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:
Heralding in the Holiday
December 25, 2014
Inspirational Art
Today’s piece celebrates both the holiday and my love of this incredibly talented sculptor. Forest Rogers imbues her work with some of the most fluid, dynamic and ethereal choices of form and detail. Her work can be equally ethereal and disturbing, but her pieces are never anything less than wondrous. This is all my humble opinion of course, but I think many people agree.
For today, just enjoy the faerie herald here, and when you have a quiet moment between festivities, do go visit her blog and website for sculpture that just pulls at the soul.
For those of you that celebrate the Christmas holiday, a very Merry Christmas to you all. To all my readers, regardless of what this day means to you, thank you so much for joining me so often and allowing me to share the many beautiful things I find in my searches. Being able to do this is the best gift, and I am gifted with this every day! How wonderful.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Not Polymer and Not a Gourd so …
December 24, 2014
Inspirational Art
I know, I know … this is not polymer, but there was some question about that as it was posted on a few Pinterest boards under polymer. And that colorful inlay could be polymer, right? It could, but it’s not. It’s painted. The reason it was popping up under polymer searches was because it was posted to the polymer tutorial site, claylessons.com, in a message posted to encourage people to visit the Daily Art Muse blog (let’s see how many plugs and links we can fit into one blog post, shall we?). So there is the polymer connection.
But why am I featuring a non-polymer piece today? Because it’s nearly Christmas and if I can’t break some rules now, when can I? Well, yes, I do break rules on occasion for no reason at all, but let’s say this is because it’s a holiday week. And because this piece is gorgeous. It is all carved wood by wood artist, Joey Richardson. The detail is amazing. The form and intricacy are so fluid and natural you might wonder if it’s not alive. It also reminded me of my favorite gourd artist Mark Doolittle (we needed another plug and link here, right?).
But wait, there’s more! More incredible work like this that is (although more links will certainly happen). After holding onto this, waiting for the right themed week to share it in for nearly a year, I finally found out who the unattributed artist was, opened her site and just got lost there. I don’t know how Joey has the patience or hasn’t ruined her fingers with all this fine carving, but I am grateful that she does. What a treat. Treat yourself as well by heading over to her site and be sure to read her About page. Her feeling about her sources of inspiration really fit the season.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Well Gauged
December 23, 2014
Inspirational Art
I love creating polymer components, but I have never been that big on the stringing and adding findings and all that. I enjoy making something that didn’t exist before it came into my hands; although a couple store-bought ear wires can be integrated into a design, they are still not wholly mine. So I started making my own ear wires. Much better but not quite as much fun as polymer. Then I saw basic gauge earrings made from polymer on Etsy some years ago and thought … ah ha! No ear wires at all. You create a whole piece, and then it goes into your piercing. Cool. Let’s try that. And that is how gauge earrings ended up becoming my primary form sold through my Etsy shop.
I don’t get much studio time these days so I don’t create and sell gauges, but I occasionally stop and see what other people are doing with them now that polymer clay gauges have caught on. These have been my favorite by far. They are created by a pair of artists, the Ukraine’s Ira and Evgeniy Abramov, who run a shop on Etsy called RybaColnce. The concept is simple but wonderful. The traditional contrast of black and red with the beat of those repeated slices into the clay to reveal the hidden crimson inside covers some of my favorite approaches: contrast, repetition and things hidden. Plus they are both serious (like edgy serious) and fun at the same time. Yes, they might not be the most comfortable pair to put in, but they’d be worth it!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Some of My Favorite Things
December 22, 2014
Inspirational Art
I am going to use this week to pull out some pieces I’ve been holding onto but haven’t found a place for in our themed weeks. Just a few of my favorite pieces and artists to drool over this holiday week.
I am not sure what in this is polymer, but it’s in the description of the work so I’ve been hanging onto it. If you read the Fall 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts, then you probably saw (and maybe read?) my article, “Ravages of Time”, on faux deteriorated surfaces. So yes, I have a thing about rust and patina and anything that represents a passage of time and the later cycle of life for inanimate materials. Knowing that, you can probably figure out why I am drawn to this piece by jewelry artist Tish Collins. The piece is titled “Time Machine”, which I easily interpret as the passing of time as shown by the disintegration of elements seen in the rust and patina here. But that is just my take on it. Then again, isn’t that what the purpose is behind art–to pull from it what resonates with you and put your own story to it? How would you read this?
Polymer is not a primary medium for Tish, but I do urge you to look at her jewelry, both with and without polymer. She has some beautiful forms and compositions to share with you on her website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Simple Color Mystery
December 20, 2014
Inspirational Art
Okay … here is a piece that I have hung onto for a while as I tried to find the person who created it. I have not, yet. It’s not a particularly complex piece, and although, I like the silver as an accent, I so rather wish the feather-like pieces were handmade or more organic or smooth and simple. The flow of color in the clay just calls for either something that matches that organic movement or has a calm stillness in contrast to it. But, nonetheless, the colors in these simple earrings are arresting.
So, this is the challenge I throw out to you all. Who knows whose creations these are? Help me find the artist and give them credit, and then back to your last-minute shopping and holiday parties!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Outside Inspiration: Felted Color
December 19, 2014
Inspirational Art
I’m going to break a kind of rule here and show you a collage instead of just one of these colorful felted pieces by Japanese felt artist, Atsuko Sasaki. Because isn’t the collection just a beautiful composition and delightful explosion of color? I also thought you would find it more intriguing when you could see the variety of forms and color this very precise felter pulls together. And this way, I didn’t have to pick just one.
I think the possibilities of how this could inspire a polymer artist comes across much more from this grouping, too. The felt here has a saturation of color commonly seen in polymer, but in bold forms; the kind of which we don’t see so much from clayers. However, everything here could be done in a polymer version from the appliqued dots within dots to the inverted mushroom caps, to the alternately patterned material popping out through slashes in the fabric. Do they give you any ideas?
I originally found this collage and this work on a great little blog called Folt Bolt, but you can find more of Atsuko’s handbags, mufflers, vases and sculptural objects on her website. By the way, these pieces are quite big. You can see handbags and mufflers modeled in photos on her Facebook page.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Dreaming of Summer Colors (& New EU Taxes you should know about!)
December 18, 2014
Inspirational Art, Polymer community news
Shall we get the not-so-nice stuff out of the way first?
The New Not-Well-Thought-Out EU Digital Tax Laws hit Worldwide on the First of the Year
If you haven’t already heard, the European Union has new laws regarding selling digital products and services to European buyers, and it goes into effect January 1st. Unlike past VAT taxes that rarely, if ever, affected micro businesses and solo sellers, this one affects everyone who sells any digital goods or services TO Europe because this new law is based on where the buyer resides, not where the seller works. Yes, even you, you seller of $3 PDF tutorials! It’s a tad insane, and most of us small, struggling businesses and artists just found out in the last couple weeks that we need to register with the EU, implement new bookkeeping & documentation storage for at least 10 years, update shopping gateways and our websites, and possibly change who/what we sell through, and we need to have it all ready before the year ends in order to offer digital goods and services to Europe in 2015 and forward. Or, we can change to whom or how we sell digital stuff. Ugh!
I wanted to inform you all of this, so you have a chance to find out if this affects you as a seller of PDF tutorials, eBooks, patterns, subscription or member services, online advertising, or automated online services of any kind and allow you time to figure out what to do. AND, to be heard if you agree that this tax is detrimental to micro and solo businesses.
Please Help. Take Action to Fix this.
Get informed, and sign the petition to have a threshold set, so small, unique sellers don’t have to pull out of Europe or go out of business because they can’t afford to comply. You can find out more about the issues with the new laws on EUVATACtion.org and get the official summary of them on www.gov.uk.
The only possible salvation for many of us will be a service who can take care of the nightmare of documenting, setting up calculations, collecting and remitting the tax for you for all of the 28 European countries involved. There is only one viable service I have found so far, and they even offer it for free (up to 20 EU transactions a month), if they can integrate through your Paypal or similar payment service. If you think you’ll need this, write them at www.taxamo.com to find out if they can work for you.
Prices will Go Up; Buy or Renew Now
This sudden news does not give us here at The Polymer Arts enough time to make the changes needed to collect VAT on our digital magazine sales, so we will be using an exception in the law and will have to individually email digital issues of The Polymer Arts to European readers as of next month. This will be costly labor-wise, so we’ll have no choice but to increase prices for these manually sent issues. But, this will cost the European buyer far less than paying VAT. So, if you’re in Europe and you haven’t renewed or bought those back issues in digital that you were thinking of getting, now would be the time to do that. Just go to our website, www.thepolymerarts.com/Subscribe.html, before the end of the year when prices for European digital purchases will go up.
Back to Color …
How about today we have a moment of color indulgence with color maven and polymer pioneer, Lindly Haunani. Aren’t these colors just yummy. I know that’s not the most technical artistic term, but that about sums it up!
This image is a preview of what she’ll be teaching at Maureen Carlsons Center for Creative Arts. The workshop is entitled “Joy Garden: Translucent Polymer Innovations”, and it’ll be held Sunday, August 9th – Friday, August 14th, 2015. Yep, it’s about time to start planning for summer fun, don’t you think? Okay, maybe it’s a ways off, but you probably want to grab a spot in this workshop sooner rather than later and for those of us seeing snow out our windows, it’s kind of fun to dream about summer isn’t it?
Lindly’s blog and website, as well as her book and DVD set, are a wealth of information on color. Just jump over to her website to get links to all her wonderful stuff.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Painterly Color
December 17, 2014
Inspirational Art
Although polymer is certainly a wonderful medium for precisely applied or built-in color, I have to say the painterly effects that we are seeing a lot of these days are so intriguing. The approach and application usually involves the inclusion of another medium, which opens the color quality to a wide range of possibilities beyond what the clay itself has to offer.
Margit Bohmer has been playing with pastels and polymer for quite a while. I can’t recall off the top of my head anyone else that has been quite so exploratory with this combination. Much of her work looks like color-stained wood or stone. The way she forms, carves and antiques her beads results in a rough, almost tribal quality; although, contemporary shapes do regularly emerge. Considering those characteristics, I thought this fun and beautifully colorful piece really stood out in her collection on Flickr. The wavy line contrasts rather strongly with the scratched tube beads, but with all the pieces treated with the same painterly color application it all comes together.
Jump over to Margit’s Flickr photostream or Etsy shop for a non-stop painterly color parade.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Our Interaction with Color
December 16, 2014
Inspirational Art
Today’s piece pays homage to one of my favorite painter’s of the last century, Wassily Kandinsky, whose birthday happens to be today. Kandinsky is considered the first artist to create purely abstract art and was one of the foremost Expressionist painters, as well as being an artistic theorist. He was especially concerned with our personal reactions to color, as in how we interact viscerally with what we see. He wrote in his book Du spirituel dans l’art (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), “Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye, which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an “inner resonance”—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.”
Isn’t that just lovely?
This necklace was created by Cecilia Leonini of Italy. To honor Kandinsky’s thoughts and not influence your reaction, I’m not going to comment on this piece. How do you find yourself reacting to it, to the color, form and imagery? Do you see what Kandinsky was referring to in terms of our interaction with color?
You can find more of Cecilia’s work in her Etsy shop. I only just discovered her through the Polymer Clay Artist’s Guild of Etsy which I am a member of. If you sell on Etsy and aren’t a member of the PCAGOE, do consider joining–start by clicking here. This group was key in encouraging and inspiring me when I was still new and uncertain, and many are what we affectionately refer to as the midwives of The Polymer Arts magazine, helping to form the concept and vet ideas for its creation and content when it first started out. They are a wonderful support group and a wealth of information and inspiration!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Color Indulgence
December 15, 2014
Inspirational Art
Do you ever have those days when you just want to sit down with a box of chocolates, a bag of pastries or a giant pizza with everything on it and just enjoy a little over-indulgence? Of course you do! I’m kind of feeling that way this week, but more about color than candy. Actually, I’ve had enough candy and pastries (gets rough on that account this time of year, doesn’t it?), but bright, saturated painterly color, I have not had enough of lately. So this week, let’s just indulge. We all have enough going on with holiday plans, shopping, selling, making trips to the post office and such. Let’s not get too serious and just enjoy some pretty things.
A quick jolt to the system came across my screen the other day in the form of this incredibly bright and mesmerizing bracelet by Viviane Depasse. She created this during a class with Carol Simmons this past April. Why is that not so surprising? This presentation does not have Carol’s precision kaleidoscope arrangements, but I, myself, am very much enjoying the meandering color. It is like the epitome of the phrase “eye candy”. It is bordering on overly-bright, but like really sweet candy you keep eating anyway; it’s hard not to keep looking.
Viviane posts her work both from classes and independent exploration, as well as her thoughts on her blog Mon Jardin Merveilloeufs.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
