Last Day of our Flash Sale and Art with a Story
February 22, 2016
Inspirational Art
Just a couple things to get out of the way here … The Polymer Arts is having a sale, and it’s probably the last of its kind for a while so, if you didn’t get the newsletter (you can can sign up for that twice-a-month missive with its bits of giveaways, eye candy, community news, and polymer tips on the left side of our homepage), here is the scoop:
We are on the verge of integrating a new shopping cart service on our website, but it will not, at present, allow us to do any more site-wide discount sales. So, while we still can, we are getting one in …!
Only one day left (Monday the 22nd) … 10% off anything on our Website! Yes, we mean it. Any subscription, renewal, back issue, or already discounted package, take 10% off with this promotional code–flash10
Also, today is the last chance to get on the mailing list for the first mailing of the new Spring issue, due out in just a couple of weeks. We are finalizing the list tomorrow for that first hot-off-the press mailing, so get your subscription, renewal, or pre-ordered print copy of the issue purchased today.
Now, lets look at something beautiful for a moment. I have no idea what I’m aiming for this week, so let’s go with the flow and see what my fingers tap out for you.
This falls into the category of things Sage really, really likes. I love texture and copper and compositions that include aged and marked things. Work like this, with a very particular composition, hints at a possible story and a certainty that the piece is trying to whisper some secret about the things it has seen. I know that sounds terribly dramatic, and you can probably guess I’ve been entrenched in a series of suspense novels the last couple months, but does this piece not seem to be full of some subtle story?
Karen Brueggemann has created quite a few of these lovely wall pieces along with visually textural and vibrant jewelry. And she has the most incredible Pinterest boards! So if you have the time today, go look around at the board with her art then prepare to get lost in all the colors and textures she’s gathered up on her other boards. What a nice way to spend a Monday!
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create a piece with a story behind it–be it or fiction a true story–yours or someone else’s. Don’t tell it literally, just keep it in mind as you choose, colors, forms, textures, and details. Don’t worry about what anyone else will think or if it follows the parameters of good design. Just create the spirit of the story.
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Unintentional Preciousness
February 19, 2016
Inspirational Art
What kind of polymer is this you ask? Well, as much as it looks like a super well polished bit of polymer mokume, it is not. It is a material called Fordite. If you haven’t heard of it before, you’re now probably thinking this is a semi-precious stone, right? Well, precious it is, strangely enough, and although it was created in a process not unlike nature’s layering and compressing, it isn’t stone either. Maybe its other names will give you a hint–it’s also known as Motor Agate, Detroit Agate, or “paint rock”and was mined, not from some exotic mountain region in a little known area of the Amazon but rather, in the depths of automobile manufacturing plants. That’s right, its layered car paint. Pretty wild, huh?
This ‘stone’ is now being traded, sold, carved and set like a semi-precious stone even though it’s a manmade product. The reason it is so special is because it is an unintentional product and some of the paint in those layers are really, really old. As described on www.thenewswheel.com: “It’s created by layer upon layer of slag-like material formed from spray-painting cars by hand. Each time a new car got colored, the oversprayed paint gradually built up on the tracks and skids holding the vehicle’s frame. Those paint layers harden as the cars entered “ovens” to cure the paint on the frame. After being baked hundreds of times, this agate would become an obstruction and had to be removed by hand.”
This meddlesome byproduct was thought to initially be something the plant worker’s pocketed as a curiosity but eventually it found its way into the hands of jewelers. Although there is documented use of this as a kind of stone as much as 30 years ago, it wasn’t until artist Cindy Dempsey of Urban Relic Design was interviewed by The New York Times that it really started to get noticed. And with demand going up but supply being finite (they don’t paint cars that way anymore), it is getting really expensive. There are even people talking about hunting down and mining the sites where the waste materials of the car plants were dumped. How crazy is that?
Okay, so it’s a cool story, but what does that mean for polymer? At the very least, it means that the mokume look is appreciated and in-fashion. We won’t be able to provide the sense of history or be identifiable by car types or time periods as these pieces are, but the way people are working with this and the kind of visual textures they are getting is just one source of inspiration for your own textural explorations. Plus, it’s just a cool story!
I choose this particular piece to share because the artist integrated the drips, rather than grinding them off or using a portion with less variation. The piece was created by a seller on Etsy whose shop is called “Walk On The Moon”. I am unsure if the artists who work in fordite commonly grind the stones from the chunk of compressed paint or if they get the pieces and just decide how best to present it. In any case, it’s pretty neat stuff for something so wholly unintentional.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Take a look at your half-finished pieces or scrap elements and look for the beauty in it that you didn’t see before. If you cut it, grind it down, drill it, add a layer, hang it in a different orientation, or do something completely unintended, can you see the wonderful thing it can become? Study or play with the piece until you find a form or treatment that makes it work.
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Changing Winds
February 17, 2016
Inspirational Art
This is not going to be as much of a jaw-dropping post as the last, but rather this will be an ‘ah1’, especially for those of us who have followed this artist for the many years she has been wowing us.
Whenever these newer pieces pop up, I think they are fiberarts. I think these are fabric-wrapped or those thread-wrapped weavings created over metal forms. They have that sense of texture and refinement. But no, this is polymer, as are all the wonderful new pieces coming out of Bonnie Bishoff and J.M Syron’s studios. Even their wall art reminds one of quilts and hand-dyed fabrics. The big surprise is just how far some of these pieces are from the inlaid furniture they were so well-known for. I am not objecting. The style of the newest pieces are so fresh looking, in both color and form, but it does feel like a pendulum swing especially comparing the airiness of the wire and polymer pieces with their cabinets and credenzas.
If you are familiar with the couple’s furniture but haven’t seen their jewelry, pop over to their website for a breath of fresh air.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: How do you usually design? Heavy or light? Design or create a piece whose heaviness or delicate nature is to an extreme that makes you just a little uncomfortable. Do you find yourself more comfortable, or even excited by it, by the time you are done?
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Teeny Tiny Surprises
February 15, 2016
Inspirational Art
This week is going to be full of little surprises, I decided. And nothing starts off a week of little surprises like the absolute smallest butterflies ever. They are not made of polymer, of course. Right? Well, actually, they are!
Julia Cissell of God’s Flying Flowers on Etsy takes miniatures to a whole new, well, height I guess you’d have to say. Butterflies are small enough in our own world so who would ever think of making them to Dollhouse scale? Well, apparently Julia did. And wow are they amazing. The detail is incredible, down to the nylon little legs and antennae! Oh my goodness … she must have amazing eyesight and really fantastic magnifying glasses to work under. And no, they are not painted. They are canes. Beautiful and incredibly detailed, they would be amazing at 10 times the size.
You can look over her collection, all slack-jawed with amazement, in her Etsy store. Also stop by Linda’s Art Spot where I found this story about Julia and her teeny tiny art pieces. You can see an example of her canes there and some other ways she presents her little treasures.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Change the scale of your work. If you usually work small, create or design something 5-10x as large as you usually work. If you work big, make the smallest, most delicate piece you can. How does changing the scale affect how you design?
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A Burst of Love
February 12, 2016
Inspirational Art
This last Valentine’s week post is a bit of a Valentine itself, being sent out to this amazing artist and friend whose work I am posting– not because I know her but because she is so inspiring.
Paula K Gilbert has been in the polymer art community for twenty-some years now. She has kept at it through a series of very difficult times that included health issues that made it hard to think clearly, much less hold a tool steady. But she kept creating and, not only that, kept sharing. And she still does. She has been a regular contributor to The Polymer Arts and has assisted us in research and administrative tasks, on and off, for nearly the entire existence of the magazine, much of it in a self-imposed volunteer status. She is one of the most generous souls I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
This past year, Paula turned to an alternative source of art related to her work in polymer, one that could be more easily handled regardless of the kind of day she’s having. She started, if I remember correctly, making alcohol ink designs on small glass tiles for pendants. I don’t know why she was so surprised that they sold so fast. They were beautiful little gems. Eventually, she turned to painting tiles with alcohol ink in these beautiful abstract designs, and loosely-formed imagery bloomed onto them. Her sense of color and intuitive application has resulted in some amazingly energetic and entrancingly beautiful pieces. Although she has dabbled in more involved techniques, including scratch-off etching and stamping, I think her uncomplicated and obviously impassioned application, like what you see here, really shows her love for art as well as her persevering spirit.
Paula doesn’t have a website at the moment but she has been posting her work on Facebook. Nonetheless, she has a waiting list for her painted tiles, so if you are interested, well, line up behind me because I am on the list myself! If you want to contact Paula but can’t do so through Facebook, you can write us here and we’ll pass it on.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create something for someone you love. Make it something small and uncomplicated. Don’t think about making a great piece or impressing them. Don’t even try to make something you think they would like. Just keep them in mind and pull materials and colors that remind you of them. Create spontaneously and without self-criticism, and see what your love for another and for yourself comes up with.
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Subdued Passion
February 10, 2016
Inspirational Art
I know it will be hard to top Monday’s piece. The energy in that sculpture was unreal. But intensity of that kind is not the only thing that visually defines passion. How about that low but long burning fire many of us have? It may be a passion for art or for our family or friends. It might be how we feel getting out in nature or the desire for adventure. It is not crazy but it is always there and that kind of passion, that persistent, ever present emotion, is sustaining and keeps us focused on the things that are good in our lives and good for ourselves.
So, to represent that slow burning passion, I picked this mellow yet fiery caned earring and pendant set. There is not the chaos of movement we saw Monday but you can still feel the energy. The Czech Republic’s Kejka creates the energy through both the purely warm color palette and the tapered but parallel and highly directional lines. The gradation from dark on the outside to light in the middle on the pendant also gives it a glow.
Kejka made a series of these flame-like canes in various colors. Take a look at the purple and blue one as well on her Facebook page.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create or sketch in a completely warm color palette. That means from reds to oranges to yellows. Try either creating a subdued feel with your design for these highly energetic colors or see how insanely energetic you can make it.
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The Energy of Passion
February 8, 2016
Inspirational Art
I only now realized that this week ends with Valentine’s day and I had to stop and contemplate whether I should do a theme. Last year’s personal love stories just can’t be topped, though, so let’s dial it back to the essence of what Valentine’s day represents. Or try. What it represents is rather personal though, isn’t it? I know for most people it represents romantic love, but I like to think of it as being about passion. And that passion can be towards anyone or anything that you feel intensely about. It’s definitely a more all-inclusive day if it is a holiday in which we can celebrate all the things we love so dearly as we all have someone or something that is lucky enough to get so much of our passion.
It is hard to say what passion looks like in art, but I think we all know it when we see it. High energy and maybe even a little tension works. A dash of red doesn’t hurt either. So, today I am sharing something I shared a while back on my personal Facebook page because it is so amazing and embodies what I see as a multi-faceted sense of passion.
This polymer and mixed media sculptural work is by the amazing Forest Rogers. The energy in this piece is so intense, it’s rather mesmerizing. The energy is in the heavy directional lines of the torn fabric, the horizontal arms, the flung back wings of the crow, and the slant of the weaponry on the ground. To really bring it home, there is that streak of blood-red streaming behind the figure whose implacable sense of forward motion seems to be leaving everything behind. Forest did not leave a lot of breathing room here, but we aren’t distressed by it because we recognize the emotion. It’s a full and intense passion, maybe sheathed in fury or defiance, but passion nonetheless for whatever cause this creature is flinging herself into.
I think this also embodies Forest’s passion for her work. All of her pieces have an unearthly energy to them, an energy that comes not just from her skill as an artist, but from a real sense of how fully invested she is in her craft and her vision. I feel this in that spot right below the ribcage when I get lost in my work, when the art just seems to spill from my fingertips. It seems most present when I am just creating without purpose or caring what anyone else will think of it. A passion for one’s art comes from simply needing to do it, from letting it become instead of struggling to create. I don’t know if that makes sense to all of you, but this piece very much calls to mind that truly intense passion for creating. If you have had that feeling for your creative work, then I feel sure you can see it too.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Use high energy directional lines to design or create an energetic or passionate piece. You can use Forest’s example to inspire your energetic lines or look to other work that you think is particularly energetic and passionate. See if you can discern the lines in the work that help relay this and try to recreate that energy in an original design of your own.
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Further Shaping Complexity
February 5, 2016
Inspirational Art
If you read Wednesday’s post, and especially if you took on the challenge, you might very easily find the connection between what you see here and what I talked about then. This is a great example of a repeated shape creating complexity. In this case, the repeated shape is actually a circle and most of the circles here are created with jump rings. As a way to create complex faux enamel with the wire boundary lines, this use of jump rings is pretty darn clever.
The piece and short tutorial are by Muchi at Muchi Creaciones. Something like this would have been a perfect exercise for Wednesday’s challenge. No, it looks nothing like Bettina’s stacked shapes, but it is built on that same set of ‘rules’, and in these challenges I really hope you will use the rules as the most skeletal frame to build off.
Here the repeated shape has a fair amount of variation to it which creates a cohesive as well as interesting piece. There are three types of circles (the pendant shape itself, the jump rings, and the crystals) but in different sizes and colors and yet they all look like they belong together. See, using the same shape over and over could get a little mundane, but on the other hand changing up every element in a piece makes it feel chaotic. If you have one strong, repeated element, it won’t matter how much variation there is between them as there is a common characteristic and therefore we see them as related. As long as we find a relationship between elements, we feel there is some level of order and intention. Intention-less art is simply not interesting. And although you can make something chaotic, it should be obviously intentional if you want people to have an interest in it
If you want to check out the brief instructions to making this type of faux enamel, hop on over to Muchi’s blog post here then stay to check out her other clever little tutorials and creations.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Take a single, simple shape or form and create at least 10 different variations, making them as different from one another as you can imagine. Don’t think about what you will make from them, just create the elements. Once you have your 10 or more pieces complete, put them together in one piece or create a series from them. Don’t forget, you can share what you come up with while participating in these challenges on the Flickr page!
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Complexity in Simple Shapes
February 3, 2016
Inspirational Art
You do not need a wide variety of elements, shapes, textures, or other complexities to create an intriguing piece. As I mention quite a bit, keeping it simple is often the most impressive and eye-catching approach. The trick is in developing or arranging the design in an unusual or energetic fashion.
With these beautiful brooches by Bettina Welker, there is not an abundance of variation besides size and that one shift in color at the apex of these little stacks. But the variation in position and size creates a swirl that draws you in. Simple but precise shapes, beautifully crafted and finished is all these brooches need, in addition to that visual energy, to go from fairly simple to fascinatingly sophisticated.
Bettina, also a graphic designer, creates a beautiful website as well as wearable art. Go enjoy her pieces and her presenation on her BeadWorx website, or if you want a condensed view of her brooches, check out her albums in Ipernity.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Take a simple shape and repeat it. You can give it as much variation as you like, but it must be the same shape. It can change in size, color, texture, imagery on it, treatment, arrangement, or finish. It can be separate shapes stacked upon one another or constructed into one object, like a necklace or a sculpture. Or work in two-dimension and treat or form your surface with the shape repeated on it in whatever fashion you would like. What can you get a simple shape to do for you?
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The art jewelry at these events is also a big draw. There is nothing quite like seeing masterful polymer work in person.
Here is a gorgeous piece by Bonnie Bishoff. She wore it to the final gala event and I just could not stop looking at the delicate forms and sunset-like colors. The picture (and the poor lighting in these places) doesn’t quite do it justice.
Another bonus to coming to these events is the local color. In this case, Sherman Oberson, a board member of the IPCA and a local Pennsylvania resident, treated a small handful of us to a tour of his insanely packed and ever-entertaining collection of flea market and thrift store finds. We did this, in part, to honor Nan Roche whose birthday it was. A huge collector of the curious and visually enticing herself, it was a perfect birthday outing for her and an immensely entertaining evening for those of us who got to tag along.
Poke around on Instagram and Facebook for more on Sherman’s place and other Synergy events.
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Exploring technique and design doesn’t ever end, or at least I don’t think it should. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been working with a material, there is always more to learn. Barbara McGuire is a true and long standing polymer pioneer who may often return to signature techniques but she keeps expanding on what she has done, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in big leaps.
This collection of beads is one of her subtler explorations. Barbara has been making face canes for ages but she keeps changing up what she does with them. The angelic looking collection here gets its ethereal feel from the use of translucent wings and background cane slices. Past variations were commonly surrounded by opaque slices and balanced or radial backgrounds. The more freeform application here adds to the otherworldly feel of these little angels.
Barbara posts most of her recent work on her Facebook page while her products and news can usually be found on her website.
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Looking over a collection of work can tell you quite a bit about an artist and what intrigues them. The posts this week will give us a chance to consider, in a more complete and varied way, what an artist might be doing or be after in particular types of work.
Carole Monahan-Kampfe recently posted some rather intriguing pieces in what she refers to as her Steampunk collection but instead of jewelry, it looks like we are seeing a lot of ornaments. We are looking at Swellegant treatments (click the ad link below for more on this fascinating stuff) which make for some very yummy textures but the various shapes and variation on an ornament is what is most captivating about this work.
Although she is calling it steampunk and the influence of that aesthetic is there, many of the common motifs are, gratefully, missing and we can enjoy the exploration of the surface treatment and the manipulation of the ornament forms. I love the negative space in the ones with the floating centers and then those forms that are folding in on themselves which she calls Infinity Orbs. No standard ornament forms here either. Carole actually looks to be taking not the motifs and objects from the Steampunk arena but rather the inventive nature it is supposed to be representative of. Regardless, the choice of shapes and decorative touches are beautiful and more so in a collection like this where the various take on the elements and forms can be compared and contrasted.
The orbs at least, she lists as being made with Makin’s clay which is an air dry clay, rather than polymer but this could all be done with polymer as well of course. Carole just likes to try all kinds of things out as you can see on her Flickr photostream–another method of looking at an artist’s collection of work and over time at that. In this collection though, she seems to have really hit her stride and I hope she keeps playing with these ideas.
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Another way to push the disk element in strung jewelry design is to create designs on those inside surfaces. This might push you to design the disks in such a way as to open up space between them so that the work on the inside could be seen. That might present a bit of a challenge but it will likely present some interesting options for added accents and forms.
Margit Bohmer did just that. Her solution to show off the intricate and highly colorful faces of her disks was to slightly dome them and have them stacked in pairs with the concave sides in, allowing an angled view to all the beautiful color and textures she worked into them. It looks like quite a bit of work too. I just love seeing this kind of dedication and commitment to a piece. Each bead face is different and could stand on its own but all together, they create an engrossing piece that will probably take the owner years to become familiar with all its varied surfaces.
A riot of color and texture is a signature of Margit’s and she never leaves us wanting for more of either. See her latest work on her Flickr photostream.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Choose a basic or commonly used design and push it. By sketching, planning, or just playing with your materials, change the form or the way this basic design is constructed as far as you can until you come up with something that intrigues and excites you then create your own original work from the ideas you came up with.
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Let’s move on from the ‘ordinary’ disk necklace and really push what these could be. First of all, who says they need to be round? Or strung on their center sitting neatly one on top of the other? Well, no one, that’s who.
Silvia Ortiz de la Torre goes completely off the disk reservation by squaring off the standard disk necklace element and taking full control of their positioning. This necklace is getting so far from a disk that I bet some of you are thinking it’s not a disk necklace at all. And maybe not but the stacking and repetition of form is the same and this is a good example of where an idea might start with some common or basic design and really veer off in very exciting directions, ending in a place barely recognizable from where it started. I don’t know that Silvia started with the idea of disks but she could have. And so can you start from a well used (or over-used) form or basic design and end up somewhere quite different. The thing is, it would have been hard to get to that cool and very original design without that common or basic starting point.
This piece is several years old but Silvia still loves disks and stacking but she is taking things in a very different direction these days. See how she has journeyed from pieces like this to her big intricate disks display in her Flickr photostream and her Etsy shop.
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Disc beads are fantastic for the complexity they can create just by sheer numbers. They also pull the design away from any one bead and put the focus on how they work together. Employing Skinner blends to create the series of well-arranged colors on this necklace, Spain’s Carmen Morente del Monte, develops a rather striking look with the common stacked disk necklace design as the basis for her composition.
It is not that we haven’t seen quite a few Skinner disc arrangements but this one is rather intriguing with its wide array of colors that still somehow conveys a sense of quiet coherence. I believe that is primarily due to the muted, natural tone of the colors. Their thick spacers subtly echo the surrounding color while their variations trail off to long stacks of warm grays. I think the choice of gray rather than black or white or simply more of the colorful blends for the back half of the bead string is actually what makes this piece work so well. The gray creates a kind of neutral background for the colors to contrast with but the contrast is a gentle one which is also echoed at points in the front beads where the blends go to gray.
I was just having a conversation this weekend about how people steer away from anything well used believing their work won’t be appreciated unless it’s wholly original but how far from the truth that is. Doing something really, really well, even when it has elements seen many times before, is a far bigger and more difficult accomplishment than striving for something purely original. I think this necklace is just such an example.
You can find more of Carmen’s well thought out pieces in her Etsy shop and her Pinterest boards.
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To round out this week’s quick focus on beads, I thought I’d share focal beads in another medium that is very well-known for them–glass.
Glass artists have some very particular and, literally, inflexible limitations and yet they create these extremely intricate and amazing beads. They do get to work with super clear transparency–a characteristic of their medium that they use to great advantage–which is something that is difficult to achieve in polymer, but their forms and patterns are something that, I think, could be a gold mine of inspiration and a jumping off point for ideas in polymer that go beyond the basic and common beads seen in polymer.
Here are just four examples of the intricacy and beauty in glass bead making today. Starting from top left is a bead created by Leah Nietz, top right is Lisa Fletcher, bottom left is Andrea Guarino, and bottom right is Ikuyo Yamanaka. You can click on each artist’s name to reach their shop or website to look further into what they create. You can also immerse yourself in glass focal beads by putting that very phrase into a Pinterest, Google Images, Etsy, Flickr, or even Instagram.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Choose your favorite image posting service, such as those just listed above, and enjoy the art and inspiration that comes up when you search for “focal beads”. Choose a couple of images and try to determine what you like best about the bead or beads and then figure out how to recreate those characteristics in polymer. Hopefully that leads you to some original and very fulfilling polymer bead explorations.
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How about just a little bead beauty from the consistently wonderful Sarah Shriver today while I amble down the road?
Six canes constructed into a cube that is both turned on its side and has had its corner’s tweaked makes for a beautiful simple bead design. Just those two changes to the upright and steady cube has created movement due to its relative instability, facing the world with but one point down, and direction since the slight sweep of the sides slides our eye out to the point of the cube corners and beyond. And let’s not forget the lovely lines of the canes themselves that add to both the movement and directing of the viewers eyes beyond the constrains of the cube.
Apparently, Sarah will be teaching this Celtic cane on the Alaska Polymer Clay Cruise, the “Clayditarod” coming up next month. I was not able to discern if spaces are left for what is certain to be an amazing polymer adventure but you can check out the details and query as needed on the cruise website here. And for more splendid Sarah Shriver work, jump over to her website here.
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This will be a simple, and hopefully simply delightful, week as I am traveling or in the midst of preparing to travel and will have to be brief. But I have had the idea of the ‘bead’ on my mind. That sounds pretty basic, I know, but for art jewelry, the bead–be it a simple, plain spacer or an extravagant focal piece–is the most common single element created and thus, has a pretty highly esteemed place in the world of adornment. So let’s take a closer look at some very well-considered and lovingly created beads.
These beauties are cane constructed by the ever clever Ivy Niles of iKandi Clay. Canes takes their place on center stage as well as energetically running around the circumference for an intricate and rather mesmerizing look.
If you are partial to either a well-done cane or intricate, take a break to look through Ivy’s her Etsy shop and her website.
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