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 thought we’d end this week on depth with an in-depth mini-interview conducted by Randee Ketzel. This time she spoke to Claire Wallis who doesn’t work with illusionary depth, but does explore faux and illustrative techniques quite a bit. Here is what Randee sent to share with us:
Claire Wallis is probably best known as the creator of the faux knit tutorial in polymer clay, which she generously shared with the world, but there is so much more to her work. Caner, sculptor, illustrator, Claire is a self-taught artist from the south of England and came to polymer ‘entirely by accident’. She played with it as a child and became re-engaged with it after viewing the works of other artists on the Internet.
An avid fan of Fantasy/Sci-Fi, she has carved her favorite characters on pumpkins, sketched them on chinaware, and sculpted them in polymer. She also illustrates–this elephant cuff is smashing–and clearly has no fear of color, as evidenced by her eye-popping bangles.
The influence of her other artistic explorations like ceramics, acrylics, pastels, printmaking and pyrography is evident in her work, though she says she had very little formal training. She counts that a blessing, as it leaves her free to approach polymer with no preconceptions as to how it ought to be used. As she puts it, “I find ignorance is not only bliss, but genuinely constructive, particularly in a medium as adaptable as polymer clay.”
Her driving force is a keen desire for craftsmanship, every piece should be the best it can be, and she can’t imagine a day without some artistic endeavor to try her hand. Claire recently gave up her job as an assistant manager for St. Barnabas’ charity shop (which helps support their hospice work) to be a full-time mom and is waiting to see where motherhood leads her creative processes.
She describes herself as ‘a bit of a one-trick pony,’ with which I humbly beg to differ, given her obvious mastery of so many media and techniques. She says of herself, “I love to read and learn, and for me nothing beats the sense of achievement you get when you master a new skill.” We will eagerly await the next chapter in her new adventure. In the meantime, you can certainly glean hints from her Flickr photostream and maybe recognize a kindred soul.
Randee Ketzel, a life-long craft artist, previously worked in metals, but is now a polymer enthusiast and co-author of “Polymer Clay Gemstones, the Art of Deception” a different kind of polymer book devoted to faux techniques and the reproduction of historical jewelry. Her book can be found on Amazon while her other tutorials can be found in her Etsy shop.
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.
It would be hard to do a week on the illusion of depth without taking a look at one of our foremost masters in the category of mica shift. Dan Cormier and his uncompromising approach has given us some of the most beautiful examples of illusionary depth in polymer.
And here’s a treat, even for those of you quite familiar with his work. This black necklace hasn’t really made the rounds primarily because it was not in Dan’s possession very long, being sold off to a worthy student and artist shortly after its creation. The other half of this treat is that I got Dan’s thoughts on this piece and a little of its story in a recent email to add depth to our admiration of the work:
When working in a medium of infinite colour like polymer clay, sometimes it’s fun to turn the volume down a few notches. This monotone necklace is another example of my “Texture Without Texture” techniques. Like my Discovery Necklace, the impressions were made with custom-made polymer clay punches, bent wire, ball stylus tools, and also bits of patterned sheet metal. With the exception of actual holes in some of the bead veneers, the surfaces of these beads are all smooth.
The woman who owns this necklace is a very cool brain surgeon and potter from Victoria, BC . We met her when she signed up for one of our week-long retreats on Gabriola Island, BC … she confessed on Day 1 that, while she was comfortable as a crafts person in clay, she’d never even opened a package of polymer. Nevertheless, knowing her ‘day job,’ I was confident that my medium was in capable hands.
Dan and his partner Tracy also continue to innovate and develop new tools and techniques. They recently vastly expanded their die sets collection with a beautiful line of elongated shapes that came out this summer, and a new set based on the beauty of the insect world is about ready for shipping. Check out their new offerings and their classics on The Cutting Edge 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.
Yesterday we looked at the depth achieved through applying unique polymer techniques that allow for a smooth surface to look like it has variations in the depth of that surface. But this can also be done with some good standard methods of optical illusion as well.
MaryKot created this pendant for a challenge using grays on the Parole De Pate blog. When you first glance at the piece you might think there are over a half dozen round elements sunk into the surface. Then like me (and I don’t have the best vision), you might have thought all the circles were just caned illusions. Then you realize some are sunk, and some are just color change. Or value change to be precise. It’s the change in value that gives the illusion of depth. In this case, it’s also well placed, as the darker value in the flower is toward the thicker center, where a cut out in the clay surface would look darker, and it gets lighter towards the edge, which is just about right, although it would get kind of Escher-esque if the black inset circles were more apparent. But the change in value and the nicely balanced design makes this a good example of a illustrative optical illusion.
Go back to our own week on the study of gray starting early in October for more on the use of value and illusion. You can see more MaryKot on her Flickr pages and her blog.
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.
The real or illusionary depiction of depth is something that draws the eye. We want to see what is down there, what is in the shadows or just beyond, what we can make out by looking deeper. Depth in polymer can be achieved through a myriad of techniques and approaches.
Let’s start this week of looking at creating a look of depth with this amazing necklace by Victoria James. The depth is subtle, but like shimmering pebbles just under the trickle of a clear creek, you want to reach in and touch the texture here. It is so hard to tell from the photo how this was achieved, but here is what Victoria says:
“These beads were created with the shingle cracked growth ring texture sheet. They are made from polymer clay, alcohol inks and metal leaf. The look of depth is an illusion, they are perfectly smooth.”
So, we are thinking this is a really great buffing job here. If it was flat, I might say resin with that shine and layered translucent appearance. But, I don’t think so. Mica shift may have played a role, but then again, it’s hard to say from here. What we can all say, I believe, is simply … wow. Beautifully done.
More illusion, texture and faux can be found on Victoria’s Flickr page and on her website where you will find her work in basketry, as well as her collection of ‘real’ world texture sheets.
f 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.
Read More
I love that polymer illustration is coming more and more to the forefront. There are some amazing illustrators out there. In our last issue of The Polymer Arts we featured Tammy Durham’s playful work and in the upcoming winter issue we have the honor of being able to include an article by Joseph Barbaccia, the creator of the amazing illustration you see here. The article reveals the steps in his process, as well as how he came to this new calling after a full and successful prior career in graphic design and years of traditional sculpting.
This image is a beautiful and striking mix of the dark and the light, the two sides, as I mentioned on Monday, that are needed for either side to be appreciated, and in this case, create the heavy contrast that is the basis of the dramatic atmosphere here. The beautiful range of additional color beyond black and white have added to the drama. Look closely at the lovely saturated teals and magentas in the raven and the various shades of blue that make up the rich and glowing night sky. Even the moon gives into off-whites and various yellow and green relations to gray.
The rough, and yet wispy, edge created by just leaving the tapered tendrils of clay displays an unusual and effective treatment of the boundary for the image. It really brings out the dimensional quality of the work that may not be as apparent seeing it just as a photograph. To learn more about Joesph’s work, take a look at his website and, of course, be sure you are subscribed or pre-order the winter issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, due out November 28th.
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.
This is Sean Mitchell. He’s 12 years old, home-schooled, and the youngest person to ever take a college-level polymer clay course.
Wait … is Sean the real news or is it the fact that this past year, the first college-level credit course in polymer art was actually accepted and implemented at an accredited American institution? Well, they are both news in their own way, aren’t they? Both Sean and the class are bright lights for the future of polymer art.
The class, “Art 200: Polymer Clay” was taught at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin by Diane Levesque who was also the curator for the exhibit at the H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art at Carthage College, A Re-Visioning: New Works in Polymer. Diane presented her overview and thoughts on the course at the Polymer 2.0 Symposium along with inviting a number of students who took the class to attend the presentation and symposium that day. Sean was one of them.
At 12 years old, Sean isn’t quite of college age and is not one of those kids skyrocketed into a university education at an early age, although I have to say, after hearing his participation in our discussions and talking with him myself, I think he could have been. He’s exceedingly bright, curious and well-spoken. It was fortunate that special circumstances and the need for a creative option in his home school curriculum landed Sean the opportunity to take this class in which he excelled. He brought this sculpture to share with us. That piece alone was pretty impressive.
So, I had to ask him … “Do you see yourself continuing to work in polymer?” His answer was yes, but he did confess that he was actually interested in going into industrial engineering. So, we may lose him to another creative area, but nonetheless, Sean as well as his fellow students, were very enthusiastic about their experience with the medium, which brought up the question, “How can we introduce polymer as an art form to more of the younger generations?”
Well, we can start with the kids in our own life. I’ve had quite the year of introducing the many facets of polymer clay to the young people in my family and beyond. I now have at least one niece that seems to be inextricably addicted to it, and she introduced it to her friends as well. Word of mouth works well in spreading the love of creating as well as in business! And, of course, if we can continue to push for college-level courses and maybe even introduce it into high schools and after-school programs, polymer can continue to expand its range and the world’s view of it as art, not just hobby craft. Wouldn’t that be exciting?
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.
Before I write up a blog, I search what I’ve posted over the years to insure I’m not showing the same artists over and over, and that it’s been a while since I’ve posted their work. It’s a way of spreading the love around, so to speak. I don’t usually have to worry about that with posts from artists working in other mediums, but I was afraid I’d already shared the stunning work of Amy Gross and maybe shouldn’t be sharing it again. But, to my surprise, I never have! I don’t know how that happened. However, since her work was in the Racine Museum of Art’s (in)Organic exhibition I saw this past weekend, I can now correct that.
Amy is so one of my very favorite artists in the realm of mixed media art. The richness of the textures and colors are what draw you in, but it’s the imagery, both realistic and implied, that holds you there. At least it does me. It helps that I have an interest in both the growth and decay that is the cycle of nature. Amy’s work filters what she sees in this cycle through her own personal experiences as she notes in her artist statement on her website:
“My embroidered and beaded fiber pieces are my attempt to merge the natural observable world with my own inner life: I’m trying to remake nature sieved through my own experiences. I’ve always been attracted and frightened by things that are in their fullest bloom but on the verge of spoiling. There’s such beauty and sadness to them, heightened by the undeniable inevitability of their ending.”
I was so immensely thrilled to see her work in person for the first time at Racine Art Museum–I had read her work would be in the exhibit–that I was having a hard time containing myself. But, jumping up and down or squealing with glee is not museum-appropriate conduct. So, I am happy I have a chance to to do so here. The first image is one I was given permission to take at the museum. I really wanted to capture the colors in that top leaf in contrast with the darker colors below. The second photo is from her website and gives you more details of the lower half. See even more shots of this and other pieces of Amy’s in her website gallery pages.
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.
One of the most impressive works we saw over the weekend in Racine was at the second exhibition we visited. Laura Tabakman’s On the Trail was a large installation piece set up at the H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art at Carthage College as part of the exhibition, A Re-Visioning: New Works in Polymer.
The installation is a wonderful little field of these colorful pods and balls standing on the tops of thin wire that swayed slightly as you passed and interspersed with bright handmade tassels, some in the pods, some fallen to the boards below them. It’s a bright, yet quiet and peaceful, piece that draws you in to look closer at all the variation in detail between the polymer elements.
Aside from being drawn in by the beauty of the piece, as polymer artists we gravitated to it as an unusual type of work that few of us have had experience in creating. There were a lot of questions about the planning and building of it, as well as the shipping and installing of the work. I guess Laura was queried enough to post the process on her Facebook page here. You have to read and see what she did to her living room for the sake of her art! She is a dedicated lady!
See more of Laura’s installation and smaller works on her website as well as on her Facebook pages.
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.
Unlike Dever’s work as we saw yesterday, Maggie Maggio exhibited work that is a continuation of her exploration of structure in polymer. Her wrap bangles and neck pieces are growing ever more bold, as well as bigger.
Here is the piece that just mesmerized me. As Maggie explains it, “Grow III represents the interweaving of the animal and plant world by blurring the lines between snake and vine.” She adds, “I will need a larger oven as the pieces grow and grow!” This is a bit of reflection on the success of her exploration as well as the size of her pieces. To understand just how big this issue is, take a close look at the necklace modeled on the exhibition card you see on the far right of this photo. (You can click on the photo for a larger version.)
Maggie had several pieces in the Racine Museum of Art’s (in)Organic exhibition, (there until February 1st, 2015. Get out to see it if you can. It is amazing.) including a piece that evolved into something quite different as she created it. Read her post about her process of exploration and one of those welcome accidents that led to a satisfying, but unexpected piece on Maggie’s 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.
