Taking Back Control

March 22, 2020

Christi Friesen injects a little humor into a stressed out world with her latest ghoulies for sale. Click the image to learn more.

Life has changed. How have you changed what you do in this new reality? Is it already affecting your art work or are you just escaping into your craft? I do have to apologize if you wanted to read this as an escape from our surreal and alarming reality but it’s hard to just talk about art like nothing else is happening so I decided I’m not going to do that. We can talk about both.

First I need to tell you that I just got the news as I was writing this that one of my girls likely has the virus. She can’t get tested (small town Kansas) but she’s sick and her symptoms are just like what other 20-30 year olds with the virus are reporting. Her doctor has her on quarantine and the usual list of to-dos for the flu. She’s strong and I know in my heart she’ll be fine but she’s got two girls and walks a fragile financial line. She also has a grandmother at high risk that they spend a lot of time with. It’s all so scary but, still, I think we can make things a bit better regardless of the bad news. And we are all likely going to have bad news hitting close to home at some point.

Crafting a Brighter World

I know some people (not you here!) feel that art is the last thing we need to be concerned about in a time of crisis but, actually, art is the thing people first go to when either there is nothing else they can do to mitigate or control their world, or when they are as secure in terms of food and shelter as they imagine they will be for a while. Why is that? I think it’s because we find solace in creativity but not because it helps us escape.

Creating art is kind of like playing god in the sense that we create and control a tiny world of our own in our creations. Not having control in a situation is what causes trauma, depression, and anxiety. When you can assert control somewhere else, that makes you feel a bit more secure, at least in the sense that you have control over something rather than control over nothing which is exactly how many of us feel right now. That is why people turn to art even in the midst of a difficult and life-changing situation. Creativity is a form of control.

You’ve probably recognized that “doing something” when a difficulty or bad news presents itself makes you feel better. It’s that same concept – doing something makes you feel that you have control in a situation that seems beyond your control. So, I’m going to suggest that we “do something” and use our creativity to assert some control while making the world a little brighter in the process.

Below are some ideas to help you control, to some little extent, the world you live in. Even if you are in self isolation, there is so much you can do to cheer up the lives of others and your life in the process. There is nothing quite as uplifting as the joy you get from knowing you have helped make someone’s life just a little bit better.

Here are just a few ideas for using your creativity to make people smile:

  • Create little surprise gifts to leave in your neighbors’ mailboxes.*
  • Make a supply of gifts for people who help you out or that you see or hear of doing something really nice.*
  • Hang beautiful, eye-catching pieces with encouraging notes in your front windows.
  • Offer to teach or demonstrate easy craft projects online for kids or adults stuck at home using Facebook video or Skype.
  • Invite fellow crafters to an online clay play day and just yap and laugh with Skype or Facebook video on so you can share what you’re doing visually.
  • Make cheerful earrings, pendants, or pins and send to nursing homes, or to shut-ins in your area.*
  • Make art cards or send letters with little arty gifts to friends and family who may feel isolated or particularly anxious.*
  • Share and encourage outdoor art ideas to get families to go outside and have fun but not to socialize. Here’s a few ideas to get started:
    • Create designs with sticks, leaves and flower petals in the yard that can be photographed and shared online.
    • Try basket weaving with grasses and reeds
    • Decorate a front walk with sidewalk chalk. (If there’s no sidewalk chalk on hand, it can be made with plaster of Paris, water, and tempura paints or if there’s a spare piece of drywall, strip off the paper and you will at least have white chalk.)
    • Get neighbors to make and hang a specific type of thing in the front window or front yard (such as hearts, signs with cheerful words, a collage of your favorite things, etc.) and families can take their kids out for a “Scavenger hunt” to spy and count up all the pieces people have hung up that day/week. (My neighborhood has been doing this. It’s arranged among us through NextDoor.com.)

*Keep in mind, the medical community believes the virus can still live on plastic and metal for 3 days and on paper and cardboard for at least 24 hours. So, if you create something out of polymer or other plastic or metal mediums let them sit for 3 days before delivering them to others. For anything on paper or cardboard wait 24 hours. (Don’t share fabrics or cotton paper, including money—they suspect the virus can live on cotton for 9 days.) Then when you handle these items, you should either have washed your hands very thoroughly or use gloves to pick them up and deliver them. I know some people feel this is all a bit extreme but considering the gravity of this emergency, these extra steps of caution could save a life.

 

Cash Woes

For some of us the overriding thought is about how to survive this financially. It’s not going to be easy but if you need to get whatever you can, however you can, here are a few ideas that don’t require simply trying to boost your Etsy shop. I’m trying to take into consideration that not all people can pay much if at all but, also, those who can pay will feel better donating right now versus buying. That way it feels helpful for you rather than selfish for them.

  • Set up a raffle for a really cool piece or two of yours. You can use a PayPal button if you have a website or maybe use a raffle service like this one: https://rafflecreator.com/pricing (Haven’t tried this service; just heard about it.) Or if it’s mostly friends and family or another social circle, use Venmo or give a PayPal ID to send to.
  • Sign up to teach art online (this can actually be great money). OutSchool is desperately looking for teachers for kids in all kinds of subjects and you don’t need a teaching credential. Teachaway lists online teaching and tutoring jobs from all over. You can also create and list your own classes online at sites like Teachable and Skillshare.
  • Make and sell inexpensive items that other people can use to do the little gift-giving things listed in the previous list. Let people know about them in your shop, on social media and/or by leaving a note with neighbors, possibly with a little gift/sample. Take only digital payments. No cash (see caution note at the end of previous list).
  • Sell off extra clay and no-longer-used craft supplies particularly to neighboring parents looking to entertain kids stuck at home. Use com, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist.com or the like to advertise what you have and, after getting a digital payment, leave items outside for pick-up if possible.
  • Offer to trade your art for things you need. (Here’s a catchy social media headline: “Will craft for toilet paper!”)
  • Conduct a casual kid’s or adult’s craft hour for friend and neighbors a few times a week online and ask for a modest or “pay what you can” amount, sent digitally.

These ideas that I came up with or dug up from already active things going on in my area is only scratching the surface of possibilities. But collectively, I bet we could come up with a insanely long list of great things we all can do. Shall we try? How about you list just one additional thing in the comments on this blog that people can do to either cheer others up or to help them make a little cash in these difficult times. I and organize list of everything sent if you all help me out there. Then we can circulate that to the community. Just imagine what we could do with a wealth of creative ideas like that!

 

So, this list making is all I can manage for this week. Between the distractions on the news, the many, many phone calls and texts between family and friends, and kicking my homesteading into high gear (other people hoard toilet paper when insecure, I grow food!) it’s been hard getting work done this week.

I do hope all of you are doing well and staying safe. I know this whole situation seems unreal and for some people it sounds like everyone is overreacting. I have to admit that it seemed over blown when we first heard about it coming from overseas but there’s nothing like educating oneself with reliable information to realize just how dire this is. I’m not saying this to scare anyone or increase anxiety but my experience here in California is that a lot of people are still not taking this seriously and we really all have to.

As the meme going around says – During World War II people were asked to go to war. We are being asked to sit on our couches. We can do this! Well, let’s also spend time at the studio table and make this a brighter world. Yes, we can do that too!

Please do take every precaution, help each other out, and let’s ride the storm with a united determination. I know some people may not think that this is the place to have such a conversation as we just had but if my words, reaching the thousands of you that read this every week, make just a few people just a little bit more cautious, perhaps that will save a life. Isn’t it so wonderful that the things we create have the potential to change somebody’s world or even save them? It is truly a bright spot in the world we have right now.

 

Notes from Home

So yes, I am worrying about my daughter but I am also worried about all of you and my longtime friend and brother-in-law with stage 4 cancer, my darling mother-in-law who lost part of a lung to cancer last year, close friends with chronic lung disease and diabetes, and my 85-year-old mother in a nursing home 1100 miles away from me. My story is not unlike your story, I know. My worries are not unlike your worries. Just take back control where you can. There are a lot more ways to do so than you might think.

Besides making art, you can also grow some of your own food. Look up how to sprout and make microgreens at home. It’s pretty fun and all you need are some dried beans or lentils, things you may already have. If you can’t find yeast at the store to make fresh bread so you don’t have to run out and buy it, you can make a sourdough starter with just water and flour and yeast from the air. Plan for future food by buying seeds online and sprout them in egg cartons or shallow bins so you can plant them outside when it warms up (or cools down if you’re down under). Dust off the sewing machine and make new clothes from old clothes. Or make masks if you have spare, tightly woven fabrics, for the national mask making call if here in the US. (I dug out some duck cloth and am getting to work myself. Just need to find more elastic!) Or at least give blood. They are in desperate need here in the US and elsewhere. I have an appointment this coming week myself.

But mostly, do whatever makes you feel less anxious and keeps you safe at the same time. We have got this!

Don’t forget to share your ideas. Go to the bottom of this post online. I just know you have something great to share!

 

 

 

A Voice Inside (Big Sale Inside too!)

How often have you heard that you need to hone your artistic voice? It’s a bit of a catch phrase in the art world, a nebulous goal that sounds like it will herald your arrival into the art world as a “real artist”. Well, although I am one of those who talks about artistic voice a lot, I thought I’d put the record straight and just say … you don’t need to develop a unique artistic voice to create meaningful work.

It’s true. The need to develop a creative voice isn’t for everyone as it rather depends on why you create. Some people simply enjoy the process of creating or have an intense passion to acquire new and better skills. If that’s you, then fabulous! Go at it and don’t worry about a unique voice. Just create what you like but don’t copy (or don’t sell or teach those pieces if you do.) Do hone your skills so the work goes more smoothly and so you can enjoy your creative time that much more.

If however, you are one of those who have something to say or some­thing they need to pull from inside themselves and put out into the world, then having a particular voice, versus just muddling around with the styles and inspiration of artists you admire, is rather important. Your particular voice is a pathway to self-expression and sharing your vision with the world. Even so, I don’t think you should put undue pressure on yourself to find that voice. I know… I sound rather contradictory, but the fact is, if you put in the work, learn the skills, follow your true passions, and work with a particular intention always in mind, your voice will come out of its own accord.

I don’t know why people go on about the need to be unique so much. We all are unique already! There is no one else in the world quite like you so there is no rea­son to try to be, or create, something that will make you more unique than you already are. If anything, we need to lose those crippling preconceptions of ourselves and how we need to be or act in order to find a more authentic sense of self. (That would be a discussion for another time, though!)

So, keep in mind, a discussion of creating a unique voice has nothing to do with becoming a unique person. Rather, it is about determining what, if any, mode of expression you want to explore in order to share your­self, your passion, and your vision with the world.

Voices Calling

Who do you know of that seems to create with that kind of authentic voice? Think on that for a second. Then ask, why does their work come across as unique and personal or as a passionate mode of self-expression?

Asking myself those questions, I just have dozens and dozens of artists that come to mind and probably as many reasons why. I really believe that polymer clay draws some very unique people due to its broad range of possibilities which leaves so much room for expression as well as room to reach into the realm of other materials and approaches.

For instance, is there anyone else that you’ve seen that does the range of work that Wendy Wallin Malinow does? It’s really different, a bit macabre (or sometimes more than a bit), and utterly fascinating. What I personally really love about her work is that she creates in absolutely whatever medium fits her purpose. Polymer clay is one she returns to time and again, but really, no material is off limits to Wendy.

Here is a collection of nests of by Wendy that I got a photo of at the Racine Museum in 2017. The upper left one is cut from copper, the one on the right (if memory serves me well) is created from polymer and paint, and the third is a detailed pencil drawing. Wendy seems to explore ideas and materials simultaneously, but lets the project determine the possible material, not the other way around. That distinction can be so necessary when feeding your own voice as, ideally, you don’t want to restrict your options simply because you identify with one material more than others.

 

Wiwat Kamolpornwijit also comes to mind as a really authentic voice, primarily because his artwork developed out of pure exploration while learning the material for a purely charitable reason. He had not set out to be a jewelry artist but was merely looking for a way to raise money for a cause he deeply believed in. But then the need to raise money continued and so the creating never stopped. His distinctive look came out of a natural progression in his process as he picked up skills and developed ideas out of a self-imposed necessity. As I understand it, he never aimed to create a distinctive voice, it just manifested itself from all the work he put into his craft and from letting his curiosity lead his designs. The result is that his award winning work is always easily recognizable. Below is a collection of his pieces from the Smithsonian Craft show in 2018.

 

Meredith Dittmar is another artist that is definitely on her own path. She too moves between materials, largely polymer and paper, in order to fulfill the needs of her projects and vision. It’s interesting to see though how polymer is sometimes treated like paper in a very flat manner, while other times, paper is rolled and folded to become more dimensional. The piece opening this post is listed as mixed media although I think it is primarily polymer. You can see how some pieces of it could be (and may be) paper. And below, she had to be working with some construction materials as well as paper and polymer, for this huge installation piece at the KAABOO Del Mar 2018 festival in southern California.

 

These are just a few of the people that have intrigued me over the years with their unique expression and sense of authenticity. By the way, the reason I can make rather certain statements about these artists is because they were all interviewed for articles in The Polymer Arts at some point. You can read more about Wiwat’s intriguing path to art in the Spring 2017 issue, about Wendy’s color approach in the Winter 2013 issue, and get a peek at Meredith’s process and studio in the Summer 2018 issue of The Polymer Arts.

 

Coaxing Your Authentic Voice

Okay, so I have an idea to help you bring out your authentic voice but it’s going to sound like a sales pitch because, well, it is although that’s not my primary motive. I want to help people find a place of joy, solace, and accomplishment in their personal creative endeavors. That’s my passion! My publications and projects happen to both help you in your creative pursuits and helps me pay few bills so I can keep doing this.

But let’s talk about you now. If the subject of your artistic voice and identifying your passions or the direction of your artwork is important to you, then you really should join us for the March Virtual Art Box. The VAB is not just another publication–it’s a community and virtual classroom with group creativity coaching that focuses on design education and exploration to help you cultivate the creativity and skills that lead to joy and fulfillment in your creative endeavors. The content applies to all professional and aspiring artists who, like the artists above, want to follow an authentic and fulfilling creative path.

So, come join your kindred spirits (from novices to some really well known and accomplished artists) already enthusiastically digging into their Boxes by snapping up the March box, or both boxes for February and March, available without a subscription if you just want to get a taste. Or jump in feet first while getting significant savings on recurring subscriptions. It’s a minor investment in your art and your creative self – less than a couple cups of coffee and it’ll warm you from the inside for longer, too!

As it does look like most of us will be spending a lot of time at home these next few weeks, it seems like a perfect time to put your spare energy into your creative endeavors. If you join VAB, you will also have access to a deep store-wide discount on all publications on the Tenth Muse website (much bigger than the one below even) and on Christi Friesen PDF tutorials as well!

But if you just want good old magazines and books, well, I want to help you out too. So, here …

“Make Your Own Package” Sale: 25% off $29 or more!

The discount is good on whatever collection of single publications, print or digital, that you put together in your cart when they total $29 or more.

Use coupon code: MYOP2529

Offer good through March 31, 2020. Discount doesn’t apply to sale items, packages, or the Virtual Art Box.

 

Okay, my dears, I am off to clean the studio so, hopefully, I can get some creative time in this week. I hope everyone is staying safe, staying sane, and keeping in touch with loved ones, especially those that can’t get visitors or go out during this crazy period. This too will pass. We got this!

A Whale of a Time

March 8, 2020

Is it me or are there a lot of ocean creatures just popping up in artwork all over the place? Maybe it’s an algorithm thing in my browser so it’s just me seeing them but whales in particular seem to be quite popular of late. What is it about whales that grabs the imagination? If you created a whale inspired piece, what would it look like?

I’ve always wanted to write an article about how people interpret the same things so differently but it’s really such a nebulous concept. Our interpretation of any one thing comes from all those experiences we’ve had over the years, or at least should. The subject of where our passion and our artistic voice comes from is the primary theme woven through this month’s Virtual Art Box, so I guess that’s on my mind. So, let’s just have an enjoyable, light-hearted excursion this week into the inspiring world of whales and see what you can glean about the artists and their experience by looking at the differences and choices they have made in their art.

 

Whale Sightings

My whale sightings started with this under side view of a whale and her baby by Christi Friesen. The underside of things in general don’t get a lot of attention but Christi picked the exact view and pose to really show off a connection between mother and child. Knowing Christi is recuperating from a year of near full-time travel in Hawaii, I get why she had whales on her mind but what made her think to view them as if under them in the water? It’s a fascinating view – both of the whales and of Christi’s mind.

 

Kseniia Dolhopolova, a jewelry artist from Ukraine says, “I create jewelry only in a good mood and try to make it with its own soul.” She created the whale opening this post. It not only has its own soul but a whole city on its back besides! Playfulness and joy seem to be of primary importance in the intention of her work here. But how do you think she came to think a city should be on the back of a whale?

 

Evgeny Hontor, a sculptural artist from Moscow, uses the broad surfaces of her creatures to create ornate designs and patterns. This whale, however, is the only one of hers I’ve seen that is also growing a lively garden on it’s back. So, what is with things sprouting from the back of whales? Is it born from the barnacles seen on some or just that they are so big that it’s not a leap to imagine a whole other world on their back?

 

Looking around for more interesting interpretations of whales, I came across Maori legends about whales. From the New Zealand Department of Conservation:

“In Maori cosmology, whales are the descendants of Tangaroa, the god of the oceans. They were thought of in awe, as supernatural beings, and often deemed tapu, or sacred. Whales appear in the migration legends of many tribes. In some, whales were a sign indicating to a tribe that it should settle in a particular place. In others, whales were a guide.”

So, the inspiration of something like this mother of pearl came from deep seated associations. The maker of this isn’t named but it comes from an online shopped simply called Janet’s that sells the work of Samoan and Pacific artists and designers. The swirl is a circle of life symbol integrated into the whale tail, creating an abstracted image of the whale and its ingrained cultural meaning. I just thought it was a lovely and simple design but, reading a bit about the culture and meaning around it and made it far more complex in my mind.

 

I love that art can be such an intimate glimpse into the world of an individual, but I think sometimes we forget to look that deep, inundated with all the work we see online and other places every day. Just stopping to think on it can really add to your enjoyment and give you more ideas and inspiration on how to reach in and bring out the originality that is you, into your work.

 

Having a Whale of a Virtual Time

Letting your unique self out and into your work as well as the wonderful and intense world of marks, an unassuming but immensely important design basic, are the subjects that guides all the content in the Virtual Art Box for March released yesterday. If you are signed up for it but haven’t seen your Art Box in your inbox, check your spam folder. If it’s not there, write me and I’ll get you fixed up.

If you haven’t joined us yet for VAB, get on board! We had one very intense and immensely productive month already and we have another one geared for this month. I must warn you, the VAB is not a passive mode of entertainment or something to just pass the time with. It’s all about getting in the studio and getting things done, learning about yourself as a crafter or artist, and discovering your source of creativity.

I have had more emails and messages in one month about people having the biggest “a-ha moments” they have had in months, if not years, than I have in the last several years put together, and it’s all from working with the Virtual Art Box content. I’m even a bit shocked at how much the simple idea of intention has changed the way so many of the VAB readers are looking at their work and how excited they are to discover the focus and direction they’ve been missing. I am thrilled beyond words!

So, if you want to check the VAB out, I’d suggest grabbing the February edition first. Intention is really a foundational concept and understanding it and working with it the way the Art Box will have you do, can be, well, as a couple Art Boxers said, life changing. How cool is that?!

 

Well, it’s been a long week, as satisfying and fun as it was creating the core of the second Virtual Art Box month, so I am going to take a day off and spend it outside and maybe cleaning the studio in preparation for my own creative time. My blood sugar has been normal for a straight week and my arm has given me next to no pain even after a full week of work so it looks like I can pull the intense focus on I had on my health and put some of it into my art. And some of it into taxes. And some into housework. But you know, I intend to make it happen and I’ll share my forays in the studio with you here!

I hope you have wonderful forays into your own studio with your own wonderful interpretations of your world this week!

 

 

 

A Bit Abstracted

Have you ever thought about how often polymer work is abstract? Many polymer artists who work in jewelry, wall art, and functional art do not work with recognizable imagery. Quite often polymer artists express themselves with little more than color, lines, forms, and textures. Technically, much of polymer art is decorative art due to so much of polymer craft being created in functional forms (decorative art being defined as functional as well as beautiful), but is there that great a difference between the intuitive arrangement of elements to create mood, impressions, and symbolic meaning in a piece of jewelry and that used in a painting on canvas? Well, no, there’s not, except in how we categorize it.

Unfortunately, that separate categorization, in my view, performs two disservices—it allows for a perceived difference in value (where art that is not functional, created just for art’s sake, is deemed more valuable) and creates a mystique around non-functional abstract art that makes us think we need to “understand” it, while nearly the same thing on a pendant can simply be admired. I find that sad. Why can’t just any piece of art be simply admired without looking for deeper meaning? Let’s look at just a few pieces that you can recognize as similar to familiar polymer work but is not, and use it as a back door to appreciating the inspiration that non-functional art can be for us “decorative” artists.

Abstracted Double-Takes

Take a look at the beautiful mixed media painting by Carol Nelson that opens this post. Can’t you see it as a lovely polymer pendant? Carol’s painting is cracked and textured and layered with metal foil. Is that not a familiar combination in polymer too? I think of the wonderfully crackled and painterly effects of Debbie Crothers’ work like this pendant below when rummaging through Carol’s portfolio.

If you are familiar with the polymer and metal jewelry of Susan Dyer, then this next painting might immediately bring to mind some of Susan’s well-known designs, of which there is one example below. The painting is Squares with Concentric Circles by Vassily Kandinsky.

These two pieces are so similar, you might think the jewelry was a direct translation of the painting but I would guess the designs came either quite independently or wholly unconsciously from the painting.

Much of polymer surface design is about abstract expression. We just immerse ourselves in the color, texture, marks, and mix of materials until we’ve manipulated it into a place that speaks to us. I know that is how I worked on abstract paintings when I had my short stint with those. I imagine that is not too different from what Christine Krainock was about when she created her painting Drifting Away, that you see below.

Now, doesn’t that remind you a bit of some lovely mokume created with translucent polymer and metal leaf, such as in this bracelet by Tatiana Parshikova? It’s a different material but has a similar feel, doesn’t it?  That painting would make a lovely bracelet if the painter was so inclined to make her work decorative art.

So, why isn’t our jewelry highly revered abstract works of art? In some arenas it is in its own way but being functional or wearable will likely always be separate from what is often referred to as “fine art”. It really doesn’t matter though. What does matter is that what we often do in polymer can be derived from much larger work hung on walls in museums and galleries. Also, if you’ve been stumped by abstract art but can appreciate the wide breadth of polymer art, you can apply your appreciation of the decorative to an appreciation of abstract paintings–the colors, textures, lines, etc. are used in a similar manner and often with similar goals.

So if you have time this week, maybe you can go to a museum or traipse through some galleries and try to imagine the pieces you see translated into polymer. You might find some amazing inspiration and ideas in work you just hadn’t considered in that way before.

VAB-ulous March

The next Virtual Art Box will be released at the end of the coming week and here’s a peek at the digital cover. Not only will we be exploring our passions, finding one’s unique artistic voice and, the wide world of mark making, I have a couple amazing discount offers for members as well. March is going to be a great month! Come join us if you haven’t already.

Shimmer and Shine

Also, if you haven’t seen the newsletter, I am presently taking submission ideas for tutorials for the next book, Shimmer & Shine Polymer Art Projects. You can get more details by going to this online version of the newsletter if you are interested in pitching an idea.

My apologies for any distracting typos this post. I’ve been a bit exhausted and my dyslexia, usually quite mild, is playing havoc with my proofreading skills. So, I’m off to just relax for a bit before I take up the reins on a busy first week of the month.

Have a beautiful first week of March!

Taking You Sideways

February 23, 2020

How often do you sit down at the studio table to create something and think, what am I going to do with the edges of my design? It’s unlikely to be the first thing you think of but does it come into play at all? This is something we have been exploring in the Virtual Art Box this month. We started with work on texturing edges for variation but this week, I thought we talk about the sides of edges!

As you know, we work in a 3-dimensional material and, therefore, even a flat pendant has not just a front and back, but sides and a top and bottom. Do you consider and treat those with anything like the consideration given to the front? Well, if you haven’t done that often to date, let’s make it a thing from now on!

Whether it’s a flat pendant, a bangle bracelet, the lip of a vase, or the base of a sculpture, those edges on your three-dimensional objects should be planned out just like every other surface. If it’s going to be seen, it should be well considered.

Side Effects

So, here’s an artist who obviously considers the side view (and the back and the top and the bottom) in every piece she creates. Sarah Shriver, known for her canes, doesn’t hesitate to add pattern and additional embellishments to all surfaces of her beads. The thick cut of the patterned layers on the back and snakes that work like frames in the front, bring the patterns into the side view, making the sides an integral part of her beads rather than an afterthought.

Sarah even treats rounded edges, such as lentil beads, with additional embellishment. See the twisted snake that encompasses her lentil beads in this post’s opening image? It not only adds pattern and energy to the piece, making them key components of the design, but they seal off the two halves of the lentil with no finishing of a seam to contend with.

Donna Kato is doing something similar to layering in these bangles below. There are several layers and patterns just on the side edge, but with the dome of the bangle surface curving into the side, it all becomes a unified design. Even if you don’t make bangles this thick and domed, you can certainly treat the edge with layers and patterns of this kind.

And what about thick slabs of mokume or canes? These would create a pattern for the back as well as the sides and can be used either as a base upon which to build the front view or it could be covered by a thin, solid sheet of clay and just be the pattern for the back and sides. I couldn’t find any photos of someone doing this in polymer although I’ve seen it. However, looking at examples in other materials can show you how good such an option can look.

This is mokume in metal, the original material for mokume gane, designed by an Australian company, Soklich & Co. Just look at how beautifully the layered pattern decorates the side. It would not be hard to imagine getting a similarly patterned side from thick slices of mokume off a stack whose layers were not rolled overly thin.

Of course, solid, straight cut, rounded, wrapped, or otherwise well finished edges may do just fine. It all depends on what the piece is about, what your intention is for it. Just consider that you have so very many options beyond solid colors for your edge’s sides.

If you want to dive in deeper with my wonderful group of Art Boxers, there is still time to get this month’s bundle and get a subscription for next month. Get it all right here!

 

Taking Off

I’m taking the weekend off to spend it with one of my amazing and beautiful children who is out visiting me. Our intention this weekend – to just relax and live in the moment. A coastal drive, tidepools, rock shops, gluten free bakeries, and yoga with baby goats in pajamas (the baby goats are PJs, not us … oh the cuteness!) are on the list to fill our few short days. So, if you reach out this weekend and I don’t answer, I’ll get you on Monday! I hope you have a beautiful week!

Giving Voice to Vision

Alev Gozonar, Herd Psychology I, 2019

Do you consider yourself one of those people who like to talk about their art, or do you want never to talk about it, like it might lose some of it’s magic if you try to explain it?

I think a lot of artists feel a little of both. We love what we do so much that we want to share it with anyone who has the slightest interest, but at the same time, we don’t want to over analyze it for fear of diminishing the personal and often mysterious process that is the creation of art work.

You don’t have to be over analytical about your art in order to verbalize what you do but you should consider how putting your thoughts about your process and what drives you to create into writing can help both yourself and those who view your work.

Let’s look at a few artists and their words to see how authentic and intelligent discussions of one’s work can illuminate and grow our appreciation for the art and its creator.

 

From the Mouth of Artists

For some artists, their intention is wound up intensely in the stories they would like to tell. Christine Damm is an artist who believes so strongly in the power of storytelling, that she named her business “Stories They Tell”. In her own words:

Stories They Tell is the name I call my company, because I am a storyteller. For me, life is a process, a journey, a transformation, an unfolding. And as our lives tell a story, so does our art. We – and it– are shaped by what we’ve done, who we’ve met, what we’ve learned, what we’ve struggled with or succeeded at. Life is an intersection with other souls, other lives, other ways of seeing, other ways of living. Art expresses that in a wonderful and ever-changing, topsy-turvy marvel of creation and discovery.

This paragraph from her website is an honest expression of how she sees the world and how that viewpoint lives with her and her day to day creative work. You can tell that it is a heartfelt view and description of herself, right? She’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but she is saying it in her own words, and it gives us an understanding of what is important to her and what drives her creative process.

 

Alev Gozonar is a very conceptual artist. She clings to, and explores, words, stories, and specific ideologies as she creates. In the piece below I found on Instagram, she tags her images with just a handful of descriptors, primarily #concrete and #brutalism, referring to an architectural style in the mid-20th century that was characterized by monolithic, blocky, concrete elements. She contrasts the concrete shapes with delicate floral petals in this piece, but in other pieces in this line, the polymer petals are spattered or covered in concrete rather than just existing alongside the harsh building material, so there’s both an interesting juxtaposition and an immersion of the delicate in the hard and harsh. (You can find those other pieces on her Instagram page.) Now read how she sees her work. Her statements about reveal even more layers to her approach. In her words:

The dominant theme in my works is the composition of a whole via the repetition of parts.  This can be seen as an extension of my textiles education and has become a cornerstone of my identity as an artist. If I make an attempt to describe the general framework of my artwork, I would say that the most important starting points for me are the emotional losses and gains I have experienced in various phases of my life, my observations about life, my personal experiences and the way all of these things reflect on daily life, behavior and emotional states. 

Now what do you think when you look at this piece, or at the piece that opens this blog? Does it change how you see them?

 

Debra Adelson is a jewelry artist working in a “centuries old Bohemian cold work glass technique. Cold working does not use heat but, rather, water to keep the glass cool while manipulating it using abrasives such as sandblasting, grinding, drilling, and cutting.”

Look at her pieces below. If you did not know what her process was, you might take but a very quick glance at her work but you would not have had a lot to ponder. However, you now know something of her process and so probably have an increased appreciation and so, you’ll linger longer to identify how her process forms the work.


She has a very specific design process as well and often photographs her work to show the original inspiration which further informs us about the piece. For instance, it will be hard to look at the amber colored brooch and not see the water worn slot canyon walls, now that we have seen the photograph – the image is forever connected in our minds to that brooch, even if we see it without the image.

So, yes, images can help but, still, Debra gives us further insight into her process and thoughts with this selection of words from her online bio:

I am inspired by the natural world and our relationship to it. My pieces pay homage to changing forces that shape our landscape—both natural and manmade. I seek to create harmony in my work and find balance between our need to shape our environment while preserving and respecting the natural world. Each series begins with a distinct inspiration or concept. I base the initial piece on an image, a moment in nature and experiment to come up with my ‘visual language’ that tells a story for the series.

Her work is really amazing so do stop and click through to look at the colorful and very interestingly carved glass “gems” on her Instagram page or website.

 

Obviously, this is just a small taste of what people post to talk about their art. I might suggest that, as you zip around online and run into various artists that you admire or work that inspires you, go to their websites and read the ‘About’ page or their artist statements. The more of these you read and the more aware you become of how statements inform the artwork, the easier it will be for you to form a statement, a bio, or other text about you and your work that is authentic and truly brings across what it is you would like people to see in what you do.

 

Me and My Projects

I can’t tell you how energized and excited I am these days! For one, the Virtual Art Box which was released a bit over a week ago, has been so enthusiastically received (for which I am so relieved as I wondered how people would like it) and, secondly, because I’m getting to write tons about the things I am most passionate about! I get up in the morning and write like a mad woman. It just comes pouring out. I have to actually stop myself so I can make room for some guest artists and writers. When was the last time you were so excited about something that you could hardly think of anything else? It’s a great feeling!

It truly helps my enthusiasm to have such glowing comments sent to me (“This changed my life, already!”, “This was just what I needed. I thought I was burned out on creating but that wasn’t it …”, “I feel like I’m taking a college course!”) but I was a bit overwhelmed and emotional at moments. I am trying, in everything I do with my publications and projects, to affect other people’s lives in a positive and nurturing way but, unlike when teaching in person, in this business, you don’t get a clear idea of what people are doing with what they learn. But with the Creative Pursuits (a challenge and form in the Virtual Art Box that lets readers connect with me on their focus and goals) and the social media pages, not to mention the kind emails and messages I’ve been getting, I’m hearing exactly what your fellow polymer enthusiasts are up to and what they want. It’s fascinating and creates such energy for me and, I think, it will do so for the active VAB members. It’s so exciting!

If you aren’t getting the VAB, you can join in today by buying the one month February box, no subscription required, and then you can  check out what we are doing. You can get a subscription right now too although that won’t start you until March. Whatever you do, I just hope you have a chance to get in on this energy.

 

 

Lindly Needs a Little Love

If you have not already heard, one of our very dear community leaders and pioneers, Lindly Haunani, had a horrific accident a bit over a week ago. She has multiple broken bones, including bones in her dominant hand, and although she is sure to recover, it is going to be a very long and difficult road. Of course, this community jumped in to help her out in a huge way, but she will need your continued love and support for quite a while.

Take a look at her Go Fund Me page and send Lindly a little love this Valentine’s weekend if you can.

Additional fundraising avenues are being worked on as well. I will keep you updated on those and her well-being as I get news.

 

Shimmer and Shine … and Get Published.
Deadline for submission of ideas is March 15th

Scheduling this for Fall 2020, the Polymer Arts Projects – Shimmer and Shine book will, like the PAP – Organic’s book, feature numerous in-depth tutorials by some of our community’s most accomplished artists.

If you feel you are one of these folks that have something fantastic to offer readers for this theme, I am now open for submission ideas. Here are the basic guidelines:

  • As the theme is Shimmer and Shine, the project should be shiny, glitzy, sparkly, or blingy but also artistic, well-designed, and skillfully conceived.
  • The tutorial should work for readers in the experienced novice to moderately advanced range. This will not be for absolute beginners.
  • The tools and materials, or workable alternatives, should be obtainable by the majority of our worldwide readership.
  • The project should have a specific technique or look that can be reproduced in different forms and styles with examples of possible variations shown.
  • Artists submitting should be experienced at photographing their process and writing detailed tutorials.

This special publication offers payment and profit sharing for our contributing artists. Keep an eye on these newsletters for your submission opportunity next month. Check out the Polymer Arts Projects – Organics  book for further examples of the kind of tutorials we will be looking for.

At this time submit just the summary of your idea–just a few sentences–and links or small attachments to images of the technique and/or pieces of the kind your proposed tutorial would include. Send them to sage(a)tenthmusearts.com. My response will be sent after the March 15th deadline.

I look forward to your ideas!

Well, my dear readers, I do hope you’ve had a loving weekend. I’m off to spend the rest of it with my sun and stars. I hope you have an exciting and creative week!

The Purpose of Intention

February 9, 2020

How often, when you sit down to create something, do you think about why you’re doing it, the story behind what you are creating, or even just the theme or look? Apparently, it’s not overly common, at least not amongst the readers writing me this weekend.

Friday evening, I finally got the Virtual Art Box out after some technical difficulties that required a change of plans on the backend. I was a bit frazzled over reworking the technical stuff and, even though I was happy with the content I’d created, I was getting a bit nervous about how this new project would be received. But, as I wrote in the immersive design article for the Virtual Art Box project, things generally work out well when you have a particular idea in mind and you make all your decisions based on that overriding intention.

Well, my intention for the Virtual Art Box was to immerse the readers in a particular design idea that can be explored throughout the month. I was hoping that the primary design article, supported by the additional content the readers would journey through, would encourage them to really delve into the idea I presented in a purposeful and substantial way. But the question was, would they?

I thought it might be a bit of a challenge this first month since my chosen theme is conceptual rather than being a more concrete design element. But it’s just such an important concept in art. The immersive design theme this month is “Intention”. It’s simply the idea that when you sit down to create something, you can be more successful and have a more fulfilling creative experience if you have an overriding idea of what you are creating in terms of its purpose and its concept, concept being the theme, story, style or whatnot.

Well, I think my own intention to keep my focus on making the Virtual Art Box an immersive learning experience is working. Already. (Yay!) I have to say that I am a bit startled and overwhelmed by the reception of the project so far. In a community where publications, both in print and online, are dominated by project tutorials and things that are “easy and fun” (not that there’s anything wrong with fun at all!), my approach feels rather serious even though, as many of you may have seen, I do try to stay conversational and lighthearted and occasionally I just get silly. Art should be fun, and enjoyable, and fulfilling. But making good art in a truly fulfilling creative life does take work. I don’t know why I was worried that people wouldn’t want to put the work in. You, my readers, have always been pretty gung ho!

I already have a few Creative Pursuit challenge forms in (this is the part of the Box in which you create a self-challenge, and the form shares it with me and with you, and I help track it and keep you motivated.) It turns out, people look to be quick intrigued by the idea of working with intention. I love that I’m not the only art nerd who gets into things like that!

The thing is, I think  intention is the core of all design. Without it, no matter how well you understand the various aspects of design, construction, workmanship, etc., it is difficult to create a successful design. Every piece of art needs a base, a core, a grounding concept from which the artist can build, otherwise the work risks being chaotic. It’s true that a chaotic design could work but only if it is the artist’s intention to create chaos. Then it has purpose. But chaos without intent is not art; it is just messy.

Intention not only gets you where you want to go but it helps guide your design choices along the way. When you make design choices based on what works for your overriding intention, the result will be a cohesive, purposeful, and, most likely, well-designed piece.

Now, I know, some of you are already thinking that you don’t want to think so deliberately about what you’re creating or that you just like to explore. Exploration, creating for the joy of it, and stream of consciousness creating are still processes with a particular intention. Because isn’t the success of a piece really measured against how well it fulfills your intention?

Let’s look at a few of the examples.

Debbie Crothers prefers to explore and make lots of pieces as she exhausts a technique or material’s possibilities. She doesn’t usually work with a finished piece in mind but, with extensive exploration as her intention, she finds success in much of what she does and ends up with undeniably stunning beads.

 

Joseph Barbaccia specializes in inspired polymer illustrations of people and things he admires and enjoys so his intention is to visually represent objects, places, and beings from his view point such as this great portrait of David Lynch.

 

In Melanie Muir’s Summer Seas in White cuff, you can see that from the colors to the patterns, even to how the patterns are tilted on the tilted square of the beads, this piece speaks of bright light on rippling ocean waters. Her intention is clear and all her design choices align with the intended look.

 

Are you starting to get the picture? If so, think about what your intention means to you and what you intention is next time you sit down to the studio table. And if this concept really intrigues you, even if you don’t want to subscribe, you can buy the Virtual Art Box for just the one month, get all the details and ideas I am offering on how to make intention a new and exciting tool for your creative work, and see how you like the Box.

Now, if you signed up for the Virtual Art Box and didn’t see your access email, check your spam folders. It went out Friday evening (PST). If you purchased it online (rather than had your prior magazine subscription balance transferred to the Virtual Art Box), you should find the PDF package download in your account on the website. If you expected it and can’t find it in either place, write me and we’ll get you fixed up.

 

And with that, I am off to relax a bit. Its been a bit of a marathon getting the new project off the ground but now that is has taken wing, it’s time to attend to me a bit and I am going to make that include some further intention … the intention to make studio time a priority at least a couple days a week. How do you ensure you get the creative time in that you need? Maybe we’ll look at that subject a bit this week as well.

In the meantime, have an intentionally, purposefully, and mindfully creative week!

Love Not Failure

February 2, 2020

Scarlette, a small but fierce fighter, shows off her Beads of Courage. This image fronts the short article on the Beads of Courage Project on the new site. Polymer Clay Love.

What do you do when you have failed at a project, deadline, or goal? I think your actions at such times say everything about who you are and what you are capable of. I keep that thought in mind whenever I crash and burn or miss the boat or come up short–basically, whenever I disappoint myself or others. Because, the most important thing at that moment, when I realize I’ve failed, is my next step, not the failure itself.

Whatever you didn’t do or whatever you didn’t accomplish has immediately become a thing of the past. Sure, we stop to kick ourselves and second-guess what we could of done better, but if that goes on for longer than a couple emotional venting minutes, it’s a waste of time, isn’t it?

So, today, I failed … temporarily. Today should have been the first release of the Virtual Art Box. I was so excited about it. I haven’t produced anything in six months and here I was making something that I feel very passionate about and its coming together great! However, a few things went haywire along the way, particularly this past week and, with my business turned into an unintentional solo project of late, I have discovered that I am not a superwoman enough to do it all under short deadlines and cannot get out the Virtual Art Box today as promised. I need a few more days. *sigh* I hate not living up to promises.

It also got in the way of getting a blog done for today. Double *sigh*!

So what am I gonna do now that I double failed today? I’m going to stop sighing, forgive myself, plan for a decompression meeting with me, myself and I once the Box is out so I can figure out how to keep this from happening again, and I’m going to get back to work. Let’s call this a bump in the road. Just like when the piece you’re working on just doesn’t come together or you burn a batch of long worked pieces. It’s just a bit of set back. You didn’t fail as an artist, not unless you give up.

So, I sat down at midnight and wrote this blog. There. I’ve managed to recover one thing. Now I have a post for you and I’m feeling a bit more accomplished already! Also, I’m going to change this conversation from one about failure to one about love. Polymer Clay Love that is.

See, while I work on fixing things over here, I can direct you all to visit a new site and project by huge polymer community supporter, Ginger Davis Allman. As of yesterday, she opened up a new website and a very different project called Polymer Clay Love.

Ginger Davis Allman, produces the content on The Blue Bottle Tree which is a polymer clay information website.  She writes, “I started Polymer Clay Love because I felt the world needed a centralized resource to bring together people all around the world to share and celebrate the love of polymer clay. I want to share about and bring recognition to makers and creators who are working diligently (and often alone) to make beautiful art, develop their craft, and create connections around this amazing medium … I’m joined by leaders and creators who share their thoughts, their stories, and their art with you here on the pages of this website. It’s my vision for Polymer Clay Love that we can bring positivity, cooperativity, and growth to all who work with this intriguing medium.”

Intriguing is the word, for our medium, of course, and for this new project of Ginger’s. Head over to the website to see what it’s all about and sign up for the site’s summary emails.

For those waiting on the Virtual Art Box, it really will only be a matter of a few days before I get the content out. I truly appreciate your patience and understanding!

If you haven’t signed up for the Virtual Art Box, I’ve kept the early Loyalty Forever discount going so you still have time to get in on those deals.

And if you want to share some love and get yourself some new goodies, check out my partner advertisers, those businesses that help me pay the blog’s bills. For instance, Helen is presently offering her latest video class, “In the Loop Pendants“, for only $13.50, just for you, my dear readers. Advertiser links are at the top and ads are at the bottom if you get this by email, or off to the right if you’re reading this online.

Okay, I’m going to go get some sleep and greet tomorrow with a smile and determination. I do hope you all have a beautiful and love filled week!

Changing Forms

Table by Alice Stroppel – www.polymerclayetc.com

So, have my suggestions thus far this month triggered any new ideas for fresh and exploratory directions in the studio? Well, if it hasn’t yet maybe it will this week. Even if this month’s ideas did have you looking into some previously uncharted territories, my theme today can work in conjunction with new materials, big new projects, and collaborations as well.

But first, at quick note … have you signed up for the new Virtual Art Box coming out next weekend? I do hope you plan to join us if you haven’t already. Not only will you get great material to keep you inspired and keep that creative wheel in your head turning all month long, I have a couple specials just for my art boxers including a freebie and deep discounts. 

I’ll be drumming up such specials from polymer and mixed media craft resources every month, most will be worth much more than you are paying for the art box itself. Plus, for just another week, you can get in on a forever lifetime discount, just because you jumped in both feet first with me on this new adventure!

Ok, back to pushing ourselves, or at least thinking about it, this month.

I was thinking that a really stimulating challenge would be to work in a form that you have not worked in before. You know, like if you normally do jewelry, try decorative arts or sculpture. If you do wall art try your hand at jewelry. But knowing most of you, you’ve probably dabbled in a quite a few different forms. So, I think we need to look at some unusual territories within various art forms you’ve already tried.

For instance, if you work in jewelry or other adornment, consider what types you haven’t tried creating. Hair adornments, perhaps? Ankle bracelets? Gauge earrings instead of pierced? Tiaras perhaps? How about lapel pins, cufflinks, tie bars, or bolo ties? Or just men adornment in general?

If you create or cover a lot of home decor, move beyond the vases and switch plates and look around for other hapless home victims like ceiling fixture pulls, trashcan lids, lampstands, or the finials on the ends of drapery rods. Really, nothing should be safe from your decorative touches.

I could probably make an insanely long list of oddball things that could either be made with their covered with polymer, but let’s just look at what a few people have done with some less than common forms and see if these pieces can’t push your ideas about what you can do with polymer clay.

Strange Polymer in a Strange Land

when sitting down to write this, I wandered around the house looking for things I thought could be made with polymer, but I hadn’t seen much of. It is actually kind of hard. I see a lot. But how about this– incense burners? Maybe people don’t burn incense quite as much as they used to and perhaps that’s why we don’t see people making them in polymer clay but, on the other hand, they’re so easy to make and you have a really wide range of possible shapes they could take. You would think a few people would be regularly popping some out. But they are hard to find.

For an incense burner, all you need is a stable form with a snug hole big enough for the incense sick to stand in and, preferably, a platform to catch the ashes. You can have incense stick standing straight up or have a long tray the stick would hang over or you can ignore the tray component completely. That should be easy, right? I do wonder if people hesitate to make incense burners with polymer because they believe the hot embers will singe the clay. I very much doubt that would happen, especially if you create a straight up stand type, where the ashes have a long way to fall. Here is one example of an incense burner created with cane petals by Israel’s Marcia of Mars Design. It’s a straightforward construction and a pretty, as well as functional, little piece

You should check out her dreidels as well. I’m not sure Marcia is working in polymer anymore, or at least she’s not posting, but she did have a lot of fun ideas you can find on her Flickr photo stream.

 

This next suggestion seems to be such a minimally explored area of adornment for a category with such a wide range of options. I’m talking about hair adornments. There are so many of them – barrettes, hair sticks, hairclips, hair combs, hair beads, bun caps and cages, hair slides, tiaras, head wreathes, hairbands, headbands, hair charms, hair rings, and hair twisters (a.k.a hair spirals or ponytail wraps). I am partial to hair slides myself because they can double as scarf and shawl pins so you can pull them out for all kinds of occasions. You can see how I make mine with the in-depth tutorial in the Polymer Art Projects – Organics book. Here’s another example of a hair slide from Emily May. Like the incense burners, as long as you planned for the basic form, one that allows a stick to pass through from one side to the other, you can create pretty much whatever you want.

 

And I did mention the nothing should be safe from polymer in the house? I can’t tell you how often I look up at window molding or the insets in a door panel or the trim on a cabinet and think “A bit of polymer could go right there!” Okay, maybe I’m pushing it for someone with limited studio time who wants to add sculptural elements, not canes or other veneers, to large immovable parts of my house. So, does may be a cane covered table sound more reasonable? That can be pretty ambitious as well but at least it can go with you if you move or can be sold. Just look at the table by Alice Stroppel that opens this post, or this amazing work by Bridget Derc.

Bridget’s canes are intense, as is her process, really. You have to skim through her Flickr photostream a bit (check out the bottom half of pages 3 and 4) but she posts a lot of photos of her process. It’s pretty amazing. And check out Alice’s website for more of her polymer table adventures.

 

Now, what if you’re into sculpture? How do you push the form there? I suppose if you normally sculpt “in the round” you can do bas-relief sculptures or vice versa. You could, of course, also venture into any of the other myriad areas of polymer and craft and apply your sculptural skills there, but this next piece might give you a whole other set of ideas. Why not, literally, take your sculpture somewhere you haven’t taken it before. Like outside maybe?

Tatjana Raum photographs her tree spirit sculptures as if they are in trees, although I think these are all in detached parts of trees like large swaths of bark and pieces of drift or dead wood. Even if they are not attached to a living tree, the tree material gives these other-worldly faces an unusual context that enriches the sculpture and how a viewer will perceive it. And what if you did put a bit of polymer art into a living tree? What a great surprise for a passerby!

 

Okay, that is all for today. I’ve got to start making these posts a bit shorter as I will have a lot to do for the Virtual Art Box each month. I am so super excited about what I have for our adventurous art boxers though. I don’t think it’s going to be what anyone is really expecting but I think it’s going to be a fantastic surprise, especially for readers who really loved The Polymer Arts magazine. I think we’re going to get to know each other a lot better and are in for a really creative year!

 

For now, have a wonderful and really creative week and I’ll see you next weekend!

 

Contrast of Self

March 14, 2021
Posted in ,

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…

 

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Of Hierarchy and Uncertainty

February 7, 2021
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Have you started to see hierarchy in creative work everywhere since reading last week’s post? Consciously recognizing the hierarchy in artwork not only reveals the path our eye tends to follow around the work but can also tell you a lot about the artist’s intention and themes.

Maybe I’m a weirdo but I really enjoy searching out the hierarchy and the path the eye makes through a piece of artwork. Sometimes, though, the work seems so simple that one might assume there is not much of a path, if any, or that there really isn’t any hierarchy. But there always is.

Let’s do a deep dive on what initially appears to be a fairly simple composition. I’ve got a few surprise thoughts for you on this!

 

The Eye and the Hierarchy

I found this gem of a piece here a couple weeks ago on Lyn Tremblay’s Facebook page. It doesn’t appear overly complex at first glance, so where is the hierarchy? We probably all can see that the emphasis is on what looks like stitches between the predominantly yellow portion and the striated blue section. But does anything really take our eye around the canvas?

Of course, the answer is yes, there is a lot going on that brings our eye around the entire piece. Let’s map the probably path.

Before you read on, take a look at the piece and make note of where your eyes goes first and how it travels around the work. Then we can see if the likely path I found is similar to yours!

Did you find your path? Ok, great. Let’s do this!

I don’t think that there is any question that we are all likely to go first to the line of stitches and the edges they pull together but, I think, we don’t linger there for so very long. The brilliance of the yellow likely draws us towards the far end where we kind of float around like we are in a warm, comfy pool of sunshine.

However, the yellow’s disintegration into that murky gray-green is probably going to pull us away soon enough because that area has more contrast and there’s movement created by that color change as well as by the lines of yellow we follow back and forth as it tries to break through the gray-green.

The momentum of moving from one side of the yellow section to the other can be used to pull us off into the blue section whose striated lines push our view to the edge where we halt, ready to turn back but instead we may discover the grouping of impressed dots in the one corner, a surprising addition that slows our return so that we can land rather softly back at the stitches.

 

Of Interpretation and Uncertainty

Now, if you are to consider the hierarchy in terms of what you think the artist might find most important, I think you have to agree that it pretty much follows where the eye wants to go. Having found the path through the canvas and confirming what we believe her intended hierarchy would be, what do you think her intention was for the piece?

Something being held together must be central since the stitches are where the primary emphasis is. And there must be more significance in the yellow than the blue. Do remember what emotions and associations yellow brings up? It generally brings up thoughts of warmth, playfulness, and happiness when juxtaposed with primarily positive elements. (It can be associated with depression, stress, and cowardice is surrounded by dreary or negative elements though.)

So, is she trying to stitch a happiness that might disintegrate to the calm represented by the blue or to the openness of blue skies? She titles it Dream Weaver so could the line be where the edge of her dreams of happiness met the real world? Is that what she meant?

Guess what? It doesn’t matter overmuch what her own specific intention was. The fact is, the piece feels complete and cohesive which is likely due to a consistent adherence to her intention, and If the whole of the design is good enough to draw you in and to have you wondering or making your own conclusions, the artist has done a splendid job.

The composition and sparse elements seen here are enough to create metaphors in our minds, leaving us to fill in the blanks about what it might mean based on our own life and outlook. That’s the kind of thing that makes great design and wonderful art!

 

Uncertain Orientation

Here’s a bonus little lesson and a different view of the piece found on the same post. I found it really interesting that Lyn posted this piece in both a portrait and landscape orientation. The piece can be read rather differently depending on which way the piece is sitting.

The vertical orientation makes it look like the undeniable presentation of a wish or, not so coincidentally, a dream. On its side, and with the stitches to the right (remember the Rule of Right!), it feels more like a journey or a process as we have a gradual change going from left to right.

It may seem like a piece of art that is presented as not needing to be shown in a particular orientation suffers from a lack of commitment to the artist’s intention. It is the case sometimes but not always. I think in Lyn’s piece, it works both ways since the same basic idea of trying to connect the strange world of dreams with the reality of life, or whatever metaphor you might have found there, is still present although one way shows a strength of position while the other feels open to change.

And I think it works particularly well with the concept of dreams since they are subject to such wide interpretation. So why not allow the owner of the piece to hang it in the orientation they prefer because it best represents their interpretation of it? Kind of cool really.

That doesn’t mean you don’t need to create your work with an orientation in mind. Most of the time you probably should. But, in some cases, if it’s abstract enough, follows at least one of the compositional rules, (we have the Rule of Thirds working here) and it makes sense for the piece, leaving the orientation open to the owners preference can really work.

 

What Next?

Phew! That was a deep dive, wasn’t it? Were you able to follow my interpretation? I’d like to do this kind of thing fairly regularly, focusing on a different design lesson each time so you have a chance to really dig into the concepts along with me. But if it’s just a lot to wade through on a Sunday morning with the cobwebs not quite cleared out of your brain yet, let me know.

You can reply to this email, if that’s how you get this, or go to the contact page here. I am always thrilled to hear what you think whether it’s a commendation, criticism, or suggestion. Absolutely love getting all of them. It really helps me steer what I create for you.

 

During the next couple weeks, I think I might steer us away from design and talk about other things that can really help take your artwork up a notch. I’ve been in a lot of conversations and have been reading a lot about novel length fiction writing and I keep finding equivalences to the way one can approach art and so that’s where my mind is and I think some of the ideas might be pretty exciting for you.

So, join me again next Sunday for an easy read and some, hopefully, brilliant ideas. And the meantime, have a wonderful, safe, and warm (or cool if you’re down under!) week!

 

You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like,  just …

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A Variety Show

January 24, 2021
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Last weekend I talked about contrast, a concept closely related to variety, which is the subject for this week. Understanding the difference between the two can avoid a lot of confusion so I’ll be referring to contrast a bit today as well. If you didn’t see the last post, give it a quick read here.

Now, what is variation?

Variation is the range or assortment of differences throughout a design. Now, didn’t contrast also speak to differences? Yes, but those differences were between similar types of elements while variation is the degree of difference between all of the elements, principles, and placement choices in your work. It is like contrast in that variation is also used to create interest or energy or to otherwise support your intention, however, while contrast is often the key to adjusting the level of variation, you can have a fair bit of variation with little or no contrast.

To put it succinctly, contrast is the difference between two or more related elements while variety is about the relationship between all the elements in a piece. So, let’s talk about those relationships and how they are used in design.

 

Picturing Variation

First of all, keep in mind that you can create variation with elements or principles or pretty much any visual or conceptual part of your work.

Take the gorgeous pendant that opened this post. Liz Sabol has variation in color, line, balance, repetition, rhythm and even types of composition. In fact, even though we can identify a use of the Rule of Thirds, a Golden Spiral, and use of the Focus to the Right principle, it’s the barely-there nod to centered composition, created by an implied line from the midpoint focused, and yet asymmetrical, balance of the bail to the centered tip at the bottom of the pendant, that is holding all the chaos at bay. This piece is an absolute celebration of variation.

Alternately, if you use a lot of the same elements or employ principles in the same way throughout a piece, then there would be little variation. You can see that in this simple but still striking little pendant by an undisclosed creative on VK.com. (If you know who made this, do let me know and I’ll update the post.) Here there is regular rhythm, an absolutely centered composition, and every shape is circular. The only variation is created by contrast in the value difference between the black and white and the textural difference between the smooth outer elements and the rough interior disc.

Now, looking at the two pendants, I’m sure you can see that there is a huge difference between the energy and feel of them, largely because of the level of variation.

 

It’s a Matter of Degrees

So, as you see, a piece can be interesting with little to no variation or contrast. These concepts add points and degrees of interest. It’s your intention that should determine what role they will play in your work.

Just think, if you want a piece to feel solemn and quiet, avoiding high contrast and keeping your variation quite subtle may be what you need. That calm could be very awe-inspiring in its subtlety. Alternately, you can have a piece with the points of contrast and variation ranging from subtle to obvious.

You see an example of moderation in contrast and variation in Amy Genser’s Eventide pictured here. Yes, the piece feels quite busy and has a lot of energy but the contrast and variation are not that dramatic. There’s a lot of texture but it’s all rough and predominantly created from the rolled-up paper elements. The rolled paper elements are all ovoid in shape but with variation in regard to the roundness and width. They also range in size and are very in color although, like the rest of the canvas, they are predominantly blue and cyan, keeping to the cool side of the color wheel. The canvas does open up into a brief mix of reds and yellows in the middle and the color values do range from a dark blue to white. But the variation is applied in a gradual and moderated way. Most of the energy comes from the texture, the repetition, and the sense of movement.

So, we see here that the degree of variation doesn’t have to be high to create energy or interest as other elements and principles can do that quite well. However, I do think in this case that the level of variation included boosts the energy of the texture and repetition. It’s a team effort.

So, unlike some other concepts, there is no way to really list the different types or degrees of contrast and variation and what they might mean for your particular piece. As you’ve seen, this is in large part due to how much these concepts depend on, and play off of, the other choices made in the design.

 

This is only a quick introduction to the subjects of contrast and variation but I’ll continue talking about them in many of my future posts. If you think about it, I’ve actually been talking about these ideas throughout the year as the differences in your choices for the various elements and principles is quite wrapped up in your decisions on how you’ll employ contrast and variation.

Some of your choices for contrast and variation will be made automatically if you make characteristic choices for your elements before specifically thinking about contrast or variation, like choosing just daisies for a flower necklace or choosing green and red as your color palette because it’s for Christmas. Repeated daisies will dictate rather low levels of variation because of the sameness of the primary motif so you’d have to work with contrast in things like value and size to take it up a notch. And Christmas colors are high contrast so it would be difficult to make the work also feel calm or serene starting from that color palette.

However, you might find it more advantageous to make choices about the degree of contrast and variation that would best suit the work and then make that happen through the characteristics you choose for your elements. In fact, knowing the degree of contrast and variation you want can help you make more confident and intentional choices for your elements, various principles, and composition. That’s how influential the concept of contrast and variation is in art.

 

Perhaps this talk of contrast and variety will get you jazzed to try out some variations on variety your own self. So, while the sun is shining and the muse is calling, do try to have a wonderful, safe, and creative week!

 

You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like,  just …

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A Lack of Absolutes

October 25, 2020
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Helen Breil’s variations lean on the principles of emphasis and movement using line, in particular, to create a feeling of unity and a sense of complexity even though these are not particularly intricate. The design just feels so complete and satisfying.

Do you feel, or have you felt, that design is a very confusing subject? I wanted to ask because as of next month, we dive into the PRINCIPLES of Design. We’ve been working on Elements thus far. Yes, there are two categories to define the ways we use design. So, before I go further, let’s define those.

Elements of Design – the components used to create designs. They are like the ingredient in a recipe, only they are not the materials or tools you use but rather the individual elements you create with them.

Elements of Design (my list for mixed media arts) include:

    • Line
    • Marks
    • Color
    • Shape
    • Form
    • Texture

Principles of Design – the concepts used to arrange and organize the elements of design. These are like the methods and choices used to combine the ingredients in a recipe in order to create the desired outcome.

Principles of Design (as I am going to teach it here) include:

    • Balance
    • Movement
    • Contrast<->Variety
    • Emphasis<->Hierarchy
    • Repetition<->Rhythm
    • Scale<->Proportion
    • Unity<->Similarity

Don’t they look so manageable in those simple lists? Well, Elements does, I’m sure. Principles … they are concepts, so they’re more complicated. But don’t worry. I’ve been fiendishly sneaking them in all along so you are actually familiar with many of them if you’ve been reading my blog even for just this year. Just in the last couple months, I’ve been drilling in the ideas of contrast, similarity, movement and even a bit about scale.

There may be two separate lists above but they are completely dependent on each other. You can’t use principles with out the elements to create with and you can’t create with elements without the principles pushing you, consciously or unconsciously, towards the beauty and satisfaction that comes from a good design.

 

The Ultimate List of Design

Now, you may be asking yourself, why are the notations above about these lists my version? Aren’t these things standardized? Well, unfortunately, they are not and that’s the crux of the problem I want to peel open today.

When I talk about elements and principles of art and design, I’m giving you what I believe would be the best set of these for what we do in polymer and mixed media art. If you go online and search for just a list of the Principles of Design, you will find everything from a list of 5 up to a list of 20 principles. That’s pretty crazy!

It is understandable when some people think one or two things don’t belong on a list but when you regularly get this whole range, with some items paired up (like I did above) and others listing those same paired items as separate and distinct concepts, it can really make you wonder how you will ever learn the “right” set of concepts?

To make it simple (but possibly no less frustrating), I’m here to tell you there is no single ultimate list of elements or principles of design. And, no, it’s not because people have different opinions, although they do, but it has to do with the type of creative work each source assumes the reader will be considering.

These lists of elements and principles change to best serve the medium the writer or instructor assumes you, the reader, are dealing with. For instance, in painting and illustration, value is its own element discussed outside of color because value is what allows painters to define dimensionality, space, and perspective in the work. Our work in craft is primarily dimensional to begin with which is why I simplified my list to included value as part of the color element discussion.

Likewise, mark making in crafts is extremely important while mark making in graphic design is nearly nonexistent or is replaced with the concept of motif or pattern. And motif is an extremely important element in interior design but it is usually a side note, if even that, in fine arts.

So, all those lists out there are customized and created for the particular creatives the creator of the list believes will be using it. Right? Right!

I just wanted to clarify that before we jump in the principles of design so if any of you have learned or been taught something different than the list I’m going to give you, you understand why. I do believe my lists will best serve you as a mixed-media artist but you are welcome to build your own as needed.

The bottom line here… Don’t worry about whether you’ve got design terminology down precisely. Worry about understanding the concepts, identifying them, and working with them.

 

Ack! What’s a Creative to Focus On?

If all these lists and their imprecise ways make you feel like you’re going to hyperventilate, take heart. When it comes down to it, there are really just a few things you need to focus on as I can distill what I am trying to teach you into just three things. If you concentrate on these, you can just read my posts and the club’s mini-mag content and all this design knowledge will work its way into your brain by osmosis:

Your Artistic Keys:

  1. Create with intention, whatever that means to you.
  2. Draw your intention from that authentic and unique core that is you.
  3. Aim to make conscious, intentional design choices on every aspect of your work.

If you can do these three things, you can and will be an incredible and fulfilled artist. The rest – the terminology, concepts, elements and such – you can gather like you do art supplies. You pick them up as you can and then use them at every opportunity that makes sense. It would be great if you actually thought of them as new shiny tools and materials on your studio table. They can be, and usually are, the most valuable tools you have at hand.

 

The End of Free Lessons is Nigh!

In the coming months, the Principles of Design lessons, although they will continue to appear here in some fashion, will be largely moving to the weekly Devotee Club mini-mags. I need to start transitioning the bulk of my content to the Club content as the full free lessons were intended just to help get us all through this tumultuous year, but I do have to get back to bringing in the funds so I can keep at it!

So … if you have been enjoying the lessons you’ve had here in recent months, come join the club! Not only will you be getting the full lessons, but I also have a lot of other content from tips on living a creative life to community news to subscriber only specials and first dibs on new products.

And for the rest of this month, get a 14 day free trial! Offer ends October 31st.

(By the way, the Success Club, which combines coaching with the weekly content, is full, in case you are wondering when you get to the page and don’t see it to add to the cart. I am taking names for the waiting list only at this time.)

Come support your design knowledge, creative growth, and these Tenth Muse Arts projects with a subscription to the Devotee Club. Just click here.

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Beating Burnout

October 18, 2020
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Corvid sculpture from the rich imagination of Ellen Jewett. I don’t know where she draws her creative energy from, but I’d take a sip or two if she bottled it!

Do you ever get artists block? I’m not talking about times of procrastination or being afraid to start something but literally not been able think of anything to do. Does your brain ever just feel empty?

Well, this weekend, mine was, which was weird. I’m not usually at a loss for words, especially when it comes to blogging or writing articles. I usually feel like I can write about art and design nonstop and never run out of ideas. But, this weekend, I hit a bit of a wall.

What is that all about? Honestly, I think it’s about burnout and not just from my usual mad pace. I think many of us are running into burnout this year.

Burnout and blocks are often related in their causes. We all have an infinite number of ideas inside our heads all growing from our countless experiences, ever-growing knowledge, and ever present desires. So, I believe that it’s not that we don’t have ideas sometimes but rather that we are missing the keys to access them.

Without Resources

Although so many of us supposedly have all this extra time and flexibility this wacky year, we don’t always have the energy needed to navigate the constant changes, the stress, the worry, and, probably more than anything, the uncertainty while still juggling our family, jobs, and creative aspirations. Some days it’s just too much. Our well of energy goes dry.

I’m hearing this from a lot of artists. Some are wondering if they are burned out on their medium or their studio space or their creative time in general. Others are lacking motivation because there aren’t shows and fairs to give them those all-important deadlines. Still others, having lost major avenues of income with both in-person teaching and live shows on hiatus, are questioning the fragility of their chosen path.

What it comes down to is that the usual motivations that push us to create are missing. We don’t even have social engagements for which to create new pieces of jewelry for ourselves to wear or guild meetings to encourage us to complete work so we have something new to share. Many of our usual energizing motivators just simply aren’t there.

Signs of the Times

It has been noted throughout history that when there are traumatic and life-threatening circumstances within a society, such as war, famine, or major natural disasters, the people first focus on survival, initially neglecting most other pursuits. However, one of the very the first things that come back into society, once people begin to feel safe and secure, are creative pursuits. Perhaps we don’t all feel quite safe and secure yet, not feeling settled enough to bury ourselves and creative work but as the world starts to right itself, the creative urge will return. Take heart from that.

The other things very particular to this pandemic that may be making it hard to create are that we aren’t having as many novel experiences and are certainly deprived of a normal level of social stimulation. Both these things provide us with inspiration and energy to be creatively productive but they are rare commodities right now.

In other words, while the world and all the bad news is slowly but surely draining us of our day-to-day energy, our sources for renewed energy are spare to nonexistent. It’s really no wonder that so many people are feeling uninspired or burned out right now.

Filling Your Well

So, the first thing I want to say, to myself as well as you, is that it’s okay. Burnout is normal. Our creative path, and life in general, is not a smooth and even highway but more of a roller coaster. This will happen sometimes, especially in times like now.

The other thing I’d say is, rather than worry about any lack of productivity or trying to force it, do what you can to recharge your creative battery. Get out and go places and do things that you don’t normally do. Obviously, stay safe and follow all recommendations in your area, but go take a hike in a nearby forest or walk through an unfamiliar part of town or go photo hunting (a kind of self-structured scavenger hunt but you are gathering photos rather than things). Just come up with things that you can do safely but that are brand-new and interesting to you.

Getting out and doing new things will create new pathways in your brain which will, in turn, energize it and keep your mind fit and flexible. As you get older, new and novel experiences become more and more important so never lose your adventurous spirit. Those same mechanisms that help keep your brain young also keep your creativity flowing, as shown by a number of recent studies. In fact, at least one study suggests that creative thinking is boosted most after weird or even traumatic experiences. If that’s true, we should all be insanely creative when this period in world history is over! There’s another reason to take heart I suppose.

Besides novel experiences, also be sure you are getting some kind of social time in. Sure, it might have to be a zoom call but, if it can be done safely, a socially distanced backyard or front yard gathering (while we still have some weather we can sit outside in) with a handful of creative friends or family can do so much to boost your spirits and energy level.

I myself am going to heed my own advice. Next weekend we are going to take out the camper van conversion I’ve been working on and do a little van camping. That’s the other thing. Sometimes burnout or creative blocks just simply need space and time. We can try to barrel through it – and I often do just that – but sometimes we really just need to kick back and relax and let the mind “marinate” on life and our present experiences. Combine some downtime with some new experiences and, if you can swing it, some socially distanced social time, and you are sure to come back with renewed energy and inspiration.

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Preciousness

October 4, 2020
Posted in , ,

Kathleen Nowak Tucci going big with not-so-precious intertubes and other disposables.

What would you say if I suggested that you create a piece and then, after you are done, remove your favorite bit? Yes, I realize the request might be physically impossible without causing complete destruction but, alternately, what if I asked you to destroy something you just spent your valuable time and effort creating?

I know you might be wondering if this is some kind of dreadful crafty torture. Why in the world would anyone ask that of you and what would be the point?

Well, this was done to me and a couple dozen other classmates back in college… twice.

The first time was in a creative writing class. We brought in a piece we had been working on all week then were asked to highlight all of our favorite lines. We passed the highlighted sheets to the person next to us and then the professor asked that we scratch out all the highlighted lines in the story we had in hand.

Of course, all us sensitive little budding Hemingways and Dickinsons sat there stunned and appalled as our pieces were read aloud without the sparkling gems that we thought would certainly reveal our genius. Strangely enough, all but one of the pieces still made sense and sometimes, the author even admitted it sounded a bit better. The point was, the professor said, that we tend to fall in love with phrases or sentences and will leave them in even when they don’t serve the piece.

The point was that without our wittiest word choices we could, in theory, make better editing decisions. In art, is it possible that we could make better design decisions if we were willing to set aside the glitzy accents we love so much or not fall back on our favorite tried-and-true textures all the time?

The second time I had a professor crush my little angsty ego was in a ceramics class after we each had done a small series of slab vessels. The professor asked us to pick up our favorite piece, bring it to the center of the room, and hold it up. We were then asked if we would be willing to drop it from a height into the trash bin that sat there. Of course, no one did it at first and he just stood there waiting until a couple brave souls let their pieces go. Then the pressure was on for the rest of us to follow. Even though I wasn’t particularly attached to the piece I had in hand, it was still so hard to drop it but I did. I seem to recall that a handful of students did refuse.

Sounds like a real jerk of a professor to ask such a thing, right? Well, I have to say that, at first, that’s what I thought but then he started to talk about preciousness. His conversation had something to do with becoming too attached to particular pieces. He wanted us to put value on our process, our growth, and learning, not on impressing him or our classmates. I think he was also looking for a way to wake us up as he had been getting frustrated with our attention span during the lecture portion of the class. Well, he sure did that.

I remember thinking about that lesson some years later, when I was better able to take it in. It made me realize that each successful piece I made was really just a step in a journey more so than an end goal unto itself. That changed the way I looked at my work. And it somehow made me braver.

I still did, and do, have favorite pieces that I cherish and will never sell, but seeing the work as steps and creation as a process rather than an investment of time in an end goal has allowed me to work a bit more freely. I have a ton of pieces that remain unfinished, and although it’s disappointing every time to come to a point where you realize it’s not going to succeed how you wanted it to, I don’t have any qualms about setting it aside. I don’t see the work as wasted because I know I’ve gained a little bit more experience and a little better understanding of the process. I’ve let go of the preciousness I used to have about everything I made.

Preciousness arises not only in our valuing our time to such an extent that we will not give up on a piece even when it’s no longer salvageable, or ignoring possible design solutions because they would eliminate our favorite part, but it also happens with the material itself.

Liz Hall creates in polymer and (a lot of) precious metal clay.

Quite a few years ago, I was itching try precious metal clay but it really wasn’t in my budget. Then I found some at a really great price and bought it. But you know what? I never even opened the packages. I just couldn’t get myself to work with this very expensive material for fear I would ruin it. But, of course, it’s rather wasted now that I’ve had it so long that is not workable. Pretty stupid, right? But we can be like that, putting value on the material and not on the process and the joy that we get from learning and creating.

Preciousness is tied into fear and failure in a lot of ways. Our idea of what we think we can do or what we think we should be able to do may be so lofty or so dear and treasured that we are afraid to try, fearing that we will make a mistake and ruin our efforts or that it will not come out as we imagine it. So, we do nothing, which is the same as ruining it, just really early on.

We may also get to a point in a piece where we love it so much that we are afraid to take the next step, a step that might spoil it, and so we set it aside, with all the best intentions to take that next step at a future time but all we’ve done is deny, or even end, the work’s potential.

I thought we’d start out this month on the concept of preciousness because it felt like a good segue into discussing October’s design theme – size.

Preciousness is one of those factors that comes into play when we decide on the size or scope of the work we will take on. Our sense of preciousness can make us hesitate to do something large or particularly complex, as we may fear that we will invest a lot of effort, time, and materials into something we are not assured will be successful.

Julie Eake’s cane mosaic portrait of actress Sophie Turner was, like most of her cane mosaic portraits, a huge undertaking. But aren’t we glad she takes those risks?

But, again, have we not already failed by not attempting it in the first place?

If we looked at everything we create as precious, all the time and effort that we put into it as well as the finished work, we would have to play it rather safe in the studio. However, art is not about playing it safe.

Art is largely about the risks you take.

If you’re not taking risks, then are you actually creating art? There’s nothing wrong in creating just for that sense of accomplishment or the high of that Zen like flow we fall into when the work is familiar and comfortable. It is more than valid to have the process of making things with your hands be the primary purpose in what you do. However, it’s the hours of exploration, the failures, the false starts, our vulnerability, the deep digging, like miners looking for gold, that makes the work that we inevitably uncover truly art.

The risks we are willing to take is the thing that is truly precious.

 

So, keep the concept of preciousness in your mind as we talk about size this month. Of course, we’ll talk about variation and contrast in size since that is what is primarily being referred to when speaking of it as a design element, but there are other things about size that we can take into consideration as we create, move forward, and grow as creatives.

 

Speaking of considerations…this week, I am going to have to take my health into consideration, so although I do plan on preparing a blog for next weekend, if it ends up being short or skipped it’s because I’m having a little surgery towards the end of the week. It’s just my esophagus and I should recover in all of two days. I have to fit in all my usual physical therapy before then though, along with all the regular weekly business tasks so it will be a full week.

Don’t worry though – all you club members will get your Midweek Mini-Mag as usual including a goodies giveaway so you can look forward to that if you signed up for one of the clubs.

 

If you haven’t signed up for one of the clubs yet but really appreciate the information inspiration you find in this blog, help support this project by subscribing! Get your weekly mini-mag, exclusive discounts, giveaways, and special offers along with your support. With everything you’ll get, you can also think of the club as a unique and special way to acknowledge the preciousness that is your creative self!

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Relationships in Texture

September 27, 2020
Posted in ,

Evgeniya Aleksandrova has a rough texture over everything here but varies the depth and pattern of the texture as well as the color.

Since we talked about tactile texture last week, it would seem logical that I would talk about visual texture this week.

But I’m not! I don’t want to be too predictable!

No, that’s not why. Actually, it’s that most of what needs to be said about visual texture has to do with the usual recommendation of choosing characteristics that fulfill your intention. If you read my blog, even sporadically, you’ve heard this before.

As long as you understand that visual texture is a purely visual variation on or within a surface (such as marbling, mokume, ikat, or any application of an ink, powder, dye or paint medium), then, as described in the post from the week before last, you can choose visual textures simply by coming up with adjectives to describe your intention and do likewise with possible visual textures and match them up based on similar adjectives. That is the core of the approach for working with visual textures.

So, that being established, I’d like to, instead, talk about another thing you’re also familiar with if you have been reading the blog for the past couple months but which we have yet to specifically associate with texture.

Creating a Relationship

Last month I talked about choosing color palettes in terms of contrast and similarities. But guess what? Combining different types of textures also plays by the same basic rules of contrasts and similarities.

I love how Joy Kruze echoes the spots in the stone with the spots of metal in the texture created in the spaces between the metal lines of her unusual bezel

Most work you create or look at probably has more than one texture. It could be a combination of smooth and rough textures or a variety of different rough textures or variations of smooth ones. You may often combine tactile texture and visual texture, as well. What these combinations all achieve is variation. Variation in texture is pretty instinctual for most creatives, as is a desire for variation in color.

The variation between textures can be heavily contrasted but, like color, it helps to have at least one similar characteristic so there is some relationship between them. With texture, you can actually use other design elements to create that relationship such as using the same or related color or a similar shape for the texture’ s space. Once you have that similarity, everything else can be contrasted.

But what about using similarities between the characteristics of the textures? For instance, you could create only rough textures but vary how that roughness is created. Or all your textures could be stippled holes but you vary the shape or size of those holes.

 

Just as you need similarities, you’re probably going to want variation, too, not only to create contrast, but also to create shapes, layers, and compositional direction (which we will get to later this year).

The Need for Variation

Variation, as always, adds some level of interest, energy, and complexity to your work and you can adjust how much you add of these by adjusting the variation between textures (or any design elements) – from subtle to bold or somewhere in between.

Let’s say you want to make a piece with a strong graphic look. You’ve already chosen hard edged graphic shapes and bold colors. What about the texture? You might choose a slick, glossy surface as a primary texture. Now, what other textures can be used to vary the surface but have it still related to a glossy one?

Hélène Jeanclaude creates glossy surfaces on all parts of this necklace but between mica shift and mokume, and the contrast of colors, she creates variation and lots of energy.

If you want to go subtle, you could stick with variations on smooth textures such as a matte or satin finish. Alternately, you can choose to rough up the surface but in a very orderly way similar to the orderliness of your graphic shapes. This can be done with a series of dense, parallel lines, or a dense but orderly mark.

As long as the marking of the surface is the only thing that changes, then all raised portions of the comparatively rougher texture will be glossy. That will give you your similar characteristic – the gloss of the smooth surface and the occasional gloss of the rough surface.

This is not to say that you can’t have textures that are completely and utterly different. The extreme contrast could be, in and of itself, a relationship. That difference will cause tension or discordance, but that could be exactly what you want.

Here are just some of the characteristics in texture that could create similarity or contrast:

  • Tactile or visual
  • Smooth or rough
  • The quality of the finished surface (glossy, satin, matte, or chalky)
  • Type of mark, technique, or tool used to create the tactile or visual texture
  • Organic versus graphic styles
  • Size (how much space each texture takes up)
  • Direction (if the texture visually flows or moves from one part of the piece to the other)
  • Shape of the space it is applied to

A visual texture shows variation in density and repetition of the dots that make up this surface. Melanie Ferguson actaully etched the surface and then polished it with cold was so she has smooth tactile but rough visual texture on her surfaces.

As you can see, other design elements can become quite intertwined with texture. Marks, lines, size, direction, and shape all can play a role in the similarity or contrast of areas of texture in your piece. It really doesn’t take much for us to see a relationship between textures. If it’s there, we’ll see or sense it and the design will feel more cohesive for it being there.

Since that texture relationship can be, and often is, developed through other design elements we work with, this is not always something you need to be wholly conscious of. But, if something in your work is not looking right, check for the relationship between your textures as well as your colors and other elements.

And, if next time you are looking at your work and feel like it needs some contrast in its tactile or visual texture, just look at the dominant texture that you have and, using it as a starting point, choose possible other textures or design options that will create at least one similar characteristic, still provide contrast at the level that makes sense for you piece, and has characteristics that recall the theme of your work.

 

Last Days for Club Discounted Forever Pricing

3 days left to join the Devotee or Success clubs at the FOREVER discount price so you can get first dibs on limited stock offers, discounts, and goodie box giveaways, all while getting a mid-week mini-mag of brief articles to keep your creative energy and ideas going. And right now you can also get in on it with a 2 week free trial! .

So, if you enjoy my blog, support this while boosting your own creative endeavors by joining us in the Devotee Club or Success Club 0r buy yourself a good book or an inspiring magazine to curl up with. Just visit the website by clicking here.

 

Visual Contrast … Out of Doors!

Packing up to take the camper van conversion for a test drive up the coast, just one night. That’s been my little side project that I’ve been getting myself lost in for an hour or so most days. It’s not completely done but good enough for one night out for my better half and me. I need some contrast between life inside this lovely home of ours and the outside and distant world! So, I am off. I hope you all are looking for new and novel things to add a bit of excitment and contrast in your lives as well!

 

 

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Tactile Allure

September 20, 2020
Posted in , ,

Melanie West’s satiny smooth finish has a heavanly tactile texture even though many people might think of her pieces as being textured because they’re so smooth. Yet smooth is actually one of world’s most loved textures.

How often do you touch art?

No, I don’t mean being the unruly museum visitor who gets yelled at by the docent, but in your everyday life, how many things do you touch that you would also consider art?

Works in the applied arts, which encompass decorative art, adornment, and functional objects, are often things that we touch. Because of this, the tactile texture of most applied art is exceedingly important. Not only can the wrong texture put someone off from buying a piece, but the right texture can make a huge difference between people liking your work due to its visual appeal and being utterly in love with it because it feels so good to touch. It is also another means by which you can express your intention.

Choosing Tactile

The first time I touched a Melanie West polymer bead, it was like taking a bite of the most heavenly chocolate mousse. Her finishes are flawless and so soft; my fingers just couldn’t get enough. That kind of tactile reaction is golden. It also supports her soft and organic themes. As wonderful as her finishes are, that kind of texture may not be wanted in your work or may not even be possible due to techniques or materials you are using.

The point is that her textures are part of the experience of her work and, if you’re creating things that will be handled, you too should consider the experience of touching your piece as part of its aesthetic value. As always, let your intention drive your decisions, but pay attention to the physical sensation experienced when handling the work and aim to have it support your intention, alongside all your other design decisions.

For instance, if you want to share your love of the beach through your work, think about the physical sensations that stand out the most – the soft breeze on your face, the refreshingly cold water on your feet, and your toes digging into cool sand. Now, how do you translate those physical sensations into tactile texture that will help you share that experience to those who will handle your work?

You can do so by thinking in terms of those adjectives – soft, refreshing, and cool. You probably want those to be the dominant sensations so don’t go for, say, a sandy texture just because the beach has sand. Is a gritty, sandy texture going to convey soft, refreshing, and cool? Chances are, it’s just going to remind someone of getting sand in their shoes and other uncomfortable places. You can create a visually sandy texture that includes sandy colors and a speckled look, but in terms of tactile sensations, going for a soft, maybe matte surface that will feel cool and soothing to the touch will share something closer to the sensations you want to relay.

Felt may have textural limitations but the final texture is still a choice. Olga Demyanova contrast a tight, even texture with the rippling and rougher orange edging and accents in this intriquing handbag.

There are a lot of materials that have limits on the tactile textures available. Polymer clay can replicate most tactile surfaces except for fuzzy, but felted work is limited to that dense and slightly rough feel of matted wool while glass will almost always have a smooth aspect. There are also techniques that create their own texture or limit how you can further manipulate the material to create texture. Learn the range of tactile sensations available in the materials and techniques you use so you know what options you have.

 

Work that Begs to Be Touched

There are a couple things you can focus on in order to create work that people will love to touch. It primarily involves smoothness and variation.

 

Smooth Surfaces

Our sense of touch enjoys traveling along a pleasantly smooth substance such as polished metal or stone. But what we like most is softness, such as a fluffy blanket or bunny fur. Softness is a type of smoothness as it allows our skin to glide across, unimpeded.

Note that you can re-create the look of fluffy and furry textures in hard substances such as clay or wood but you can’t re-create the same associated softness because, in those materials, you lose the ability for our fingertips to effortlessly glide across it in the same way due to the unevenness in a hard surface. So, recreating the look of fur doesn’t necessarily re-create the tactile experience. The ‘look’ of fur is just a visual experience.

So, be careful to think of smooth tactile texture, not in the way it looks, but the way it feels.

 

Klavdija Kurent gives the wearer of her jewelry much to explore with their fingertips.

Variation

Our fingertips were made for receiving information, and lots of it, so they do very much enjoy a variation in texture. However, we don’t normally enjoy variation that is sharp, prickly, scratchy, or sticky. These textures make it hard for our fingers to glide along and take it in, not to mention that they are also often painful.

However, bumps, grooves, and fine lines excite the nerve endings. It’s just like the sense of taste – we aren’t too happy with things that are bland but a lot of flavors that go well together thrills our tongue. Our fingers, likewise, enjoy complexity.

 

The Best of Both – Smooth and Varied

I think you’ll find that pieces with both a smooth and varied surface attain the pinnacle of touchableness.

Take a look at the pearled bracelet here. It is not even in your presence and you probably still feel a tiny urge to reach out and touch it. That’s because each half pearl has a small, smooth surface which is further aided by the round and unimpeded nature of its shape as well as there being a varied field of them.

The combination of smoothness and variation in this bracelet makes for an engaging texture, adding energy to the piece both in its tactile and visual nature. Note that this also has a bit of rough texture around the edges to provides textural contrast. Because contrast is important in texture too!

The contrast of texture fit well into my intention of showing the classic perfection and allure of pearls in an organic setting. I wanted it to be a subtle reminder of the messy world pearls actually come from even though we now associate them with neat, tidy, and conservative dress.

 

The Tactile Balancing Act

The textures you choose will dictate limitations in terms of surface treatments and other parts of your design, so you have to balance out your tactile texture choices with your other design choices. For instance, if you create a deep and dense texture on a light color, it’s going to appear darker, which you might not want.  Or you may want a very smooth surface but want pattern to raise the energy so you would have to figure out how to incorporate pattern visually with inks, veneers, or other smooth surface applications.It just needs to make sense for your intention and the limitations of material.

If your tactile texture decisions, weighed in light of all the other decisions you have to make about color, shape line, function, etc., are chosen in service of your intention, you are sure to have a beautiful, cohesive, and interestingly touchable design.

 

Should I Call Them Mini-Mags?

The first week of the Art Boxer Clubs has commenced and one of the first comments about the weekly Pick-Me-Up is that it ought to be described as a mini-mag. I guess it is. It’s hard to take the magazine attitude out of me. There were 5 little articles and a good handful of links for further exploring.  So, yeah, maybe it is a mini-mag. I might have to rethink what I call it.

But regardless of what it’s called, joining the club will get you a little extra boost each week and at least once a month, you’ll get a special discount, a first dibs or limited stock offer, and/or a giveaway. And right now you can get in on it with a 2 week free trial and a FOREVER discounted rate.

So, if you enjoy my blog, support this while boosting your own creative endeavors by joining us in the Devotee Club or Success Club (there are only a few spots left in this upgrade to personal coaching option, at least as of my writing this), or buy yourself a good book or an inspiring magazine to curl up with. Just visit the website by clicking here.

 

No Fires Here

We are still a safe distance from all the fires and the sky has started to clear up from the smoke so nothing too exciting to report from Tenth Muse central. I’ve already gotten started on the next project but I don’t want to say too much about it. It seems like every time I say something, I get jinxed and delayed. So, you’ll just have to stop by and check in with me on the weekends, or read the newsletters, or, if you want to be the first to know, join one of the new Club options as Art Boxers will be the first to know (as well as getting extra discounts … just sayin’.)

 

I hope you all have a relatively unexciting week yourselves. It’s not like we need much more excitement with the craziness of the world providing plenty already. Just go make beautiful things and be kind and caring to each other.

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The Language of Texture (Plus … Discover the new Art Boxer Clubs!)

September 13, 2020
Posted in

Dawn Deale, Crackle bracelet using gold leaf with alcohol inks.

Now that we’ve spent three months intensely delving into color, are you ready to completely switch gears and explore a different design element?

How often, when you are creating something, do you ask yourself “What kind of texture do I want?” Or, more importantly, “Why this texture?” I think we can all agree that texture is an extremely important part of all types of arts and crafts and, like color, is probably more often than not chosen consciously. But why do you choose a smooth texture versus a rough texture? Or a simple texture versus a busy one?

I think the first thing we need to define in terms of texture is what it actually is. Do you automatically think of some uneven and fabulously tactile surface? Well, certainly, that is a type of texture, but that is only one type. Texture is more wide-ranging than that. At its most basic, it is the feel or appearance of a surface.

Texture can be of two primary types – tactile or visual.

For instance, tree bark is generally rough. If you can reach out and touch the actual tree bark that is tactile texture. If you have a glossy photo of tree bark, the texture is still rough, it’s just visual rather than tactile. If we don’t make this distinction, you could say that the photo of tree bark is smooth but you’re actually describing the tactile texture of the glossy paper.

So, you know what? That means you potentially have two decisions to make when it comes to texture – what kind of tactile texture and what kind of visual texture will your piece have?

In this necklace by 2Roses (Corliss and John Rose), softly marbled polymer gives subtle variation to the visual texture of its beads.

Your initial decision for each is not too hard being that you really only have two basic options for each – will it be smooth or not smooth? Or you can say smooth or rough, although I think rough has a lot of specific associations but it does describe the alternative to smooth.

Your chosen texture will actually be on a scale from smooth to rough. It will also be relative to the smoothness or roughness of other textures either on the piece or to similar textures. Beech tree bark is relatively smooth compared to oak bark although it is relatively rough compared to, say, glass.

Lightly marbled polymer clay (like that in the necklace seen here) will have a rougher (or busier or denser) visual texture than a solid sheet of clay but is not as rough a visual as a finely crackled alcohol ink surface treatment (as in the opening image), don’t you think?

You may be tempted to say that sometimes you choose to have no visual or tactile texture, but what you’re really saying is that you want a smooth visual or tactile texture. There is still texture; it’s just smooth or without variation breaking up the surface.

Now is it really important to call what we might see as the absence of texture as smooth? Well, how will you define the emotive, symbolic, and/or psychological meanings or effects of your surface if you don’t acknowledge its type of texture? I think that would be a little rough. (Sorry for the pun!) And that’s what I really want to talk about today.

 

Talking with Texture

As with color, different textures communicate varying emotions and atmospheres but, unlike color, texture can rather easily communicate all kinds of abstract ideas in very concrete, and sometimes quite literal, ways. Concepts that deal with the physical nature of things like force, fragility, turbulence, or stillness are not only readily interpreted or felt by viewers but they are also readily determined by artists. I bet you can think of a texture that could represent each of those for physical concepts within a couple minutes if not a handful seconds.

Texture can also readily elicit specific emotions such as comfort, fear, revulsion, and desire. To come up with textures for emotions, you could just think of a physical thing associated with each (fuzzy blankets for comfort, sharp knives for fear, etc.) and from that come up with a texture (a soft, matte surface for comfort, or sharp, erratic lines for fear, etc.).

“Lichen” tiles in porcelain by Heather Knight. They are all dense, tactile textures but they convey different things. What words would you associate with your favorite 3 in the image?

You can pretty much come up with a texture to go with the intention of the work you’re creating simply by identifying what characteristics you associate with the ideas or emotion of your concept or theme. For some people, recognizing these characteristics is very intuitive. For the rest of us, or even for those who feel they’re intuitive, it can help to come up with words you would associate with your intention and develop your textural design decisions from them.

This could be as simple as throwing out a few adjectives to describe what reaction you want from the viewer or you could list specific ideas or objects related to your theme or concept and then consider textures that you associate with the words you’re writing down.

If you have a hard time just freely coming up with textures, you can find possibilities to jump-start your ideas by looking through your texture plates/stamps/random objects stash for textures that evoke those words. Or you can look at artwork to get ideas. Determine what emotions or sense you get from various pieces and then identify what textures are used.

I know I brought up visual versus tactile texture but I’m got not going to talk about them any further today. I’m going to save those for the next couple weekends this month. I haven’t decided which to do for next weekend so it’ll just be a surprise. Just have fun coming up with adjectives to associate with textures that you can use to help support the intention of your work.

 

Announcing the new Art Boxer Clubs!

The first of the latest projects I have been brewing has launched!

The content of these Art Boxer clubs will be aimed at all types of mixed media creatives, not just polymer clay artists. Like the blog, the focus will be on increasing your design and creative skills while helping you stay energized and engaged in your craft, all while mixing in a good dose of fun and exciting bonuses!

I am keeping core design lessons free here on the blog for now but giving you many of the other features that were in the original VAB plus some new exclusive offerings:

The Art Boxer Devotee Club… $9/month: Exclusive weekly (Wednesday) content including mini-lessons, creative prompts, project ideas, and challenges as well as member only discounts and offers, giveaways, and early notices on all sales, new publications, and limited items. Get 2 weeks free to try this out if you join during the month of September.  Go here for full details! 

The Art Boxer Success Club… $35/month: For serious aspiring artists or artists looking to take it up a notch, this includes everything the Devotees get plus twice a month email or once a month chat/zoom coaching sessions. I’m reviving my creative coaching services but in a limited way – only 20 of these memberships are available. This is a very inexpensive option (normal rate is $65 for similar coaching) for one-on-one support to help with whatever artistic and/or business goals you have been aiming for. Click here for the details.

*If you are already a monthly contributor toward the support of my projects and free content, you will automatically be added to the Devotee Club member list, even if you contribute less than $9. If you would like to move up to the Success club, just write me. Thank you for your early and continued support! 

If you have questions about the clubs, write me here and I will get back to you on Monday.

 

And don’t forget … the 25% off PRINT publications sale is still going on.

Good only until Tuesday! Click here to get in on this before the sale is gone.

 

 

Under Smoky Skies

Thankfully (for me), I have no crazy personal updates or unfortunate stories to tell you about. I hope I haven’t disappointed those of you all into the Sage soap opera over here. I’m loving my new physical therapist and although I haven’t seen any significant progress thus far, my knees, shoulder, and elbow have not gotten worse.  And hubby’s face is healing just beautifully so we are pretty content in our recoveries here. So that’s cool.

Speaking of cool, how many of you are dealing with weather changes due to fires in your area? We were supposed to have another hot week but the dense smoke all over California has developed its own little weather system, blocking out the sun and cooling down the day. Too bad the air quality is too poor to go out and enjoy the nice temperatures. We also have this weird orange-yellow cast to the daylight. It’s just otherworldly.

To be clear, there are no fires anywhere near enough to endanger us although I suppose that could change at any moment. Between the wonky weather and just what a ridiculous year this has been, I think we all should just stay in and create beautiful things for a while. At least until the skies clear up. What do you think?

 

Well, I hope, wherever you are, you are staying safe and healthy. If you join one of the clubs, then I’ll chat with you on Wednesday!

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