Enticing and Entertaining
August 23, 2017
Inspirational Art, Polymer community news
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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A Choir of Angels
June 22, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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Body of Work
June 20, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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Working on the Inside
June 17, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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The Disk Cubed
June 15, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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Disk Arrangements
June 13, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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The Many Faces of Glass Beads
June 10, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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A Bead Cubed
June 8, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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Bead Break
June 6, 2017
Inspirational Art
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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Since we are, so many of us, in the mode of changing habits right now, I thought I’d post a quick note on posting your art and some things you may want to weigh in terms of how you restrict or allow access to what you post.
To get your work on a blog or to have it shared on sites like Pinterest, the images need to be available to your viewers beyond simply popping up on a screen. A lot of artists are afraid to allow people to access their images for fear that the image will get stolen. The fact is, if someone wants your image and plans to do something unethical with it, blocking downloads or embedding them in Flash is not going to stop it from happening. Images can often be pulled off a site by simply downloading the page or through screen captures. The only way to keep someone from downloading images of your work is to not publicly post it.
On the other hand, restricting people from sharing and accessing your images through valid and helpful means is likely going to cost you quite a bit in missed opportunities. If you have download or share restrictions on Flickr, Instagram, or your website, few bloggers will have the time to track you down to get the image and your admiring public won’t share it. In other words, if you want all that free word-of-mouth from fans and want bloggers to get your work out in front of thousands of appreciative readers, allow sharing and even downloading of your images. You can keep your images small (a computer monitor needs less than 1/4 the pixels that a print image needs to be well rendered), so your work can’t be printed, or even watermark them. Allow people to help you show the world what you’re doing.
I had two other artists whose work I might have posted this week but didn’t because they restricted access to their images. Another thing that often takes a work off my list of sharable images is not knowing who created it. But you know me, I’ll post it and ask for your help in identifying the artist if I really feel the need. Here is one such piece.
I know it was posted on Etsy three or so years ago in a shop called Posies’n’Pearls. It seems that the shop no longer exists so I am unable to give the artist credit. A Pinterest post lists this piece as having peridot, pearls, crystal, and polymer, but we also see ribbons, found objects, and other beads. It seems a step above the common shabby-chic mix we see a lot of these days with a restrained but lovely palette of sage greens, muted warm tones, and antiqued metallics. If you know who this is, we’ll get that posted here and give this well-shared image and the artist the credit they deserve.
Inspiration Challenge of the Day: Shabby-chic aims to pull at our nostalgic heart-strings. Find something in your house that makes you nostalgic and let it be the inspiration for a sketch, color palette, texture, form, or imagery. You can also just write out the ideas it brings up and post it at your work table for later.
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So, as is traditional for many of us at the beginning of a new year, I have set several new goals for myself. One of them–to schedule regular time in the studio–was on my list last year, but between figuring out how to live and work in two states, constant changes in my staff, and the chaos and construction that commenced at various times at both places I’ve been living, this never really happened. And in the end, those are all really just excuses, aren’t they? Well, this year, I decided my resolutions were going to be much more difficult to set aside. Because I’m going to tell you about them.
Telling someone else about goals or plans to do things makes us much more likely to get them done simply because we know someone else knows, and that accountability to someone else’s expectations is a huge motivator. It helps knowing who will motivate you best, as well. For me, it can be just about anyone. I am heavily driven by the thought that people have an expectation of me, but I am slightly more driven by people not so close to me. I know the people closest to me can see the craziness of my life and are more likely to understand why something didn’t get accomplished. But for those that can’t see it, they will only know it didn’t get done and I will feel I disappointed them.
That kind of motivation isn’t always a good thing, though. For instance, I pull a lot of all-nighters and commonly cut down my sleep to work more when I feel like we are getting behind at the magazine. That brings up another goal. I’m not going to deny myself a full 8 hours each night, not anymore. A lack of sleep isn’t really conducive to strong, productive work time to start with and I’m guessing a lot of time-consuming mistakes were because of that. Plus, I’ve been reading about the long-term effects sleep deprivation has on the brain. It seems it may contribute to Alzheimer’s and an escalation of memory loss as we age. I already have some brain damage from a prior illness to deal with, so to further jeopardize that all-too-important organ just seems silly. Same goes for exercising, which helps with the quality of sleep. I sometimes forego my runs or the gym when it gets busy but I am promising myself not to do that either. So, keep your fingers crossed that well rested and fit also means efficiency and easily kept deadlines.
But back to the creative goals … more time in the studio. How to do that? I could simply tell you I will get into the studio more, but if I’m not very specific it can too easily slip away. One needs a specific plan with specific goals and timelines. So, here is my plan, and you can join in on this if you like.
For each blog post I put up, I am going to add an inspirational challenge. I plan to create from each one of these challenges within a day of posting it. These will be small things that can be applied to existing projects, can be manifested in simple exercises that can include any medium or can be starting points for new projects. The point will be to nudge our creativity in a new direction in order to stretch our creative muscle. It can help energize your existing work or get you out of a slump, but more than anything I am hoping it will help keep up an enthusiasm for creating.
I think I will be able to pull the challenges out of the work I find to share, but I am leaving open the possibility of posting challenges that are unrelated. So bear with me as we figure this out. I am thinking of posting a 4th blog each week with my efforts of the week and/or the efforts of others if you want to send images to me. Or maybe a Flickr page? What do you think?
Here is the first challenge, inspired by Sonya Girodan, who has had quite the year of exploration and has created the most amazing work from it. Here, Sonya takes some of the stylized tribal faces she’s been working on and works them into a painting. The quality of the color and its application are used in both the painting and the polymer masks. The tribal-like masks, a stylistic contrast to the contemporary feel of the painting, adds to the potential meaning of the work, taking us beyond the purely emotive reaction we might have to the painting to questioning how the masks relate and what story there might be behind it. It’s intriguing, isn’t’ it?
Take a look at more of Sonya’s explorations on her Flickr photostream.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Mix your primary medium with another medium. Either work one type of work into another that already exists or take something you have and add to it in another medium. If that doesn’t inspire you, simply ‘doodle’ in an unfamiliar or not regularly used medium and see what your mind comes up with.
Ok … let’s see how this goes!
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know at this hour, the whole world has had the chance to greet the first day of the New Year, but I would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy, creative, productive, and beautiful 2016.
I am doing so with the help of the DiAmore Design Studio, which is a team of artists rather than an individual. They hail from the Ukraine and specialize in unique decorated and custom wedding items such as guestbooks, cake toppers, table decorations, and, more than anything really, hand decorated glasses.
I think it is rather hard to make a sophisticated decorated glass that isn’t over done but this team has that down. This beautiful polymer hydrangea works with these champagne glasses, even as large as they are, because their shape simply follows the bottom edge of the glasses’ bowl. It would feel obtrusive if it was planted farther up and farther down would cover up the thin delicacy of the stem which keeps the whole look from feeling bulky.
Beyond the flower, there is this delicate hand-painted design with accented pearls. Those seem rather standard with these hand adorned glasses, but the bold flower makes for a rather unique decorated champagne glass. I think bold should be the motto this year! I have a few bold ideas of my own I’ll introduce in the coming weeks. What have you in store for the new year?
So, a toast to you and yours. I hope you are relaxing and enjoying the first day of this brand new year!
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So, this week we recover from Christmas, get gifts returned and exchanged (if we are brave enough to stand in those long customer service lines!), and prepare for the New Year. It’s quite a shift from the family-focused holidays the rest of the season. New Year’s eve is usually for our friends more than our family and the parties or dinners out or drinks at the house are what’s on our mind about now. What to wear?! I know that becomes an overriding concern for many, so I thought I’d look for some blingy-ness that could help dress up any basic outfit. With the right jewelry, you can skip buying a new dress and just have everyone transfixed by your adornment, second only to your vivacious self, of course.
I was looking for shimmery and sparkling when I came across this lovely resin dominant bracelet. Hélène JeanClaude is a polymer artists who is big on transparency, but I am unsure just how much of this is polymer, if any. Not that it matters too terribly. The colors and reflection she is getting off the fabric texture buried in the resin and the shimmer of the colors make it quite eye-catching. You can see how, even with a lot of shadow around it, the colors and resin reflect and magnify any light that hits it. The flat space and angles of the resin help with this effect as well as distorting the pattern beneath, which adds to the variation of the blended and bleeding colors.
Hélène has been experimenting with this technique for the last two years, creating pendants and earrings with a more obvious use of polymer. If you could get your hands on either or both, that with the bracelet would be all you’d need to dress up a little black dress or even a shirt-and-jeans outfit. I know there isn’t enough time to get a hold of one of Hélène’s pieces, but maybe these can inspire some new pieces of your own you can whip up in the studio this week; bury shimmering clay treated with mica powders or foil leaf under translucent clay, liquid polymer, or resin if you have that on hand. There’s still time!
For further shimmery and translucent inspiration, you can find her other pieces using this technique and her explorations with translucent clay on her Flickr photostream and here on her blog.
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The one thing most of us have in common on a holiday like this is family. Hopefully, we are surrounded by them or will be talking to them today. Some of us will also be missing loved ones but thinking of them fondly. I will be missing all my girls, my step-daughters and granddaughters, but they will all be together out in Kansas with lots of extended family. I will be missing my four siblings and nieces and nephews that live in Colorado and my adopted family of close friends out there. Because this year I am having a sunny Christmas in California and will be taking off shortly with my handsome better half to go spend the rest of the day with my parents, my older sister, and her family. So, I will have some family while missing others, but I am terribly grateful to have so many loved ones and more grateful still that we all get along so well!
I thought a little Eve Thissen would be a perfect accent to the day with her beautifully expressive images, portraying love and tenderness with simple lines and shapes that create tiny but unmistakable gestures. Today will be all about family for so many of us, and this is the feeling I hope you all have as you greet and hold and hug and talk and laugh with them.
Happy holidays and a very warm and merry Christmas to you, my generous and kind polymer and craft art family.
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I know, I know … I said I was not going to present any iconic symbols for the season this week but, well, things pop up that I just have to share.
These are not your typical Christmas trees. The playful nature, the color, and the organic and seemingly random size and organization of the circles all together take it quite a bit beyond the usual commercial fare. This is, of course, the work of Bull’s Eye Studio in Anchorage, Alaska. With her trademark wonky bull’s eye motifs, these trees bring in the spirit of the holidays along with that handmade look and love that only original craft art can have.
She has left a little gift behind back there on her Flickr page. It’s a single process shot from her work table, but you can easily guess from this photo how these lovely motifs are created.
Don’t stop with just a gander at this particular collection I picked up for you here. Go to her Flickr page to see them large and in detail, along with many other kinds of trees, wall art, light switch plates, beads, boxes, and sleeping dogs. When you have a moment to look such things over this weekend, that is.
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I am thinking that for the rest of the year I will post pieces that somehow reflect the various aspects of this busy and, hopefully, joyful season. I don’t foresee any Christmas trees or snowmen, so you are fairly safe from the iconic imagery we are already bombarded with. No, I thought I’d see if I could find wonderful pieces that represent the other aspects of the season.
This, for instance, is something many of us face this week–packing! There is a lot of travel this time of year and you will most likely be dealing with a suitcase or two, either your own or those of your guests. So I thought these wonderfully recreated old suitcases (over Altoids tins) would be appropriate. The details on these are incredible. From the worn look of the leather to the interior lining and side pocket, it’s just a joy to look over every little detail.
The artist here is one Amanda Klish. She was an immensely talented master doll artist who also worked in a variety of other medium as the need arose. But I would say doll art was her primary focus. And yes, I am speaking in the past tense because, according to her Facebook page, Amanda has moved on, leaving the art world behind to become a nun. Wow. Is that a change in careers. She actually went to join a monastery, so she has completely disconnected from the world. It makes me a little sad to think such a talented artist will not be sharing her work with us any longer but I am always glad to hear about people taking off for new adventures, especially those that have such a strong pull that they completely change their lives. In my experience, that is usually a very good thing.
So, the suitcases fit for both our little seasonal travels or having guests visit and for the new journey of this artist, which she under took a couple of months ago. If you want to look into what she did in her short time with polymer, she has both a Pinterest board and a Facebook page. Mind you, this budding nun liked to create dolls that are absolutely anatomically correct, so if you aren’t fond of nudity you might just stay here and admire her suitcases.
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Early this week I was sent a little message and share on Facebook from a regular contributor to The Polymer Arts, Sherilyn Dunn, who, upon recalling a conversation we had about scars, thought I would be interested in this quote from Billie Mobayad:
“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damaged and has a history it becomes more beautiful.”
The reason Sherilyn sent that is because that is exactly how I feel. I think scars are beautiful. The cracks and damage, the chips and worn surfaces of the things around us, and on and within ourselves as well, is just telling of the richness and beauty of life. It does not mean it was always a happy life but those scars we carry are our stories, and whether we received them through tragedy or courageous adventure or something in between, they are testaments to our history. The more scars you have, the more you really know of the world. Or so I have always thought.
Which is, I know, a large part of why I am drawn to pieces like this one from Anastasyia Arynovich. According to her LiveJournal entry, she created this while “in the delirium of influenza”. Do you see how some of the hard things we go through can result in some very beautiful things?
Of course, this also reminded me of the quote I had just been sent. We don’t assign much value to stone, but when it is cracked open and either reveals or is filled with something of high value, like gold, we see it in such a different light. The contrast of the surfaces in these stone-like beads–shiny versus matte, smooth versus rough–just accentuates the contrast in perceived value. Actually, the expectations are reversed. Don’t we usually expect gold to be smooth and stone to be rough? The thin wavy lines, suggesting water or air, bring another, fragile level of contrast as well. It makes for a wonderful piece.
Anastasyia is also an incredible caner. Take a tour of her Flickr photostream to see what I mean. It will be a delightful ‘break’ in your day.
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Simple ideas are often the most surprising. When I saw this bracelet as a thumbnail on my screen, I thought it was a cane or inlay, but when I went in for a larger look, I just broke into a big smile when I saw the way Petra Nemravka created this peek-a-boo color.
We have certainly seen the twisted strip in polymer before but maybe it’s the singularly bright bit of color combined with the continuous rhythmic repetition that a bangle bracelet allows that makes this feel so fresh and brilliant. The simplicity of the colors–a high contrast of black and white with highly saturated colors glimpsed between them–is not spoiled by further embellishment but is enhanced by a variation in the length and placement of the cuts. The barely-seen color is reinforced with the bracelet insides, but only the edge would regularly show when wearing it, so even that swathe of color would be doing its share of barely being revealed. I thought the idea was all around clever and well executed.
Petra is from my grandmother’s homeland in the Czech Republic. I do notice that I am often drawn to the work we see from that region and have wondered if it has anything to do with my background. But then there are pieces like this, very contemporary with a sense of design that is not regional but rather feels universal. So, I’m pretty sure there is simply a well propagated sense of good design and color in that part of the world that we are so often lucky enough to see come out in great polymer pieces. Petra is also an entrepreneur, running the online shop Nemravka.cz along with working on her wide variety of designs as you can see on her Flickr photostream.
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