All Scratched Up
January 23, 2017
Inspirational Art
What a weekend! There was lots of heavy lifting as I continued to get my new home and studio set up in California and in the background, I’m thinking about the news of yet another craft magazine closing down while here at TPA we are ramping up plans for a new periodical (see the TPA newsletter for this news and check out the links to the sale I Love 2 Craft is having on our book and back issues), all this while hoping we don’t get washed away the heavy deluge of rain here. I have to say, I’m thoroughly worn out. And yet here is a new week to greet us with much left to do!
Perhaps that is why I found myself collecting images of work with scratches and dings and wonderful worn textures. I kind of feel the same way. However, there is beauty even in the worn out and scratched up.
These simple bell forms, created by Katya Tryfonoava, are elevated, rather than diminished, by a cacophony of scratches. The lines, emphasized by what I assume is rubbed in black paint, show energy as well as give the beads texture and contrast. This is quietly balanced by consistently sized and evenly placed dots marching around the higher slopes.
Katya’s simple shapes and hand crafted texture seems to be at the heart of her desire to combine the modern with folk art. As she says in her Flickr profile, “My goal is to empower modern styles with the inner truth, the energy and wisdom of generations that are naturally embedded in the traditional art. This is what I define as a largely overlooked link between the old and new cultures, worlds, ways of life. I don’t want to simplify the contemporary art to primitive, but I want to bring to it character, spontaneity, energy, living vibrations, expression and passion, which are inherent in folk art, to fill the contemporary shapes with new meaning.”
See where her goals have taken her by perusing her wide array of exploratory pieces on her Flickr photostream.
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Journals: Organic Matter
January 21, 2017
Uncategorized
Journal covers are very much like blank canvases, which means you can do anything you desire on them. Your medium is probably the only thing that will constrict you, but then you aren’t restricted to one medium, are you? Polymer is amazing and will always be my go to material but I wouldn’t ignore other wonderful options, especially since so many other mediums work so well with polymer.
Here is a journal cover that has no polymer on it but most of the materials used are quite familiar to polymer clayers and could be combined with it to create looks inspired by this texture rich cover. Gabrielle Pollacco uses an insanely wide array of paints, inks, powders, sprays, stencils, stamps and a few other things to create this cover. Sometimes, too many materials is like too many ingredients in a recipe … going overboard can really muck things up. But Gabrielle brings it all together here by limiting her palette and sticking with a weathered look as her thematic motif.
She seriously looks like she is having way too much fun in this video tutorial that she recorded of her full process for creating this cover. I now have a new list of products to find and try so if you watch this, you have been warned that it may result in a bit of frenetic online shopping! Also … the music she uses may get stuck in your head and have you bopping about the rest of the day. It’s not a bad thing. Just wanted to give you a head’s up so you are ready to defend yourself with the mute button if bopping is not appropriate at the time.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Create a journal cover for your goals and plans book. Try some new materials to really make it interesting. If you’ve not covered a journal or sketchbook before and find covering a pristine new book on your first try to be a bit too much pressure, create on a separate sheet of clay that can be glued to the journal later or, if you like it as is, can be a bit of inspiration to frame. A sheet of raw clay, cured between two tiles to keep it perfectly flat can be a great ‘canvas’ to work on.
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Journals: Polymer Painted
January 19, 2017
Inspirational Art
Not only is today’s journal cover an inspiration for what you can do with your own decorative journal cover, it’s a beautiful example of ‘painting’ with polymer.
England’s Monika Duchowicz actually does do a bit of acrylic painting on this along with the polymer applications but it doesn’t come across as painted. I would guess most of the painting is in the moss on the stone and in the water which is beautifully rendered and in a way that polymer would not be able to emulate in such a seamless fashion. With a successful background in painting, it’s no wonder that the water and its complex reflections look so real.
Journals are a primary form for Monika, especially these painterly ones. You can view more of her journals as well as wearable art in her Etsy shop and on her website which is in Polish and English although some pages are just one or the other. You can always drop the URL of a page or parts of text into Google Translate if you come upon text that needs translating. .
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Journals: Precious Plummage
January 17, 2017
Inspirational Art
I’m sorry we are a little late posting this week. We had a few technical and timing difficulties but we are back on track now. Speaking of which … how many of you are still on track with your new year’s resolutions or plans for 2017? It can be so exciting to come up with the plans and goals but actually getting them done can be another matter. There are a number of things you can do to help keep on track but I think, the most important thing is to write it all down. There is something about having our ideas written out in black and white that makes us feel more committed to them, that makes them concrete and real in a way that an idea just floating around in our head does not.
So I was thinking that having a pretty journal to write those ideas in would be highly encouraging. Not only will you want to use a beautifully decorated journal, you are also far less likely to shove it in a drawer and forget about it. Write your goals, and the steps you need to take to reach them, in a beautiful journal and leave it where it can be admired as well as remind you of its contents. Of course, I’d encourage you to create your own beautiful journal cover and so, this week, we’ll focus on journal cover inspiration.
When talking journals and polymer, it is almost obligatory to show off a journal by Aniko Kolesnikova. Here is a gorgeous peacock cover she created last year. I love that it’s not just a polymer composition attached to the front but that it flows across the entire cover, including the back and spine, so that all the sides are connected. It’s still quite functional with less decor on the back so it will lay flat and be comfortable to write in but remains beautiful from any side.
Although a profusion of scattered crystals can so easily come across as garish, the be-jeweled feathers work in this cover as the bright and abundant plumage blends with them. The beautiful labradorite is also well integrated although I have a feeling that it really pops in person as reflected light and colors would change within its layers as it is moved about.
Aniko has over a dozen views of this particular piece on her Flickr photostream so you can more closely examine all the details. Of course, you can also see her other journals there, on her website and on her Mandarin Duck Facebook page.
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Moths and Mushrooms
January 14, 2017
Inspirational Art
For a last look at moths this week, I thought I’d share this work by Cheryl Lee Myers of Elemental Urchin. This is probably not polymer clay but rather two-part epoxy clay. I say that because for one, I found that she paints these all on a black base that looks very much like epoxy I’ve used and, two, she never mentions polymer.
I did wonder if her decision not to specify the type of clay she uses was because she is very much into nature and mother earth so she didn’t want to see the word polymer or epoxy in her nature-centric listings. I personally don’t see that as a problem but not everyone understands the choices we make as artists, even when us tree-huggers create in plastic and such. I have a lot of thoughts on that subject and I’ll be talking about that at this summer’s Synergy 4 in Pennsylvania which, by the way, opened registration this week so hop over to get signed up and start making your travel plans!
But regardless of the reason Cheryl doesn’t mention the type of clay she uses, the idea of recreating natural elements combined with actual natural elements is something I thought might inspire a few readers who haven’t tried it yet. She also changes up what nature has given us, much like our artists from earlier this week.
Cheryl’s textures and painted wings–see the moths wings with what look to be lily pads and stars in them?–are visually rich as is the dominant purple color palette. The light touch of metallic powder and the shine of the stones create an alluring combination but one not quite like what we’d find in the wild but obviously it exists in this artist’s mind!
I found Cheryl’s work on Instagram but you can also take a look at her work in her Etsy shop.
Inspirational Challenge of the Week: Find something in nature and recreate it … your way. Change or add to what nature has already done and make it your version.
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Rippling Wings
January 12, 2017
Inspirational Art
Apparently I am not the only one who likes moths! The first post this week knocked the meter off the scale and was shared, liked and viewed thousands of times. We also got our answer as to who the artist was–Darya Telegina of Balambeshka on www.vk.com. I’ve added it to the post which you can see here. (Thank you to Sherrie Brittig, Conny Brockstedt, and Natalya Aleksandrova for figuring it out and sending the links!)
So how about a few more moths this week? This beautiful fluttering thing is the creation of Iryna Limanska who makes all kinds of flora and fauna inspired wearable pieces.
The attraction here is partly the delicate colors but mostly the rippling edges of the moth wings which gives it a lively and energetic look. Those ripples are a bit of artistic license, however, as the moth she refers to in the listing–the Actias Luna moth–doesn’t ripple like this or have colored edging. I don’t think there are any moths with this kind of rippled edge to its wings, none I could find. But as artists, this is exactly what I think we should be doing–creating something not seen before.
Not that it is inartistic to recreate nature in exact detail but since we can alter what nature has already shown us, why would we not? This is where self-expression has a chance to come out in quiet but insistent ways. It is an opportunity to show others how we interpret what we see or how we’d like to see it.
Irvna does a lot of this altering nature in small ways in her work. Check out the flower petal skirts on her ballerina silhouettes and her succulent boutonnieres, all listed in her Etsy shop.
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The Ethereal Moth
January 10, 2017
Inspirational Art
I don’t know what it is, but moths seem to be popping up all over the place in the polymer-sphere. They are pretty amazing too. This one was hard to miss. The translucent wings and choice of colors that are smoothly graduated in beautifully executed detail make this moth feel quite ethereal. Even the fluff and strands on the head are finely wrought clay with careful attention paid to the progression of grays. It’s a wonderful piece but unfortunately, I don’t have the artist to credit. It showed up on Pinterest with a link to a polymer group page on www.vk.com but with over 11,000 members, I have no idea whose it could be.
I can’t tell you how many pieces I pass up for features in the blog because there is no artist listed and initial searching leaves me no clues. Which means we are all without further knowledge of these artists. You can help change this.
If you like something so well that you save it, be sure there is a link to the source of the image’s information, not just the website’s homepage. You can ensure you are doing this by grabbing the web address of the post, article, or particular page you found the image on in the notes of the image on the social media site you save it to. If the address is just the website home page, you can usually click through on the post’s title or the “more …” link at the bottom of it to find the particular page with the artist’s information in whatever form the posting person has it.
Let’s give credit where credit it due. Not to mention giving us a chance to find out whose work we are admiring. As usual, if anyone knows who created this, chime in. I know I would like to see what other wonderful things they are creating!
UPDATE: We got our answer as to who the artist was–Darya Telegina of Balambeshka on www.vk.com. Thank you to Sherrie Brittig, Conny Brockstedt, and Natalya Aleksandrova for figuring it out and sending the links!
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Illusionary Color
January 7, 2017
Inspirational Art
Since this week seems to be about juxtaposed color that causes visual shifting, I thought I’d check in on Sandra Trachsel of Koniz, Switzerland who creates some of the most splendid three-dimensional looking cane layouts. Her pieces are visual illusions of space and movement, all created with changes in shades and values of color and how they line up.
Here is one of her pieces from about a year ago. She calls this Necklace Artichoke which, as it is with a lot of her pieces, was inspired by a quilt pattern, this one from quilter Sylvia Schäfer. Although the cane work looks very much like the sample quilt, this arrangement and repetition takes it a step beyond. The variation in the side and background colors of the beads adds to the energy and dimensional feeling. If you try to look at the necklace as a whole, the beads then look to glow from their centers. It’s a beautiful adaptation of the original pattern.
Even though a lot of Sylvia’s canes come quite directly from quilt patterns, her precision and choices as she reinterprets them in polymer is quite inspiring. Take a look at her collection of pattern dominant work on her Flickr photostream.
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A Fitting Start
January 5, 2017
Inspirational Art
At first I couldn’t figure out what Carol Blackburn had done here and could only stare at this in wonderment. But then, I was looking at the image on my phone as Randee Ketzel had forwarded it to me and I have to immediately check out anything Randee sends my way. On closer examination (and on a full size computer screen), I realized that these are sheets of Skinner blended clay fitted together using interlocking tabs. Carol refers to them as Dodecahedra and mentions in the thread of comments on her Facebook page that she plans to make earrings out of them so I guess they aren’t too big. I sure would love to see them in person. It’s her color combinations that really make these work with all cool or all warm colors on each one, making the variety of color relate.
Carol does like to play with sheets of clay, much like paper and in ways related to paper art but the durability and embedded color add an aspect you just can’t get in paper. You can see what I mean by jumping over to her website. If you are on Facebook, jump over to Carol’s page and check out the comments and conversation.
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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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