Changing Things Up
January 3, 2017
Uncategorized
Well, here we are … first post of 2017 and I find myself, again, focused on how to make this a year full of useful information and inspiration for everyone who so kindly drops in on my mental meanderings. To that end, I have decided to make a couple tweaks.
I’m going to have just one Inspirational Challenge a week, at the end of the week, so those who were feeling bad that they couldn’t do all three each week (not that I expected that myself!), will feel some of the pressure come off and we’ll have the weekend to work on them.
The other thing is to prioritize studio time in my schedule for myself. This will greatly be assisted by the fact that as of next week, I will finally have the space for a dedicated and properly equipped studio in California, the state I will now be calling home as I move into our new house. I still have my space in Colorado but will be there only once a quarter or so. Not traveling nearly every month will certainly help with getting more time in the studio too.
To further assist in my New Year’s resolution to find more studio time in my day, I might change up the posts a bit, as long as I can still give you great content. Just want to see what I can do with very short formats. Then, after the move I’ll put together a survey and get your input on what you’d like to see in the blogs, newsletters, magazines and books. If you have specific ideas that you think I should put to a vote in this survey, write me directly at sbray(a)thepolymerarts.com before the 14th of January.
In the meantime, let’s look at some clever designs this week that take common or familiar ideas but give them an interesting tweak. These beads are, I believe, variations on using the same striped sheets of clay but arranged in different patterns. It is hard to believe these could all be from the same initial pattern but look at each piece closely and you’ll see a bargello like concept used to arrange each one. It’s rather fascinating to identify what Jana Honnerova did here. It’s rather like some kind of brain puzzle. But it brings to mind what we can get out of pushing our arrangements.
Jana’s hallmark seems to be taking one thing and seeing what else can be done with it, both with her own techniques and the techniques she has learned from others. See whose influences you can identify in her work and what she does to change up the approach of other artists on her Flickr photostream.
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Fragility and Strength
December 30, 2016
Inspirational Art
Although New Year’s Eve allows for all kinds of bling and shimmer to be pulled out and showed off, sometimes the most impressive statement is understatement. That’s what I think this strong but delicate piece from jewelry designer Kayo Saito is about.
I imagine this necklace it is quite large so it will show off size wise for certain, but I think the organic shapes in semi-translucent fabrics draw the eye for its juxtaposition in the fragile look of the forms within their strong directional orientation and dense composition. Both the fragility and strength are unwavering which makes it quite a sophisticated and intriguing piece.
I know … I just posted two items in a row this week that weren’t actually polymer. But in both cases, they could easily have been polymer with the same impact. It doesn’t matter what material a piece is made from, only that it is done well and that it inspires. Right? Art is inclusive, not exclusive. Just go take a look at Kayo’s website to see more inspiring, strong and sometimes frail looking work in fabrics and metal.
I also picked this piece because I think its characteristics represents how many of us feel as we head into 2017. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world right now. We don’t know what our leaders are going to do and we don’t know how the conflicts across the world will play out in the coming months or what it will mean for us. This has left many people feeling frail and exposed. But the issues that have arisen have also given many, many people a new sense of direction as well as a swelling sense of responsibility and need to speak out and be heard. We may feel vulnerable, we may even appear frail, but I think a lot of people today are actually strong and resilient. We have already been through some seriously trying times this past decade and we have, for the most part, bounced back. I think recent experiences show that whatever comes this new year, we can meet it with strength, ingenuity, and compassion. A bit more creativity and beauty in the world won’t hurt either.
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Soutache Sashay
December 28, 2016
Inspirational Art
If you aren’t into a lot of bling, you can add a little energy to your outfit with some moving adornment. These soutache and tassel earrings would be mesmerizing on the dance floor this new year’s eve, or at any upcoming special occasion.
Designs in soutache are easily translated into polymer. From the spirals and loops to the integration of beads, browsing through a collection of soutache jewelry offers a lot of ideas for some fancy polymer pieces. And adding tassels like Anna Lipowska Lianne has done with her sashaying soutache would be a lovely addition when you want graceful movement in your jewelry.
Anna is also expert in adding just a dash of color or even going a little geometric. Take a look at her collections on her website and her Facebook page.
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Diamond Rivers
December 26, 2016
Inspirational Art
Now that we have gotten through the heaviest of the holiday season and family members will be packing up and heading back home, its time to think of the coming year. And about New Year’s Eve! This is the time for celebrating with friends and wrapping up the year in style. It’s also the one time of year where everyone can find an event to go all blinged out to.
Even polymer, plastic based as it is, can be crafted with some serious sparkle and sophisticated bling. These rivers of crystals through frosty river rock like beads come in a full shimmer set of necklace earring and a ring. The soft round shapes keeps it from being an overly serious set of adornment but the generous sparkle will bring even a jeans and sweater outfit up several notches.
The set was created by Blanka Procházková, an artisan whose work has the marks of influence from a range of polymer artists, this set included, many of whom she has taken classes with. Her approach and designs have a slightly different angle on what others have done, showing her exploration although not her particular voice, not yet. There are definite hints though and she’d be one to keep an eye on. You can do so by jumping over to her Flickr photostream or her website.
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Dressing up the Christmas Tree
December 23, 2016
Inspirational Art
Although I really want to go with a winter white holiday theme, it was hard not to go into a purely Christmas piece with amazing work like this floating across my monitor as I look for eye candy for you. But whether you do Christmas or not, it is hard not to appreciate the decorative impact of something as unique as this Christmas tree dress.
I’m not sure if this is more a tree or a gown. Maybe it could be worn although it would be quite difficult to get around in. I do know this was made for a client’s home by Legare Simpson at A Ribbon Runs Through It. Legare got into making these when, not finding anything she liked, she tried making wreath’s for herself. What she made impressed others who asked her to make them wreaths and the passion just grew from there.
She makes all kinds of wreaths but it’s her dresses and suits–created for other seasons as well–that really grab the spotlight. I wish I had time to make something so amazing for the house but maybe next year. In the meantime, enjoy her gorgeous array of tree dresses, flower suits and unique wreaths on her website.
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Wintery Bling
December 21, 2016
Inspirational Art
Here’s the look of winter without the below zero temperatures so many weathered this past weekend in the mid and northern United States. Just the right amount of icy color without the icy temperatures!
The mint and pale gray greens on white in these shimmering earrings by Florida’s Irene B are about as wintry feeling as one can get without stepping out into the real thing. The greens really do it as they contrast just a bit with the pearl whites to really make these stand out not to mention that those colors are exactly what you get in freshly frozen ice and under deep, wet snow piles.
These were sold on Etsy back in 2012 and there isn’t much more on them or the artist as her shop seems to be shuttered up right now. The shop notes don’t say whether it’s closed for the season or has been for a while. The set was too beautiful to pass up even without further information but if anyone knows the scoop on this artist, write me and I’ll add it here.
In the meantime, stay warm and cozy. I am heading off into for a chilly drive across Utah today and into the gorgeous Colorado mountains. There is sure to be snow but let’s hope it is only the stuff that has already fallen and will sparkle at us from under a blue, blue sky.
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Adorable Holidays
December 19, 2016
Inspirational Art
Like many of you, I will be traveling this week so I am going to keep things light and brief but stay with the feel of the upcoming season by featuring a few simple but surprising pieces.
This adorable jackalope (as we call these rabbits with antlers in the Southwest) was created in ‘velvet clay’ by Evgeny Hontor with such an endearing look. Decorating the likeness of animals with symbols and marks appears in many cultures throughout the ages with no reason to stop the tradition in modern days. We do still like to celebrate the animal spirits that capture our attention and inspire us.
Although not a reindeer, this little guy felt very wintry and celebratory so I thought it was a great way to start out a Monday. Back to wrapping things up for our little holiday trip but if you want to immerse yourself in more cuteness jump over to Evgeny’s Etsy store for more adorable and beautiful creatures.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: We’re going to take a break from challenges this week as for many of us there will be little time. But let the post inspire you as you see fit if you get yourself some studio time.
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Encouraging Stories
December 16, 2016
Inspirational Art
Our profiled artist for the Winter 2016 issue is the delightfully enigmatic and poetic Alev Gozonar whose work is far less defined by the material than by the stories she has such an overwhelming desire to tell. She works predominantly in polymer if you are looking at the last few years but she takes many detours and one may even wonder if she’ll be wandering back this way at moments.
In the article we feature and discuss her pointillistic cane wall pieces but that is only one part of this ever exploring artist. The work you see here is water-color on paper with little wire and polymer people pushing up the painted shapes to reveal the white and words behind the painting. There is an obvious metaphor of revealing the ideas behind the work but the struggle of the little guys also brings to the forefront the idea of just how hard it is to convey one’s meaning. And, if you know Alev’s work, you know there has got to be a story in this — probably something personal or close to her. In any case, the muted color palette is just beautifully harmonious each open shape just begs you to examine it. I find it an irresistibly intriguing piece and did so wish we had room to discuss some of her pieces like this. But that is both the beauty and the shortcoming of a magazine format –you only have so much time to delve into the most interesting subjects.
Think of the articles as an introduction to subjects and ideas that serendipitously fall into your lap and do go investigate the most interesting ones further. If Alev’s stories and inspiration sparks your interest, go take a look at her beautiful website, especially the section on her book which you can read online (the English is next to the Turkish so don’t let the show of foreign words turn you away).
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Pick up a magazine or scroll through Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram or whatever you have handy. Find something that really grabs you and do a bit of investigating. Keep a notepad or sketchbook nearby and start making notes on what you find inspiring. After you’ve done this, go play in the studio and let that inspiration help you start on your next project. If you detour from the inspiration, that’s fine. Just let it get you started and see where it takes you.
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Close Color Calls
December 14, 2016
Inspirational Art
Our Color Spotlight section of the Winter 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts was graced by Donna Kato, interview by Lindly Haunani. How amazing is that combination?! Donna let us in on her colored pencil experiments and her reasoning behind her approach. Although colored pencil on polymer is not new, it is always fascinating to see into the workings of an artistic mind and since this section focuses on color choices and inspiration, we got a peek at how this master choose colors for her explorations.
One piece that I was sent to consider including was this beautiful necklace you see here. We ended up focusing so much on the pencil work that there really wasn’t a place for this in the article but it certainly deserves a bit of attention. Each section of the necklace deals with one basic hue in two different values. The disparate placement offsets the regularity of each hue showcased in the same shape and the relative dark to light hue being basically the same within each color set. The delicious saturated colors don’t hurt it at all either.
The most active page to see what Donna has been up to in her own art looks to be her Facebook page although you can see some of her more honed work and learn from her wisdom by going over to check out her classes on CraftArtEdu.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Let’s play with color hue. Pick 2-3 colors–they can contrast, be analogous (next to each other on the color wheel) or simply be your favorites. Choose two variations of each color–different saturation (how pure a hue it is), values (dark or light), or tints/shades (additions of white/black.) Now use just these to create a new piece.
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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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