One Element at a Time
February 3, 2019
Inspirational Art
I don’t know if you have ever considered, or found important, the fact that most polymer art is a collection of elements constructed into a single piece. Yes, I know I am stating the obvious here but consider the fact that most polymer art is put together in such a way as to make the individual elements blend into a cohesiveness whole. Have you ever considered that maybe each element can be its own little piece of art, even if it’s to be a part of something bigger?
If you make the work about each individual elements and not the single composition they are part of, you should be able to give yourself more freedom in the creative process. The idea would be to just focus on the single component in front of you without regard for the other parts it may eventually be joined with. Since you don’t have to consider any other elements you should be able to just let your mind and hands go play. You could, in fact, just create tons of individual pieces and then pull together the ones that you find relate and from that create a finished piece. There would be no pressure to make things work together or fit. Does that sound intriguing?
Elemental Artists
There are a lot of artists that do this almost exclusively. When Debbie Crothers creates, a finished piece is usually the last thing on her mind. She is in love with seeing what the material will do and spends most of her time playing and exploring. Once her stock builds up, or just whenever the bug bites her, then she will create finished pieces of wearable art.
Recently she has also been incorporating her love of found objects as you can see in the image above. This is just a part of a very long necklace of Debbie’s. (The whole of which I’ve not seen her posted anywhere but will be featured in the upcoming Polymer Journeys 2019 book. Look for pre-sale announcements this coming week.) Each individual component definitely stands on its own here since each individual polymer and found object component is framed. But you can also see, if you look at her work on Facebook or on her website, that her pieces are almost always a variety show, one that features the results of her exploration and just having fun with the clay.
Another cool thing about this type of artwork is that the viewer will probably want to look at each and every individual component. Just the variety heightens the interest in these kinds of pieces which means the people viewing it will spend more time looking at it and more time appreciating your work. That can really help in terms of sales too because the more time someone spends looking at a piece the more likely they will be to want to buy it.
I think this kind of intrigue born of variety may be the primary draw when it comes to the jewelry of Olga Ledneva. This piece you see here is a bit more dense and has more potential movement than her newer work but I thought it was also a good example of how all these pieces, together, create a textural canvas since they are all kind of dangling on top of each other, and yet, as cohesive as it feels, you still want to look carefully at each piece in the assembly. Olga’s Facebook page and Flickr photostream are good places to look around for other assembled element ideas.
I know those two ladies make some pretty interesting and complex components but don’t think you have to go to that extent. The individual elements you create in this process can be as simple as punched out squares such as you might see in one of Laurie Mika’s mosaics. I am such a fan of this kind of free-form collage work, one that allows you to simply show off the characteristics you love about working with clay. You can assemble bits of your alcohol ink treated sheets, mokume gane, complex canes, impressed clay components, or hand sculpted forms. A mosaic or even a necklace of just simple shapes can let those treatments and colors shine, each on their own.
Of course, this approach isn’t just for polymer clay. This brilliant green assemblage necklace by an artist known only as Gebrufa is all fabric and fiber, although some components could as easily have been polymer. My guess would be that she gave herself just the restriction of a limited color palette but otherwise made all the individual pieces as whimsy led her. Should you want to know that you can have a cohesive finished piece when you are done freely creating components, this kind of approach would give you a path to that while still creating with relative freedom.
So, have I got you thinking about the individual elements of your pieces in a different way now?
Planning and meticulously designing pieces is essential in many circumstances but letting yourself just explore can also be an important part of your artistic growth as it helps to free up and expand your creativity. Letting yourself just play can be hard to do when you don’t have a lot of time and you want the time you do have to result in finished pieces. Knowing you can focus on making great little individual components which you can later put together into a fabulous necklace or wall piece might just be the thing that gives you the license to let go and doodle away with your clay.
THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:
- Want to CLAY OUT EAST or CLAY OUT WEST? Registration for both of this multi-instructor, 4 day workshop events are open now. Clay out East is in Atlantic City, New Jersey, June 12-15th and Clay out West will be held Sept 30 – Oct 3 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here is the link for the East event’s registration. I couldn’t scare up a link for the West event registration but you can email them at clayoutwest@aol.com to get the details.
- Did you catch the “Make Your Own Silkscreens” article in the Summer 2018 issue of The Polymer Arts? It was so much fun to make these and right now, the company that made it so fun and easy, EZScreenPrint if having a 15% off sale but it ends today! Go here, and use coupon code JAN15. No minimum purchase required.
- Did you know that Poly Clay Play has a Shopping Discount Club? If you go through a lot of supplies (or just tend to get overly excited around polymer clay and tools and want to buy everything you see) this discount club could help in big ways. PCP is one of my favorite shops, especially for pastes, powders, and alcohol ink. She gets them all! Go here to check out the club deal or just shop around.
Always glad to get your feedback!
Last week we did some history, this week was about how you approach your work. Did you like the subject and did it get you thinking? Or do you thoughts on other things you’d like for me to research and write about? Just let me know. Write me in the comments below this post (click here if you are reading this in an email).
Life’s Little Surprises
June 16, 2014
Inspirational Art
This past week I had to make an unplanned trip out to Los Angeles to help my family while my father dealt with some health issues. He is doing quite well now and I am feeling good about returning home. What might have been a rather stressed filled and scary week actually turned into something quite wonderful–I had some truly touching moments with both my parents, had a surprise clay day with my niece who came out and played with polymer with me for the first time and then fate lined it up so that I reconnected with two people out here I haven’t seen in 25 years, people who were very important to me back then and look to become very important to me again. What a fantastic and uplifting surprise those reunions were!
There is such a truly joyful beauty in the small, unexpected moments like those I had this past week, just as there are in those small, unexpected elements in what could have been a simple and quiet piece of art. It can take just one small thing to take something from being ‘nice’ to being remarkable. Take this pendant by Anna Fidecka. There would have been nothing wrong with just creating a nice silver bezel for the caned cabochon but that meandering silver cutting down through it adds movement as well as a stronger focal point. It’s a simple addition but it really makes the piece.
Anna hails from Poland where she works with precious metal clay, beads and polymer, mixing them or not as the muse dictates. More of her work can be found on her Flickr pages and her website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Fading Out
February 22, 2014
Uncategorized
Here color is minimized but what little color is brought in, is subdued and blends into the composition rather than accenting the dominant copper browns. In Tammi Sloan‘s work here, the palette of browns provides a warm, earthy feel that draws you into the narrative sketched on the front. Using this limited color palette gives the piece a maturity that bright colors would not provide. Through this pairing of copper and polymer clay, she has created an effective juxtaposition between hard and soft materials. She created this piece by rolling a sheet of polymer clay and impressing it into the fired metal clay, so that it would come up through the holes.
Tammi, who is from Whidbey Island, Washington, has a passion for creating. She moves where inspiration takes her. As she explains it, “It is a moving meditation that brings me to a place of deep peace. When I create, I rarely have a picture in my mind of what it is I am going to create. There is a general idea,
but the finished piece is a melding of that idea, the feelings, and thoughts that are flowing through me at the time.” Take a moment and visit her space and become inspired.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Outside Inspiration: A Tale in Silver
February 21, 2014
Inspirational Art
This antiqued silver pendant by artist Samantha Braund uses intricate textures, form, and unique shapes to tell a story with this Spider Conch shell design. Working primarily with silver limits the number of colors used in her, but embellishing with a lot of texture and shapes to invites us in to hear her story or to invent a story of our own.
Because of the way hte varied planes and edges are composed in this piece, emphasis is placed on the center where the shell opens up to us. The form could also be seen as a metaphor for the heart. The colors of the gems used here remind us of the turbulent emotions that flow through our own hearts as we travel along each day meshed in the highs and lows of life.
Samantha is a multi-medium artist with strong roots in graphic design, photography, and precious metal clay jewelry design. This necklace is part of her Spider Conch “Joy to Pebbles” series made with metal clay. For some more examples of her work, and to see her electroformed copper on polymer clay pieces, take a look at her Amadora Designs’ Flickr pages.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners. Click on an image below.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Polymer
January 20, 2014
Inspirational Art
Going for something a bit different this week. I have a collection of items that I thought originally were made from polymer, that were often listed on Pinterest boards or other sites as polymer, that were not. But they are beautiful pieces that could definitely be done in polymer. So let’s look at these and determine how we would create it in polymer.
Pictured here is a piece of Plumevine’s Faery Jewellery by Lorianne Jantti. These whimsical pieces are made from hand painted resin clay and embellished with chains, hooks, ribbon, and the like. They could easily be crafted in polymer and similarly embellished with crystals and Pearl Ex powders. If you’re into PMC or Art Clay, you could make part of the piece with metal clay and embellish with polymer accoutrements.
Take a look at some of Lorianne’s work on her Etsy site and deconstruct it to see how you could make similar objects in polymer with other mixed media.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
I don’t know if you have ever considered, or found important, the fact that most polymer art is a collection of elements constructed into a single piece. Yes, I know I am stating the obvious here but consider the fact that most polymer art is put together in such a way as to make the individual elements blend into a cohesiveness whole. Have you ever considered that maybe each element can be its own little piece of art, even if it’s to be a part of something bigger?
If you make the work about each individual elements and not the single composition they are part of, you should be able to give yourself more freedom in the creative process. The idea would be to just focus on the single component in front of you without regard for the other parts it may eventually be joined with. Since you don’t have to consider any other elements you should be able to just let your mind and hands go play. You could, in fact, just create tons of individual pieces and then pull together the ones that you find relate and from that create a finished piece. There would be no pressure to make things work together or fit. Does that sound intriguing?
Elemental Artists
There are a lot of artists that do this almost exclusively. When Debbie Crothers creates, a finished piece is usually the last thing on her mind. She is in love with seeing what the material will do and spends most of her time playing and exploring. Once her stock builds up, or just whenever the bug bites her, then she will create finished pieces of wearable art.
Recently she has also been incorporating her love of found objects as you can see in the image above. This is just a part of a very long necklace of Debbie’s. (The whole of which I’ve not seen her posted anywhere but will be featured in the upcoming Polymer Journeys 2019 book. Look for pre-sale announcements this coming week.) Each individual component definitely stands on its own here since each individual polymer and found object component is framed. But you can also see, if you look at her work on Facebook or on her website, that her pieces are almost always a variety show, one that features the results of her exploration and just having fun with the clay.
Another cool thing about this type of artwork is that the viewer will probably want to look at each and every individual component. Just the variety heightens the interest in these kinds of pieces which means the people viewing it will spend more time looking at it and more time appreciating your work. That can really help in terms of sales too because the more time someone spends looking at a piece the more likely they will be to want to buy it.
I think this kind of intrigue born of variety may be the primary draw when it comes to the jewelry of Olga Ledneva. This piece you see here is a bit more dense and has more potential movement than her newer work but I thought it was also a good example of how all these pieces, together, create a textural canvas since they are all kind of dangling on top of each other, and yet, as cohesive as it feels, you still want to look carefully at each piece in the assembly. Olga’s Facebook page and Flickr photostream are good places to look around for other assembled element ideas.
I know those two ladies make some pretty interesting and complex components but don’t think you have to go to that extent. The individual elements you create in this process can be as simple as punched out squares such as you might see in one of Laurie Mika’s mosaics. I am such a fan of this kind of free-form collage work, one that allows you to simply show off the characteristics you love about working with clay. You can assemble bits of your alcohol ink treated sheets, mokume gane, complex canes, impressed clay components, or hand sculpted forms. A mosaic or even a necklace of just simple shapes can let those treatments and colors shine, each on their own.
Of course, this approach isn’t just for polymer clay. This brilliant green assemblage necklace by an artist known only as Gebrufa is all fabric and fiber, although some components could as easily have been polymer. My guess would be that she gave herself just the restriction of a limited color palette but otherwise made all the individual pieces as whimsy led her. Should you want to know that you can have a cohesive finished piece when you are done freely creating components, this kind of approach would give you a path to that while still creating with relative freedom.
So, have I got you thinking about the individual elements of your pieces in a different way now?
Planning and meticulously designing pieces is essential in many circumstances but letting yourself just explore can also be an important part of your artistic growth as it helps to free up and expand your creativity. Letting yourself just play can be hard to do when you don’t have a lot of time and you want the time you do have to result in finished pieces. Knowing you can focus on making great little individual components which you can later put together into a fabulous necklace or wall piece might just be the thing that gives you the license to let go and doodle away with your clay.
THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:
- Want to CLAY OUT EAST or CLAY OUT WEST? Registration for both of this multi-instructor, 4 day workshop events are open now. Clay out East is in Atlantic City, New Jersey, June 12-15th and Clay out West will be held Sept 30 – Oct 3 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here is the link for the East event’s registration. I couldn’t scare up a link for the West event registration but you can email them at clayoutwest@aol.com to get the details.
- Did you catch the “Make Your Own Silkscreens” article in the Summer 2018 issue of The Polymer Arts? It was so much fun to make these and right now, the company that made it so fun and easy, EZScreenPrint if having a 15% off sale but it ends today! Go here, and use coupon code JAN15. No minimum purchase required.
- Did you know that Poly Clay Play has a Shopping Discount Club? If you go through a lot of supplies (or just tend to get overly excited around polymer clay and tools and want to buy everything you see) this discount club could help in big ways. PCP is one of my favorite shops, especially for pastes, powders, and alcohol ink. She gets them all! Go here to check out the club deal or just shop around.
Always glad to get your feedback!
Last week we did some history, this week was about how you approach your work. Did you like the subject and did it get you thinking? Or do you thoughts on other things you’d like for me to research and write about? Just let me know. Write me in the comments below this post (click here if you are reading this in an email).
Read More
This past week I had to make an unplanned trip out to Los Angeles to help my family while my father dealt with some health issues. He is doing quite well now and I am feeling good about returning home. What might have been a rather stressed filled and scary week actually turned into something quite wonderful–I had some truly touching moments with both my parents, had a surprise clay day with my niece who came out and played with polymer with me for the first time and then fate lined it up so that I reconnected with two people out here I haven’t seen in 25 years, people who were very important to me back then and look to become very important to me again. What a fantastic and uplifting surprise those reunions were!
There is such a truly joyful beauty in the small, unexpected moments like those I had this past week, just as there are in those small, unexpected elements in what could have been a simple and quiet piece of art. It can take just one small thing to take something from being ‘nice’ to being remarkable. Take this pendant by Anna Fidecka. There would have been nothing wrong with just creating a nice silver bezel for the caned cabochon but that meandering silver cutting down through it adds movement as well as a stronger focal point. It’s a simple addition but it really makes the piece.
Anna hails from Poland where she works with precious metal clay, beads and polymer, mixing them or not as the muse dictates. More of her work can be found on her Flickr pages and her website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Here color is minimized but what little color is brought in, is subdued and blends into the composition rather than accenting the dominant copper browns. In Tammi Sloan‘s work here, the palette of browns provides a warm, earthy feel that draws you into the narrative sketched on the front. Using this limited color palette gives the piece a maturity that bright colors would not provide. Through this pairing of copper and polymer clay, she has created an effective juxtaposition between hard and soft materials. She created this piece by rolling a sheet of polymer clay and impressing it into the fired metal clay, so that it would come up through the holes.
Tammi, who is from Whidbey Island, Washington, has a passion for creating. She moves where inspiration takes her. As she explains it, “It is a moving meditation that brings me to a place of deep peace. When I create, I rarely have a picture in my mind of what it is I am going to create. There is a general idea,
but the finished piece is a melding of that idea, the feelings, and thoughts that are flowing through me at the time.” Take a moment and visit her space and become inspired.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
This antiqued silver pendant by artist Samantha Braund uses intricate textures, form, and unique shapes to tell a story with this Spider Conch shell design. Working primarily with silver limits the number of colors used in her, but embellishing with a lot of texture and shapes to invites us in to hear her story or to invent a story of our own.
Because of the way hte varied planes and edges are composed in this piece, emphasis is placed on the center where the shell opens up to us. The form could also be seen as a metaphor for the heart. The colors of the gems used here remind us of the turbulent emotions that flow through our own hearts as we travel along each day meshed in the highs and lows of life.
Samantha is a multi-medium artist with strong roots in graphic design, photography, and precious metal clay jewelry design. This necklace is part of her Spider Conch “Joy to Pebbles” series made with metal clay. For some more examples of her work, and to see her electroformed copper on polymer clay pieces, take a look at her Amadora Designs’ Flickr pages.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners. Click on an image below.
Going for something a bit different this week. I have a collection of items that I thought originally were made from polymer, that were often listed on Pinterest boards or other sites as polymer, that were not. But they are beautiful pieces that could definitely be done in polymer. So let’s look at these and determine how we would create it in polymer.
Pictured here is a piece of Plumevine’s Faery Jewellery by Lorianne Jantti. These whimsical pieces are made from hand painted resin clay and embellished with chains, hooks, ribbon, and the like. They could easily be crafted in polymer and similarly embellished with crystals and Pearl Ex powders. If you’re into PMC or Art Clay, you could make part of the piece with metal clay and embellish with polymer accoutrements.
Take a look at some of Lorianne’s work on her Etsy site and deconstruct it to see how you could make similar objects in polymer with other mixed media.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read More
