Contrast of Self
March 14, 2021
Design lessons, Supplies & other fun stuff
Would you call yourself a selfish person? I doubt very many of us would think that way about ourselves. Yet, as artists, we often find ourselves “stealing” time away from others or other things to do what we love, reveling in it when we have it. Is that selfish? I mean, it is more about us than anyone else, isn’t it?
Yes, it is about us, and that is as it should be. In the requested comments for last week’s giveaway (scroll down to see the winner and this week’s giveaway), participants mentioned some version of the “me time” aspect of getting to sit down and create more than anything else. I mean, I know we create because it is something we enjoy, regardless of what anyone else thinks, but I just love that so many people acknowledged and celebrated it. We should!
I strongly believe that everyone should have something of their own, something they can turn to in order to express themselves or at least put something out into the world that would not have existed without their desire to create it. The art we create gives us purpose, exercises a uniquely human part of our brains, and helps us to love ourselves. Not to mention that we deserve the joy we get from it!
But, by definition, that is selfish—doing something because it’s what we want. I wish our society would get over the idea that doing something for ourselves is bad. I think not doing things for yourself is self-negligence. Why is that not a commonly understood thing?
This also highlights the bigger, contradictory world that we inhabit. We live in such strange societies where selflessness and humility are expected or requested, and yet we are also pushed to strive for excellence in what we do. How do we reach excellence without focusing on ourselves? And then there is this silliness where we are not supposed to acknowledge when the work we do is good or that we’re proud of it. If we do, others may think we’re being arrogant or grandiose.
So, do we strive to be great and then pretend that we’re mediocre? We talk about contrast being good in art, but this is so not the right kind of contrast!
I’ve long found the dichotomy of these contradictory but societally prescribed behaviors beyond aggravating as well as having the potential to be debilitating. I think that is why it made me so happy to see so many people acknowledging their creative hours as me-time, self-care, and a time of wonderfully selfish joy. Keep it up, I say!
Now, let’s talk about the good kind of contrast in art.
Design Refresh
Let’s look at the beautiful brooch by Lyne Tilt that opened this post. What do you notice first about this? There’s a lot going on in this little space, isn’t there? What are the three things that jump out at you as far as design elements?
I’m going to say color, shape, and texture. Did you come up with the same three? There is also a lot going on with marks and size. So, any combination of those would be spot on.
How about design principles? What do you think is the number one principal used in this design? Sure, we could refer to scale and proportion considering all the different sizes of the layers, or we could talk about focal point or even just key in on the centered composition. But the one thing this has in spades is contrast.
Obviously, there is color contrast in all the major color characteristics—she has a vibrant trio of warm colors contrasting the cool of the blue and cyan; color values range from the dark blue and deep red to the moderate orange to the light yellow and pale polished silver; and, if you check your CMY color wheels, you’ll see that the color of the bottom layer is a blue-cyan whose complementary AND split complementaries are the yellow, orange, and red that you see in the upper layers.
But doesn’t a color palette have to have at least one common characteristic between all the colors? Well, ideally, yes, and this does. Here it’s saturation. These are not muted colors. The orange may be slightly tinted (has some white in it) but not enough to feel it’s gone off base from the saturated characteristic that ties them all together.
Now, look at the contrast in the textures. The top and bottom layers might have the same texture, but the rest are vastly different. There are even different materials—metal and clay. But they work together pretty well, don’t they? Why?
The textures work together in part because they are all drastically different—the wide variety is part of the charm of this piece. But, like color, they need something to tie them together.
Did you notice that the textures are applied to the entire layer from one edge to another? Thier differences are connected because the application on each layer is the same. That does seem to be enough to allow them to exist in the same piece and not have it feel completely chaotic.
The shapes, on the other hand, are not completely different but they are not the same either, right? They are all some version of a hand cut circle, but some of them are definitely more oval. I think pulling back on the amount of contrast between the shapes also helps to rein in the potential chaos all this dramatic contrast and color and texture could fall into. The centered composition also adds a bit of calm to the piece.
Let’s take this week to consider the design principle of contrast. Would your pieces benefit from more contrast, or do you need to rein some of that in? Remember, it all depends on your intention. There are no wrong levels of contrast, at least not in art.
Last Week’s Giveaway
Drum roll please…
This last week’s randomly chosen winner is Eloise B! I’ve spoken to her and her clay is already on the way. Congrats Eloise!
This Week’s Giveaway
Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s giveaway through comments on the post. As mentioned above, it really made me happy to see all the fantastic, positive and self-caring observations. I also hope it gave you a moment to focus on and appreciate what you love so much about creating.
So, let’s do this again.
The Goodies:
- This week I have a selection of Sculpey clays in 2 new Soufflé colors, 3 new Premo colors, and 2 big 8 oz. blocks of clay stash basics—Sculpey III in Pearl and Silver. That’s 26 ounces of fresh clay along with a three-piece set of Sculpey silkscreens.
- Or if outside the US, I have a $25 Tenth Muse certificate, since it would be such a gamble to ship clay outside the US.
How to Win:
- Put a comment in the blog comments* (below), telling me what type of contrast you enjoy creating most in your own work, or the type of contrast you wish you used more of. And, yes, if you want to share pictures, you can do so by including a link. Just don’t put more than one link in or it may spam filter the comment.
- Note: It can take some time for the comment to appear if you’ve not commented before since, due to annoying spamming, I have to approve it .
- Giveaway winners will be chosen by random—it will NOT be based on your answers. I do hope you’ll give it some thought anyway. The answers could be helpful to you as well as interesting for the rest of us.
- And let’s say you can only win once this month so we can spread the love around.
- Get your comments posted by Wednesday March 17th at midnight Pacific time to get in for the raffle.
- I’ll announce the winner here on the blog next weekend!
I’ll put together yet another pack of goodies for a giveaway in next weekend’s post, so stay tuned here!
You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like…
Balancing Color & Contrast
November 26, 2018
Inspirational Art
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.
A Serving of Fruits and Veggies
October 15, 2018
Inspirational Art
Happy Monday, fellow polymer enthusiasts. I’m not sure how this week is going to turn out as I have not had time to put together a full-fledged theme so we’re gonna go with “things that caught my eye” for now.
I’m sure you can understand why this piece by Marion Le Coq aka Fancy Puppet, might have caught my eye. They are fun and refreshing pieces, wonderfully finished and composed. She connects all her elements with repetition of motifs, colors, or other things. For example, the leaf off the apple is reflected in the leaf addition on the back and hanging leaves. The carrot’s colors are reflected in its layered pieces behind it, and its crisscross of lines reflect the crisscross of the plaid.
I’m guessing the plaids and dots are silkscreen but the secret is probably available on her YouTube page where she has dozens of tutorials and review items. She’s also quite busy elsewhere online. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, Canal blog, and Etsy.
Elevating the Squiggle
September 17, 2018
Inspirational Art
I recently realized that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the lowly squiggle. But who doesn’t like a well-done squiggle? I guess it’s hard to take it seriously with such a silly-sounding name but the sound of the word itself describes it so well.
I myself am very fond of squiggles and apply them throughout my work, primarily as accents, but some people take the squiggle to wonderfully elevated levels as the central theme of their piece.
This pin by Petra Nemravová is an excellent example of the squiggle stealing the show. The organization of these wonderfully unruly squiggles brings a regular rhythm to their organic movement. It reins in the rambling energy that this kind of squiggle contains. The bright array of colors, which could also get out of hand, is held in check by a regular graduation from one color to the next, helping to create an energetic but contained feeling.
Petra is such an advocate of bright colors and cheerful compositions. Enjoy a stroll through her colorful world on her Flickr photostream. She is also the genius mind behind the wonderful selections found in the online polymer shop Nemravka, serving the European polymer and craft communities and beyond.
Eliciting a Response
August 27, 2018
Inspirational Art
I decided this week I would like to talk about work that speaks to me. Well, I don’t mean that I want to talk about me so much as use pieces that do speak to me as examples of what it means when a piece of artwork elicits a response from the viewer.
For various reasons, I ended up thinking and talking a lot about how we define art this past week. I have long felt that art should be defined as work that is made with expression and intention, with a goal of eliciting an intellectual or emotional response. Yes, I know a lot of people will say that it is the individual who should determine what art is to them but I would like to suggest that such a statement is not quite the right phrase. Each of us can determine what is good art or what is bad art—to that I absolutely agree. But shouldn’t a label such as “art” have a more specific definition than just whatever someone thinks is art, or just something that is made by hand, as the definition would seem to be nowadays?
I am guilty of this broad use as well so I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just a big proponent of using language to effectively communicate and I think it would be great if the English language had a well-defined use of the word “art” that allowed us to talk about work born of self-expression versus craftwork or artisan work created from skilled hands.
My definition also brings up the question of what does it mean to elicit a response? It is not as confined a concept as it might sound like so I thought I’d try to define that a little this week.
For a piece of work to elicit a response all it has to do is make the viewer stop and feel something, or stop and think. It could be something as simple as making them smile or as complex as questioning societal norms. It can be positive such as emitting a sense of peacefulness or negative such as work with a high shock value geared to make you appalled or angry. If the piece is made with intention, part of that intention will, consciously or unconsciously, be to communicate with the viewer, and if the artist is communicating then they are attempting to elicit a response. Good art accomplishes this. Bad art is too distracting in its failings to communicate or illicit anything of value.
This piece here feels like a very personal piece for Shannon Tabor who commented on her Instagram post of this that “I’m back to my roots in design with ‘Compass’. My Back To Basics study is over and I’m anxious to get all these design ideas out of my head and onto my clay!”
I can feel her excitement for this new work in the composition and surface treatment of this necklace. There is a buzzing kind of energy from the scratches and the asymmetrical placement of elements but there’s also a reservedness in the basic geometric shapes and the subdued and shaded palette. I found that I was drawn to the contrast between that reserved feeling and that feeling of excitement. It reminds me of that point in time right before things really take off in some exciting new venture, which I love, and so that must be what made me stop and spend time with this piece.
So, you see, Shannon may have been working on something specific to what she wanted to explore but the intention in her skilled design choices allowed me to connect with her emotion, or at least my sense of what her emotion must’ve been. That’s eliciting a response. And to me, that’s what makes it art.
See what else Shannon is up to by following her on Instagram or hopping over to her website.
Piecing It All Together
August 20, 2018
Uncategorized
Happy Monday to you all. Business first… preorders for the fall issue of The Polymer Arts is available online now. We don’t have a precise publication date but looks like mid-September. I’ll let you know here on the blog, in our newsletter, and on the website when we know. Again, thank you for your patience with me while I work on healing my overworked joints.
Okay, one more piece of wall art, this time by the inventive Angela Barenholtz. I know it seems like we’ve been talking about wall art for a couple weeks but this will probably be the last for a bit. I picked this one for a couple reasons having little to do with wall art.
For one, it’s a really fun piece with its variety in color, visual texture, and even the long shapes that make up this “polymer quilt.” Creating with a large variety of primary elements makes for energy-infused and eye-catching work. But, the trick is that everything still needs to work together and have some kind of relationship. In this case, the relationship is in the consistency of the type of pieces inserted into this quilt—long and evenly cut strips of visual texture arranged in a square composition. With this much consistency, you can go nuts with the variety of color, texture, and pattern.
Each one of these could actually sit on its own—like it could be a pendant or brooch if small enough, or even a pair of earrings. Giving yourself a canvas of a certain size and shape releases you from having to be overly concerned about the bounds of individual elements and construction of the work, particularly if you’re creating jewelry, and you get to play with what you place on that canvas. I imagine a lot of you might find that attractive, being we are so in love with our surface treatments, canes, and textures. How many times have you fallen in love with just the sheet of clay you were working on before it became anything? Creating a simple surface to work with can allow you to present those fantastic results in a fun and easy manner.
Angela is all about surface design and variety. You can see that by looking at her Flickr photostream. She also generously shares her techniques in her published tutorials which you can find on Etsy.
Inspiration, Aspiration, and Jon Stuart Anderson
June 25, 2018
Inspirational Art
Guest Blog Post by Teresa Pandora Salgado
Van Gogh admitted to the world, “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” Me too, Vincent.
One of the most infuriatingly fabulous things I cannot do is make cane like Jon Stuart Anderson. Jon creates canes in a cunning palette that leans in close and whispers, “Go ahead…take your time…look at me.” And I surely do. And the world does too.
I love the way Jon cruises nimbly past the pedestrian cane crossing. He jaywalks that trodden path without ever touching the ground. Obvious contrast? He doesn’t need it, no matter how much the cane is reduced. Nor does he require new colors. Jon keeps it fresh with precision, composition, and balance. Neat trick.
Jon Anderson is known for his millefiori animals: elephants, turtles, bulls, and birds. You’ll notice the creatures have a flesh and blood sense about them, a beating heart beneath their rich robes. So you look and you look and then, just when you think you know him, Jon takes you to another fork in the road. To the left, skulls, vessels, lights. And to the right, guitars. Ohhh, the guitars.
So, go ahead. Look. Be inspired. Aspire.
See Jon’s work at his website here.
Teresa Pandora Salgado is a polymer clay artist, designer & instructor from Los Angeles, California. She has made 87 YouTube tutorials which have garnered over 2 million hits from viewers in 151 countries. In addition to teaching live workshops on millefiori complex caning across the U.S., Teresa helms the online store, Tiny Pandora Crafting Boutique, which featuresMilll her specialized tools and kits.
Muted Veneer
April 16, 2018
Inspirational Art
In perusing #the100dayproject on Instagram these past couple weeks, I’ve noticed that veneers are quite the thing to be experimenting with right now. Whether you call polymer sheets you work with surface design, surface treatments, or polymer veneers, it does feel like the clay surface is having a renaissance of exploration.
One of the first of these explorations that I’ve noticed in recent weeks was this piece by Lindly Haunani, which she posted on Facebook. Of course, the queen of color is going to have a showstopper based on her color choices alone, but the subtle texture and the composition of the layout of the veneers, for all the energy of the color and lines, has such a satisfying sense of calm and rightness. There is that obvious sense of intention and deftness of skill that brings refinement to such unquestionably masterful work, even in a piece the artist claims is exploration.
Explore more of Lindly’s work on her website and Facebook page.
Creative Composition
March 7, 2018
Inspirational Art
Another great contribution to the Spring issue was in our artists’ gallery. All of our artists are unique in their approach but it is Isabelle, known online as Bellou, whose designs are really standing out.
Isabelle creates bold, contemporary adornments that are polished to a glass-like shine. Her work often has a centered focal point but the balance of the components are set in asymmetric arrangements or are all shaped differently with different treatments. However, in all the disparity there is a common element that brings it together.
This is one of the pieces she sent us that we couldn’t work into the gallery pages. On the one side, there are wide, solid pieces, dense with texture, but on the other side, the space is opened with a series of cut-out shapes that have the same mica shift texture as the other side. The rest of the center piece brings in a grounding energy to the movement of lines and shapes that play across the necklace.
To see more of Bellou’s work, take a look at her shop pages here.
I think we’ll stick with inspiring creatures this week. And what creatures are more inspiring to us than those we share our life with? Dogs, cats, birds, fish …we find something in them that we connect with so it’s not surprising that they make their way into our art.
Recently Angela Garrod posted these kindred creatures of hers on Facebook. With a beautifully stylized approach, she captures the look, and even a few good expressions of some of people’s favorite animals, and this while playing with geometric designs. The hand scratched texture keeps the geometric shapes from feeling too stiff and sterile and adds quite a bit to what would otherwise be just simple shapes and lines through which we, somehow, recognize the variety of animals. I don’t know how our brains see that but more so, it is always a wonder how cartoonists and other artists create images with just a few simple lines and shapes and know we’ll see it. The brain is just pretty darn nifty.
Angela has been up to all kinds of cool and curious geometric designs of late. You can see her explorations through her shared photos on Flickr, her Facebook page, and the gallery on her website.
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Nothing like a “Rainbow Coalition” to start the week off and that is what we are fortunate enough to be enjoying today with this enchanting little gather by the ever whimsical Doreen Kassel. The colors of these characters are just so juicy and combined in a most delicious way. Marks were scratched into the surface after painting to energize the forms of this little gang’s broad torsos. Although their body shapes don’t leave room for much movement everything else is in motion from the dancing gestures of the arms to the expressive facial gestures. It is hard not to smile in their presence.
Speaking of which… I could use an energized rainbow coalition of my own as we have lost a couple of contributors for the next issue of The Polymer Arts and could use some imagination and talent to fill in the spaces. The next issue’s theme is ‘Color!’ Would you want to be a part of this delightful next issue? I could use help fleshing out a “ways to design colorful beaded necklaces” article or maybe you have a color-centric or just colorful technique tutorial such as painting with or on polymer.
We also really could use a short personal story, that may or may not have to do with color but would inspire and make people smile, for that last page, the Muse’s Corner section. Do you have any splendid ideas the readers of The Polymer Arts might want? You’ll never know unless you write us!
Please send your article ideas to me using the link on our submission page or write me directly at sbray(at)thepolymerarts.com. Avoid replying to this post if you get it by email as it won’t go to me, taking a day or two to get forwarded, and I would love to see your ideas as soon as possible!
In the meantime, for more color and smiles, take a look at what Doreen is up to on her website or follow her on Instagram.
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So let’s finish up this week on dots and spots with one piece which happens to have many, many ways of using the decorative and often dynamic element.
Shelley Atwood isn’t shy with her details as demonstrated here. Pin-pricks give way to tiny circles which play in the background behind spots of color and details of varying shapes, not just the roundness of the dots we know and love so well. But even the leaf shapes, repeated over and over, create the same kind of effect.
Having four sections doing basically the same thing helps with the suggestion that the leaf shapes should operate as spots rather than a distinctive visual. Even with all the variation, the dots, and spots and marks, all contained within a similarly sized space, balance each other out so you are left to just enjoy the riot of color and the joy of the spot.
Shelley’s work can be found, with all its many marks and delicious details, on her website and on Flickr.
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Oh, the dot. A dot is not really a shape and it doesn’t define anything for us in the way its closest relation, the singularly dimensional line, does. It is just a point in space or on a surface but it will always grab our attention. It marks a point that we feel drawn to investigate. However, when it’s gathered to create a texture or pattern, that draw it has doesn’t expand but acts more like beats in a song. So when you have lots of dots, make a song of it.
I think that is what Julia Zharova is doing here. It’s a song she likes too, so she’s created variations on it. In the top one she lets the dots be simple and smooth but backs them with a lot of organic texture. In the one below, the dots are concave and colored but the background texture is more subdued so that the dots can dance without distraction. It’s a couple of examples of variation on a similar design.
Julia seems rather fond of the dot, which is scattered throughout her beautifully composed and well finished work. Enjoy a break with Julia today with a perusal through her Livemaster shop.
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I’m going to use this to both wrap up my jabbering about the Spring issue of The Polymer Arts and as a segue into talking about a design element that seems rarely discussed … the dot. Or spot. Or point on a surface. Whatever you want to refer to it, dots or spots are an unassuming but strong design element. In polymer, we can give them dimension and form until they take on another life entirely. In Donna Greenberg‘s work, those organic gatherings of points definitely look to be alive.
We were so lucky to have another wonderful article by Donna in the latest issue, The Polymer Arts Spring 2017 – Shape and Form issue. She discusses ways to use your past work to inspire new work. I think most of us have tried going back to something we did before but her suggestions are a bit different and her examples are beautiful. She does a lot of these dot/spot barnacle-like cups in her re-formed work and in her latest vessels too.
Although the form of the ‘spots’ seen here are similar, the way they are used and gathered are not. Look at the one on top. It had an organic feel but the little cups and the spots are placed in a very orderly fashion. The rougher but lacy edge builds a balanced but dynamic tension, pulling away from the inner order. But the platter below is a purely random application with the gathered dots of different sizes flowing in a natural path through and around the piece. It’s less restricted nature also warranted the use of a brighter color, making the piece quite lively and cheerful.
I found these pieces on Donna’s Facebook page but also take a look at her barnacled beauties in the latest issue of The Polymer Arts or hop over to Donna’s website to see more of her dots and spots.
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I was so excited to have Carol Beal put together an article on lathe turned polymer. She demonstrates what you can do with a fairly inexpensive table top lathe to make intricate but easy polymer beads. But here is the thing that we didn’t have room for … you can make a lot more than beads on a small hobby lathe.
I searched around and found all these things being turned in polymer or a similar material like acrylic. Most would require the you cure and then turn the ‘blank’ as it is call without the functional parts attached so other than ensuring you can take the item apart to add the polymer, you have a pretty wide open field of functional and decorative art objects to explore with this technique:
- Pens (the top turned small item in pretty much any medium
- Bottle stoppers
- Ice cream and coffee scoops
- Every kind of eating utensil you can think of.
- Key chains
- Razor blade handles
- Crochet hooks
- Seam rippers
- Perfume applicators
- Makeup brushes
- Ornaments
- Hair sticks
- T-handle corkscrews
- Spinning tops
- Drawer handles and pulls
- Gauged Ear plugs
- Wands …
… basically any smallish thing with a long handle, long body, or is stout but round can potentially be created from or decorated with lathe turned polymer. I never thought about it but I sure am now.
What you see here are lathe turned acrylic pieces I found linked with Craft Supplies USA’s YouTube pages where they have a bunch of lathe videos for wood and acrylic blanks. However, you can see how easily this could be polymer. All you would need to do is follow Carol’s easy tutorial and once you are comfortable making beads, you could branch out into whatever you like. You would need the lathe of course which can be had for something in the range of $150-$600 dollars, depending on how precise and how serious you get. You can also find these kinds of tools on Craigslist and Ebay, sold by the well-intentioned hobbyist, on the cheap. I would go for new or like-new ones though so you know it is in good shape. These are not toys! That plus a set of woodturning tools which can be had for $30 brand new and you are set to go. I could see this being very addictive!
We could only post a small sample of what Carol has turned out (couldn’t resist the pun!) in lathe turned beads but take a peek at what she has on her Flickr site and in her Etsy shop as well as searching for lathe turned crafts or lathe polymer clay on Pinterest, Flickr, Etsy, and Google images to find even more ideas!
And if you still need to get your copy of the Spring issue, jump over to our website for Carol’s article and much more.
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One of my personal favorite articles in this issue is the interview of Wiwat Kamolpornjiwit. He has been one of my top jewelry designers since I saw his work some 9 years ago. I don’t think anyone does anything quite like what he does, not in polymer.
He really seems to approach his work from a purely construction and sculptural aspect, instead of getting into all the many ways polymer can be manipulated, putting the design first and the material second, if that. I love that. It should never matter what the material is if the design has not been well-considered. This is not to say that he doesn’t play with canes and surface design but they tend to be accents or focal points rather than the bulk of the work. This piece is actually a bit unusual for him, that I know of, as it incorporates a druzy stone moving the work into a bit more mixed media than in the past.
I believe this piece is from the collection shown at his recent American Craft Council show in Baltimore, Maryland. Cynthia also showed off his work on the Polymer Clay Daily blog a couple of weeks ago so he’s getting his share of attention right now, and for good reason. He has an interesting story so be sure to read that in the latest issue of The Polymer Arts magazine and see more of his work on his website and his Facebook page.
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The Spring issue is out and as usual, there is a bit of chatter on it out there in the social network world but there is an unusually high level of enthusiasm out there this issue. Is it that fabulously colorful cover? The wide variety of articles by or about amazing artists like Donna Greenberg, Christi Friesen, Wiwat Kalmpornjiwit, and Sylvie Peraud? So far the most talked about articles are the Lariat making, Donna’s inspiration from the past and Christi’s treatise on armatures which was pretty eye-opening since she picked the brains of some of the most amazing artists for which armatures are essential, namely Ellen Jewett (with that incredible opening piece!) and Adam Thomas Rees who I knew built his own animal shapes but had no idea how he did these huge things. But Christi revealed that for us.
The one thing we couldn’t do in Christi’s article was blow up some of the images so you could really see the detail of the work these artist’s do. Adam layers canes onto animal shapes in a manner reminiscent of Jon Anderson though they were developing their work around the same time so I don’t think Adam came to this idea from seeing Jon’s work although either of them may have influenced the other since. But other than canes on animal shapes, they have different approaches. Adam’s pieces are huge and his canes are large, broad patterns and often very bright. He sometimes mixes up other sculptural textures and additions to his creatures that create a feast of interesting details for the eye to roam over. The hanging matted hair like texture built up on this one creates a swath of white to give the eye a resting place below all that intense color and pattern above.
Just open Adam’s website and try not to be startled by the creature staring out at you. It’s beautiful but intense! Take some time out today and enjoy Adams colorful patterns in his galleries. And grab your copy of the Spring issue of The Polymer Arts on our website here.
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So many artists spend an inordinately large amount of time looking for the next really cool and totally different thing that will get them all kinds of attention and make their work stand out. But here is the thing … nothing is really new anymore. It’s just a variation of something that was done before. Thinking and creating with this in mind can be so freeing. It allows you to just create what you love or what you want to express.
And some days you just want to be simple, clean and use some no-fuss forms and applications. Nothing wrong with that. Go for it. You can see how a basic striped composition on a bangle shape and a couple of lentil earrings did for Julia Peker‘s approach. Choosing an array of both visual and tactile textures gives this variation within the limitations of a palette of subdued and tinted cool colors. Nothing crazy or new design wise, but it pulls off a tasteful and understated elegance that most anyone can appreciate.
Julia takes notes from a lot of other polymer artists as can be seen in her work so I suspect she is still working on her voice but I think I see it emerging. Her postings look to be relegated to Instagram for the moment but I would be interested to see how her work develops. We’ll keep an eye out!ow
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