Iconic Shapes
May 31, 2020
Inspirational Art
If there was a shape that could represent state of the world today, what would you say that is? Chances are, you’re thinking of something that works as an icon or symbol rather than something as simple as a circle or octagon. Abstract shapes are something I touched upon only briefly in the article about shape and form at the beginning of the month. They are most commonly created for things that we are already familiar with, many of which are considered universal. Some have been with us for ages such as stars, teardrops, and hearts, but simplified shapes will pop up whenever a quick method of communication that is not language dependent is needed or preferred.
For instance, right now, a square with half circles on the ends, often with a few horizontal lines in the square, represents a medical mask. Such an icon may have meant nothing to you at the start of this year but it’s hard not to recognize it for what it is now.
That is the power of abstract shapes. With minimal characteristics, these shapes represent an object if not an entire concept. For this reason, I suggest you to not use them too frivolously. If you pop a heart shape on something, it should be because your intention necessitates calling on the viewer’s emotions rather than just putting it on to be cute. Now, I’m not saying that using hearts to be cute is a bad thing but realize that people will see it as an emotional expression. And I say emotional, not love, because the heart represents a base positive emotion associated with love, caring, and happiness but if your heart shape has a hole in it, is cracked or torn, or is jet black, the viewer will start thinking of things like loneliness, sadness, or even animosity.
Not all abstract shapes have such a wide range of potential meaning but many can elicit a similar or even stronger reaction, such as the shape of a cross or particular types of star shapes, depending on the context in which it’s used.
If you want to use abstract shapes but do not want to be so obvious or bring up the more common associations, you might find it useful to combine abstract shapes or to use them in unexpected ways. This approach to the use of abstract shapes can make for a much more subtle or complex statement which means your viewer will probably react more viscerally even with a readily recognized shape since its associations won’t be so blunt.
Here are just a few examples of abstract shapes where the association with them has been toned down.
Here, Elsie Smith overlays the impression of leaf forms on heart shapes showing just how perfectly they fit together. Pairing these makes the heart a gentle emotional background to the focus on, and apparent love of, nature’s intricate leaf formations.
This next one is a really good synergy of recognizable abstract shapes. Speaking in terms of the silhouette of the piece below as well as the focal point of the opening image, we could see a sunburst, a starburst, or a flower shape. Since Zuda Gay Pease was primarily creating flowers at the time she created this, we can assume her intention was for it to be a flower, but the energy of all those many pointed tips makes it come across as celestial. So, we get a combined association – the femininity and beauty of the floral shape with the energy and excitement of bursting light. It’s quite an impressive mix.
It’s interesting that practically all types of celestial bodies have a recognizable abstract shape (or variations of them.) There is probably nothing quite so common in abstract celestial shapes as a crescent moon. Our association with it can be fairly wide ranging from simply symbolizing the quiet and dark of night to embodying the ebb and flow of life.
In this example, I found it very curious that the lines on these crescents appear to be sun symbols with all their brilliant energy, and the bright blue ends of the crescent, visually truncating the shape, make us less likely to think crescent moon than simply an angular and curvy shape. The moon and its mysteries therefore become a quiet background to the louder energy of the colors and lines. I really like this contrast of concepts here as the sun and the blue color brings in a liveliness while the unconscious reaction to the moon shape is a quiet but divergent undertow. (Unfortunately, the Etsy shop from which this was saved is no longer available, so I am not sure who created it. If anyone knows, I would be ever so grateful if you would send me their name so I can update it.)
Is this making sense? I don’t think it’s hard to grasp the general idea of how iconic an abstract shape can be so I’m going to keep this short today. It’s also been a busy week getting all your accounts fixed up and so I should get off this computer. I challenge you to look around at the way abstract shapes are used in art work, be it your own or other people’s pieces.
Go Forth and Be Free… to be Inspired, For Free!
If you haven’t heard yet, starting in June (this next weekend) I will be posting the upcoming Virtual Art Box content previously planned for the VAB membership project on this blog so everyone can read it for free. I wanted readers, regardless of budget right now, to have access to these discussions, lessons, and exercises so we can all work on our art and increasing our skills and enjoyment together as well as give me the opportunity to take my work load down a notch or take breaks when necessary without being unfair to paid subscribers.
So, you can look forward to some in-depth article length discussions and ideas with a bit more juice to it than the blog usually has along with ideas on how to work with and apply the concepts if you so desire. Take it like a free class or just let the ideas sink in and enjoy the art. It’ll be here for you, starting next weekend.
Supporting Free Content
I am glad to have your support, in anyway you can provide it, to help me produce this content for free. Your supportive emails are always appreciated but if you want to help me keep the lights on, making purchases on the website is one of the best ways to do so since it gets you (or a lucky giftee) something to enjoy as well giving the contributing artists further exposure all while helping to keep me in busines.
If you have everything you want from the website at the moment, I have provided a donation option here for those who have asked and can afford to toss me a little something to help me, in particular, pay my tech guy and allow me much needed doses of dark chocolate!
So … until next weekend!
Mix and Match Stone
August 22, 2018
Inspirational Art
As I’ve said many times, you can have all types of contrast as long as there is some commonality in some aspect that will create a relationship between the disparate parts. Olga Ledneva is quite adept at this as you’re certain to see in this piece here.
What Olga had done to bring all these disparate pieces together was create a variety of faux stone and other natural and inherently solid-looking faux materials, all finished with a smooth surface and in relatively geometric shapes. That tied most of the bead elements together. But then there’s this flower, a delicate object with an uneven shape and a rippling surface. It’s completely different from everything else but it works, doesn’t it? Why would that be?
For one, she’s made this flower element the focal point by making it so completely different. Just its hugely different look actually ties it to the rest with its high contrast. But she sneaks in one subtle characteristic that makes it work with the other beads— she makes it approximately the same size as all the center stone beads. Similarly sized objects will seem to belong together when they are surrounded by a variety of other sized objects. This can be a tricky thing to pull off well but I think Olga did it wonderfully here.
Olga’s work has grown in leaps and bounds since I last posted her work in early 2015, a post that caused little bit of a stir because she was combining elements, forms, and techniques learned in classes from master polymer artists, which I pointed out while noting the original, completely valid and successful way she applied them. Not everyone was comfortable with comments that might be perceived as anything less than glowingly positive but, as I replied in the comments then, I feel that I am a funnel for the community and our thoughts and concerns. So, I wanted to present the piece as a great example of taking what you learn and making it your own.
Some people were actually mad about what I wrote but Olga, to her credit, saw this as supportive and positive. That kind of openness to constructive commentary on one’s work is an important element in an artist’s growth. It shows a sincere desire to better one’s skills and designs and I think we really see that in Olga’s work.
You can watch her growth over time and see more of her beautiful work by looking through her photos on her Facebook page and Flickr photostream.
A Pocket Full
May 14, 2018
Inspirational Art
I know I usually only do one week of a theme but we’re going to kind of continue with flowers and transition into other organic beauty this week. I’m just letting serendipity choose for us. And serendipity chose that we look at a few more unique floral items.
This wall sconce was created by Judith Ligon. This is one of her signature forms and, in my opinion, what she does best. She calls this heart-shaped wall vase a Posey pocket. The decoration on these works like a continuation of the vase’s content. The floral elements come down the front from the vase’s upper edge with lines and vine impressions creating an echoing backdrop to the stems and leaves that might be here. The placement of these decorative elements causes them to blend with the flowers and other natural contributions set in it. This way the vase and the flowers become one cohesive decorative object.
Judith sells her work through her website and shows off her latest pieces on Instagram.
The Proliferation Effect
October 9, 2017
Inspirational Art
The thing about many items being packed into a limited space is that you stop seeing those individual items and see them as one thing with a texture, and energy that does not exist in the separate parts. You see it in the crowded stands at a game, a bowl of snacks or even in your drawers full of clay. It is a kind of gestalt effect. You can use this crowding of objects to create wonderfully energetic and highly textured pieces.
This is a piece I found last week that got me thinking about this as an artistic approach. The necklace is by Hee-ang Kim, a Korean graduate student Kookmin University in Korea at the time of its creation in 2014. It is part of an aptly named series called Proliferation, this being Proliferation XI. The super thin polymer petals are stitched together to create these feather-like beads, which collectively flutter and wave in a very touchable looking texture.
Hee-ang works in a variety of materials including other types of plastics, metal and, it seems, just about anything at hand. Regardless of material, collecting multiples of objects into energetic, intriguing and often strange never-before-seen organic forms dominate Hee-ang’s collections. You can take a look at the many ways this effect can be used with thin bits of polymer on Hee-ang’s Instagram and website.
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Forest in a Bowl
October 6, 2017
Inspirational Art
When I saw this delicately shaped aspen forest on such a pale and yet luminescent bowl, I just kind of sighed. Such a balance of light colors and strong forms takes a very intentional and intuitively passionate hand.
I saw this on the Colossal newsletter, which is a little collection of interesting art and artists dropped into my mailbox weekly. At first, I thought this was a shallow shell shape but a closer look shows it to be a bowl and not all that shallow, with the aspen trees growing up from the inside of it. Ceramic artist Heesoo Lee actually creates this complex and delicate look by creating separate leaves and placing them carefully by hand, building a very dimensional and shimmering look for these trees which, in real life, shimmer with the constant flutter of their leaves in even the slightest breeze. It made me a little homesick for Colorado actually. The aspens will be a brilliant gold turning to russet red about now.
Well, i can’t get out to the Rockies right now but we can all enjoy these Rocky Mountain forest-inspired creations by visiting the Montana-based artist’s work online both on Instagram and Etsy. Here is the link to the Colossal article on her as well.
And don’t forget to work out time to come see the Into the Forest installation in Pittsburgh in November. Here is the link again so you can work on those plans to join fellow polymer artists that weekend.
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Growing More than Plants
October 4, 2017
Inspirational Art
I love the integration of the real world with artistic imagination. Finding this garden dragon hit all my buttons as I have also always been a bit of a dragon-loving nerd. The creator, Emily Coleman, creates all kinds of fantastic creatures made to blend in with natural settings.
Her inspiration for this comes from nature itself, of course, but it is driven by, in her words, “… a very strong passion for the environment and the protection of the world’s forests. As I began showing my tree dragons, I realized they could help me spread this passion.”
I have to agree. Anything that draws people to nature, takes them outdoors, and encourages them to plant in a garden or a pot, helps keep us close to nature and the earth which engenders an appreciation for them and, usually, some level of drive to do right by these things we find ourselves communing with. Putting a little something fantastical in among the plants is a fun and relatively novel way of displaying and celebrating creativity and the substance of human imagination.
Read a bit more about Emily and her inspirations on this Bored Panda article and see her other creations on her Instagram account and her website.
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Heading Into the Forest
October 2, 2017
Inspirational Art
I am heading Into the Forest in November! The huge installation project put together by Laura Tabakman, Julie Eakes and Emily Squires Levine will be a monumental event for the polymer art community and I, for one, can’t imagine missing this. It is being installed into a gallery in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania with a gallery opening and party on November 10th followed by a Saturday forum on related topics. Coming down off the high I got being around so many amazing folks at Synergy in August, I am looking forward to a little creative recharge in November along with getting to see the work of 300+ polymer artists, all in one huge piece of global art.
So first … if you are interested in attending as well, you can jump over to the website and get all the details right here. I would love to see you and meet you there!
The anticipation of this event has put me in the mood for forest-inspired work. Of course. So I rooted around the internet and found some amazing stuff to share with you this week. Here you see a very curious and delicately beautiful pendant inspired by both the flora and the fauna of the forest. The artist, Alina Sanina, started working in clay eight years ago as a curious teen but now, with a degree in art education behind her, she continues to sculpt and create a wide range of fantastical but rather realistic pieces.
I found this piece to be an eye-catcher at first glance because of its contrast between a skull, representing death, and the green and floral details of Spring foliage that top it off. But if you examine it for a minute, you’ll notice that the skull is not all a skull. The deer has live-looking eyes and fully fleshed-out ears. The contrast of life and death is within the deer head, not just the skull and vegetation here. It looks to me like a little representation of the cycle of life in a forest setting.
I have long been interested in societal views of life and death and how different cultures and even individuals work out how to handle the fact that these complete opposite states co-exist and are an understood, if not readily accepted, part of the cycle of life. I don’t know if that is what Alina had in mind when creating this but there are definitely metaphors on those subjects that one can discuss in regards to this little piece.
Whether you turn away or are intrigued by such difficult subject matter, I think you will want to see more of the beautiful work Alina creates. You can do so in her Etsy shop and on Instagram.
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Giving Floral a Little Teeth
September 27, 2017
Inspirational Art
Along with hitting up a number of museums, I got to chat with a lot of artist friends, including my crazy circle in Colorado who seek out, as well as create, really wild and fantastical work. And whenever they find polymer related work, they bring it to me.
My old roommate and the instigator of my own polymer journey, Kyle Kelley, introduced me to this unusual artist, Anastasiya Khramina of NooboSlowpokoPanda. The polymer flowers you see here may have beautifully painted petals and lots of natural detail but take just a little closer look and you’ll see they also have teeth! And some crazy but realistically textured tongues. There is even one embellished with a cat’s snout, complete with bared teeth.
These beautifully creepy, ready-for-Halloween creations are made into brooches, pendants and hair clips, per the customer’s request. She actually makes other things besides flowers but they all have teeth and tongues. If you’re getting into the Halloween mood or are looking for some creepy inspiration, jump over to Anastasiya’s NooboSlowpokoPanda Facebook page for short videos on her pieces and process and her Etsy shop for a look at her present offerings.
And don’t forget … tomorrow is the last day to get half off all available print editions of The Polymer Arts and Polymer Journeys. Head to our Etsy shop to pick up any publications you don’t have yet!
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A Translucent Memory
September 22, 2017
Inspirational Art
Easily the all-time favorite cover and one of the best-selling issues since 2012 was the Fall 2013 – Organics issue. I think this was, in large part, due to this fabulous cover art by Kathrin Neumaier. Kathrin was the most prolific and arguably most interesting artist working in translucent polymer clay. She created hollow forms in both the solid and the liquid forms of polymer with stunning results.
I remember getting this image from her and I knew it had to be the cover art for the issue. I didn’t even make any other covers or put it to a vote with the staff as I usually did. I laid this out while on “vacation” with my family on the Oregon coast and while they were off playing on the beach, I got to play with making this piece shine. I remember finishing it and just stepping across the room to look at it from a distance and it was just gorgeous, no matter how you looked at it.
I dug around to see what Kathrin has been up to but there haven’t been any postings since the end of 2016 so it’s not the most up-to-date news on her. I do hope she resurfaces, but in the meantime, enjoy the inspiring collection of work she has created and shared with us on Flickr.
If you don’t have a copy of this beautiful issue, I have only about a dozen copies left in print although they will always be available in digital. Grab your copy of this memorable issue on our website here.
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After a week of studying dense and mostly random repetition of elements, I thought some of you might be looking for some ideas to play with using this design concept, so today I brought you a few ideas.
Ponsawan Sila has an easy mokume gane tutorial using bubble-like elements to create a dense surface texture. She flattens hers, but I was thinking, just keep the raised spots, and maybe create a denser bubble pattern then indent the middle of each bubble for additional dimension. I think that would look interesting.
http://polymerclaybeads.blogspot.fr/2007/02/blog-post.html
If you want just some simple, fun repetition that could get you in the zen mode dot after dot, try this tutorial from Marina, known as Paper World Mary on Blogspot.
http://bond-mary.blogspot.com/2010/04/blog-post.html
If you were admiring some of the cupped shapes and flowers we saw, how about this cupped flower tutorial by Olga Fufygin.
(Click on the image for a larger view. There seems to be a problem with the image coming up on the blog page it’s from.)
Here’s to hoping you get some time for clay play! Have a great weekend.
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Today’s outside inspiration, a bit of crochet jewelry by Russian crafter by Zaji Galochka, has a little of all the things we’ve talked about this week. There is repetition and the crowding of the duplicated elements. Then there is an example of both an orderliness with an organic movement and a lack of precision. Plus, it’s just a lovely piece! The shine of the hard, round pearls plays a lovely contrast to the soft, rippling texture and looseness of the crocheted leaf shapes. Additionally, there’s a great dichotomy in the color scheme between the two sides.
I just wish the center bead was something else, maybe a large, dark-colored pearl or a rough, textured bead with a soft color that would straddle the contrast between the pearl and crochet elements. I wonder if the artist chose this bead in order to create a more dynamic focal point. Anything at that center, bottom point of a piece where the shapes and colors meet will be a focal point, even if it’s an open and empty crocheted circle. I don’t usually discuss ways to improve pieces, but this is so lovely in every other regard, I just would love to have seen it take one more step towards the elemental unity. Of course, some of you may disagree, finding it perfectly done as is. That is the wonderful thing about art; it reads differently for different people.
I found this piece on Deviant Art, which has some of the most fantastic artists, but is sometimes a little difficult to dig through. All the information and items I could find for Zaji are on her page here. If you like this piece try searching Pinterest or Google images for more crocheted art jewelry. There is some amazing work out there, much of which I could see inspiring many a polymer artist with their handy extuder by their side.
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I knew it was not likely that I would get through a week about repetition and crowded aesthetics without bringing in Cynthia Toops. I tried, but of all the artists I can think of, no one really beats her degree of repetitious elements that is a portrayal of beauty rather than something that tips into chaos or excess.
This tube necklace really drives home the idea that no matter how machined and perfect the elements, the crowded disorder of their assemblage is going to read as organic. Every element here was created with a precision tool or skill set, from the extruded tubes to the carefully chosen gradation of colors, and then to the elegant high-sided bezels the polymer tubes are packed into. It is easy to sense the care in the craftsmanship, but the precision may be hidden. You see this and still think of bunches of flowers, a meadow dense with wildflowers or the flowering of yarrow plants and the like, don’t you? It’s that very slight variation in color and height of each standing tube that sways our thoughts to the natural settings. A simple idea, but the results are complex, rich and rather intense in a quiet, elegant way.
From their amassed tubes to dense string of pods, and on to micro mosaics, Cynthia and her collaborator, Dan Adams, really crowd it in and continue to awe and delight us along the way. If you’ve never visited their website, take a a little trip through some of these beautifully packed spaces.
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I was hoping to find a piece as crowded with random repeated elements as we’ve had the last two days, but without the obvious organic element to see how that affects the design. However, that has been rather hard to find. Once the repetition is applied in random order, any man-made, machined or polished characteristics of the elements start to lose their innate sense of precision and inanimate nature. It would seem that the randomness itself speaks to us of nature. Then I found this piece by Katy Schmitt that is shiny, polished and bright, but the crowded design actually has some order to it. Yet, it still has a subtle, but definite organic nature to it. Why is that?
Well, there are a couple glaring things here. One, the overlapping application is reminiscent of natural things like scales and pine cones. And the colors and circling design of the canes are basically peacock feather eyes. Nature, of course, has it’s own orderly design that we also gravitate to. Repeated, crowded and yet, orderly; however, not perfect as in machined, but perfectly natural.
Orderly and natural combined elements dominant Katy’s work. Enjoy more of her work on her Flickr photostream and her own website.
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There is a bright side to fall colors, at least according to the fashion industry. Deep, dark and rich is not for everyone, even when it’s in season, so designers and fashion magazines put together lighter and brighter palettes as well. Pantone released their Fall color forecast several months ago, but I am not as yet seeing many in our community who are following Pantone’s rather vibrant colors. I had to reach back a way to find this lovely piece by Ronna Sarvas Weltman that displays many of the upcoming forecasted colors; the magenta, reds, lavender and yellows.
There is definitely a feel of fall to this necklace. Although, I don’t think Ronna was thinking of the season when she created it. She was thinking about the various design considerations that would make it a necklace different from all the others.
In her words, “This necklace has a bunch of similar disks at the back portion. Looks a bit boring in a photo, as if I stopped being creative and just put a bunch of disks in to finish it up. But, when it is worn, it works beautifully. I knew designing it that it would look better on than off and maybe wouldn’t even be all that advantageous vis-a-vis marketing. Just thought I’d bring it up as another element in the design process. What a piece looks like on a table surface can be entirely different from the way it behaves around a neck.”
Excellent point. Ideally, necklaces would all be photographed while being worn in order to show how they fall and lay. This would also display which portions of the design are visible and whether they stand out as designed.
Because of Ronna’s organic and often antiqued look, much of her art jewelry would fit in wonderfully all throughout the fall season. For more ideas and other color palettes to ponder, take a look at Ronna’s work on her Facebook page and her website.
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Read More
Maybe you’ve already saw this in our newsletter a couple weeks ago, but many of you probably did not. And it certainly fits the current theme, for what are fans, but dimensional triangles? I know, I’ve been pushing the theme a bit hard this week, but it was fun, wasn’t it? Now it’s time for you to have more fun with the ideas we talked about this weekend. If you need a push, I would highly suggest grabbing a copy of Helen Breil’s new digital book, Fan Fold Designs. Just look at the cool designs you can learn to create just on the cover alone.
As Helen explains, “This design-based book is the result of my exploration of the design possibilities of folding clay. I was inspired by the paper folding and origami arts as well as the fabric arts of silk Shibori scarves and ribbons. The strong design element of the fold lines seem to naturally invoke a bold and dramatic look.” Agreed. I already have my copy, and as busy as I am, I just couldn’t help but stop in the middle of my day when I got it in order to try out a few things. These techniques are easy and fun and have so many possibilities.
And speaking of our newsletter, if you don’t already get it, you can get by signing up on our website on the left hand side of our main page. It comes out just twice a month, but includes news on classes, products, events, and conversations as well as reporting on what’s happening here for The Polymer Arts magazine. Every issue also includes useful tips and lists the most popular blog items seen the last couple weeks with additional insights and words from our readers. Just another way to get your polymer fix!
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Kathryn Doll gives her art jewelry a feel of age and austerity with layered visual texture and classic forms. She uses liquid polymer clay with paint, metal leaf, and glitter to achieve the depth you see here. That slight shimmer and the cool brilliance of the stones brings a quiet elegance to the pendant’s antique look.
Kathryn’s work has shown up on actors in a number of shows as well as being gifted to numerous celebrities. See who wears her work as well as seeing what else she creates on her website and on her blog.
Read MoreNow for something completely different. Both for our theme and for polymer in general. Jasmyne Graybill has been a huge influence and inspirations for me since I first discovered her work some 4 years ago. Her pieces are pretty but not comfortable. Her subject matter is organic but not of a type you see often if ever. She takes old, ordinary objects and turns them into works of art but if you didn’t know it was polymer, you might try to clean it, or more likely run in the other direction. That’s because she takes inspiration from that part of nature that we try to erase, destroy, hide and kill off. But its these forms that in the end, will take over what we try to create.
In this piece, polymer has been shaped and textured into the likeness of some unknown mold which has taken over a pretty floral plate, turning a stacked composition of flowers into a scattered composition of nature taking over a manmade object.
Mold, mildew and fungus do not usually grow in any kind of pattern or regular application. They grow where their spores land, chance being their primary organizer. This chance approach is a valid composition as long as there is a relationship or visual connection among the elements. In this case, they are all the same basic form created in a color palette to match their host object.
I know many of you are probably grimacing at this piece. Yeck. But these less admired inhabitants of the organic world create some wonderful textures and forms. You don’t have to create faux mold, but you might find the textures and the way groups of fungi form, interesting enough to consider recreating what you see only in a context and with an approach that reflects your idea of beauty. Here are four dishes of other fungi possibilities that Jasmyne created. Quite pretty, I think.
If you, too, find Jasmyne’s work rather fascinating, you can see more of her pieces and installations on her website. She does not work solely in polymer, which is another reason I admire her work. She uses the material best suited for what she wants to represent. It just so happens that polymer can emulate so much. Even the icky things.
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We have another example of scatter composition in this necklace from Aniko Kolesnikova. Since we’ve already done this for a couple days, why do you think this composition works? Or do you?
I think it does. The elements, although different colors and irregularly placed, are all the same basic form–impressed and filled with colored clay, or in some cases a little extra bit of cane. The overall surface texture of the pieces are also impressed with hand tools so the overall surface is similar.
Hand tool texturing can be widely varied and works great for the scattered look or when kept in an orderly pattern. (By the way, we have a great article in the most recent issue of The Polymer Arts by Anke Humpert. It explores a variety of marks and various pointed hand tools, and explains how to explore them and other tools on your own–don’t miss out on that!) Aniko does quite a lot with hand tools as you’ll see if you spend some time on her website.
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