorants together to punch up the color and texture of a polymer piece. In fact, I only found one such piece by an artist local to me, Maria Clark of Sweet Willow Designs in Lakewood, Colorado. This leaf was crafted in polymer and wire, and then colored with pan pastels (see the article for more on this artist-quality type of pastel.) Then it was cured and further enhanced with Prismacolor colored pencils. The colors are so juicy and intense; the subtle changes in texture just add to this richness. This is not a look or gradation in color you could get with colored clay alone.
Maria explains her process briefly in a post on her blog. She has other work to show on her Flickr pages and tutorials on her YouTube channel. Although, there does not seem to be any colored pencil or pastel work there … yet. But, if you want even more ideas about the broad possibilities of both colored pencil on polymer and/or pastel on polymer, I first highly suggest you read the very informative articles with technique steps that Margit and Penni generously wrote for us in the Spring 2015 issue of The Polymer Arts, and then hit up Pinterest, Flickr and Google for additional work using polymer + pastels +/or colored pencil for keywords. Then, be ready to get lost in the images you’ll find.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Extended Diversity
March 9, 2015
Inspirational Art
The newest issue of The Polymer Arts has been out for about a week and has been selling like mad. It is really a full issue. And, we had to cut down or save a lot of the material for later because the contributors for this issue sent us so much good stuff! So this week, I’ll share some of what we couldn’t get in.
Julie Cleveland’s article, “Rules of Resin” could have been a book for all the information there is out there on the subject. However, we choose to go into the basics, but in depth, so any of you could confidently and successfully work with resin and combine it with your polymer. A number of artists with extensive resin experience shared their work with us to include in the article, but we hardly had room for everything we wanted to share with our readers. Sherri Kellberg was one such contributor. She creates beautiful, shimmering pieces often finished with a resin coating. Recently, she played with a dichroic glass look in polymer and got some stunning results. Some of that work is in the resin article, but here is another piece that looks almost unreal in its shimmer and color. The resin acts like a magnifying glass that amplifies the colors and makes the surface texture look more three dimensional. It’s just one of many small advantages to using resin as a polymer finishing material.
You can see more of Sherri’s work in her recent collection of dichoric look polymer on her blog and more of her shimmering resin and polymer work on her Etsy pages.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Repeat a Space
March 7, 2015
Inspirational Art, Technique tutorials
I thought I’d look for some tutorials for you to play with this weekend that would accommodate some play with repetition. In that search, I found this simple, but charming, polymer bead spacer tutorial. We really didn’t talk about the repetition of strung beads, but I figured that would be a pretty obvious use of repetition. However, there are many ways to add variation to a string of beads. Different colors, sizes, shapes and textures is one way. Adding interesting spacers is another fantastic way.
Now, here is where I could use some help. I can find this tutorial on many a Pinterest board and numerous sites that gather tutorials, but I cannot pinpoint the author. And yes, there’s text on there but it does not seem to the English alphabet, so I’m at a loss. And with this tutorial so widely spread on English and non-English sites alike, it seems this person should get a little more obvious credit. So, if anyone has a clue, I’d love to hear from you. You can comment or reply to your email version of the blog post, and I’ll get it.
Here is where I originally found this tutorial if anyone wants to try to sleuth it out: http://claybooks.diary.ru/p172024294.htm?oam
In the meantime, how about making creative spacers this weekend? That could be a particularly fun, little project, especially for you snow bound folks!
Update: Thanks to Anna Anpilogova, we have our mystery solved.
The tutorial is by a Russian clayer Anna Mashkova. “Here is the link to original post in her blog … http://alica19.livejournal.com/17265.html” Thank you to both Annas!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
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Outside Inspiration: Reuse & Repeat
March 6, 2015
Inspirational Art
Earlier this week, I mentioned that you can avoid creating less-than-exciting pieces that use consistent repetition by adding variation or creating unusual or surprising visual impact. Well, today’s piece, created by jewelry artist Kathleen Nowak Tucci, has some serious impact while still using the same form, texture and accents repeated over and over. The impact of this piece comes from the gorgeous, shimmery color. There is a touch of variation in color, but I think this would still be eye-catching if it was all the same color. We sure do like our bright and shiny. Now, do you know what this is made from?
If you make your coffee with a Nespresso machine, then you might have recognized those colors from the capsules used in the appliance. Kathleen’s use of these started with a visit to a friend who used these. She was drawn to the beautiful colors and asked her friend to save the used ones. Now, she’s made a full-line of jewelry from these toss away cups.
I love that Kathleen has created something so beautiful from items we would normally toss out without a second thought. Well, that’s not wholly true. I bet polymer addicts would stop to admire the great colors and might have even wondered if they could be used in the studio. Actually, I know I saw some combination of these with polymer a while back. Although I could not find them just now, maybe you will come up with something of your own. Take a look at the many other beautiful pieces on her website, and if you’re intrigued, find a friend or get yourself a machine and see what you come up with. Nothing like coffee and art getting together!
A nod goes to the fabulous Helen Breil who sent me a link to this particular piece on the Beading Gem blog and website. Another nod goes to photographer Victor Wolansky who Kathleen praises for taking such a beautiful photograph of a particularly difficult piece.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
