A Passion Story

June 9, 2019

My apologies for the lateness of this post. Nothing has quite worked out the way I had planned this week. From yet a new plumbing problem and further demolition being planned to the sad yet exciting news that my assistant and keeper of lists, Sydney, is moving on to work with a business helping people with eating disorders to the graduation of our teen, setting up for the next issue and our vacation preparations, it has been beyond busy here. I wrote this on a plane to Australia and still am not sure when I’ll get to post it.

The craziness of this week, has, however, had its moments of clarity and calm, at least enough to have a couple of conversations on a subject that is very dear to me … passion. So I thought I’d share my thoughts and, perhaps, get you thinking about your passions and your voice. But, alas, I can’t do the usual research in my present situation, so I am going to tell you some stories about me instead, just a little view of a life driven by my passions and need to be creative and expressive. My apologies for the lack of photos. I’ll make up for it in the coming weeks.

This text is actually from a talk I gave with Dan Cormier and Tracy Holmes at Eurosynergy in Malta in 2014 titled Finding your Artistic Voice. My story isn’t purely about polymer art though as writing has been the larger part of my creative journey.

My journey as a writer started when I was very young. I was writing stories in my head from the time I had language enough to do so. I wrote my first book at age 9 and, encouraged by an insightful teacher who saw something in this fearful, quiet, and intensely shy child, I became determined to be a writer. I was lucky to find a passion as a child as my voice developed at an age when I did not think about having to please anyone besides myself or follow what others did. I still try to return to a childlike state in my mind as much as I can—the child mind is so unencumbered with little or no critic, less of a need to ‘fix’ what they are doing, and seeing the world as still new and intensely interesting.

Because of that, my journey as a writer has been very organic and relatively unencumbered. But it did have its challenges. My undergraduate college work was in art but I went back for my Master’s in Writing in San Francisco, the birthplace of beatnik poetry and a lot of great but very edgy & alternative writing. I concentrated on poetry but I wrote for the average person. I wrote about normal things—nature, everyday struggles, and just things I saw out my window or on a walk.

I was heavily criticized by the other students for not doing something “different”. Sure, most all my subjects have been written about thousands of times but they were not written by me and they were not filtered through my eyes. Back then, it never occurred to me to give in to criticism because my writing was so ingrained in me and I grew up just writing what I wanted and didn’t question my subject choices. As a result, I think my work had a recognized honesty and my writing was well received by my professors and department heads. I was nominated for a number of awards and I continuously published for nearly 5 years. Half the other students in my master’s program couldn’t say that.

Eventually, and somewhat ironically, I stopped publishing because I ended up spending more time at readings and shows than writing and I wanted to focus on the writing more. Although the creative writing efforts didn’t go where I had hoped, that focus allowed me to build a career in writing as a freelancer, although it was non-fiction magazine articles and training materials. But in these, I found my passion for teaching and sharing knowledge with others.

Visual art, although an intense passion now, was a long time developing. I actually didn’t see myself as a visual artist at all until I was in my late teens when I accidentally ended up in an advanced Life Drawing class and couldn’t get out of it right away. However, being forced to do the initial assignments, I found that visual arts came quite naturally to me. But with writing being my “thing”, I just thought of art as something fun to do. I was eventually convinced by two different professors to change my major from writing to art, my eventual reason being that I felt I had a lot more to learn about art than writing.

In art school, I was still able to draw on my childlike wonder and sense of exploration, probably because I had kept it alive in my writing all through my younger years. After art school, I worked in charcoal and fiber as well as mixed-media but wasn’t driven to make a career of art until polymer found me nearly 18 years after art school. My polymer journey was quite different than my previous creative treks. I found that I had lost a lot of my childlike tendencies and was out of practice having taken years off my creative endeavors to work and take care of family. But, like many of you, when I found polymer, I became obsessed. I quit my writing career so I could be a full-time artist and so, obviously, I geared what I did to make a living but that gave me a very different focus to start with than I had when I started writing or when I started art school.

My dual drive—to make a living as well as explore this fascinating medium—pushed me to learn as much as I could in 4 months and then I started doing shows, so from the start, my polymer art was about selling it. Although I was initially making art that made me happy, it was not long before I was making art according to what I thought would sell. That resulted in some gimmicky things that were more for and about the market than me. I sold well enough for a while but I slowly began to dislike my work and when that happened, coincidence or not, my sales started to slow.

Eventually, I went back to freelance writing part-time in order to allow myself to start making what I wanted. Not having to count on my art alone to pay my bills was very freeing. Strange thing though … I sold a lot more for better prices when I just did what I wanted.

What happened? For one, I think I was happier with my work, finding so much more joy in what I was doing, and I think it showed it came through in the work, making the art more desirable. I returned to combining other mediums in my work which allowed me really explore the medium in ways I had not done before. I was back to selling out at nearly every show, was invited to teach classes and spoke at shows in rooms so packed that I was often moved me to bigger rooms to accommodate. I believe my success at that time was due largely to my passion showing rather than external pressures driving what I did.

Eventually, though, my passions changed (they will do that!) as I was missing the broad sharing of knowledge that writing allowed, so I started a magazine, thinking it would give me time to develop my art in new directions. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time for my art since then but only because the magazine was such a success. I am still pondering my passions though and what I’ll do next. That’s part of what I want to do on this trip. Consider where my passions truly lie these days and decide if the changes I’ve made recently are feeding them or might there be more changes in the near future?

I’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks and I’ll get photos up then too. Thanks for being patient with me while I travel and think about your passions and what you are doing in the meantime identify what you love most about what you do and whether or not you are feeding your true passions.

(Apologies for typos and odd grammar. I’m not going to have time to proof this very well and my dyslexia is out and causing havoc with this jetlag! I hope you enjoy my story nonetheless.)

Adapting Nature

July 1, 2017

In my search for other creative planter ideas, I came across these amazingly lovely upright planters, of sorts. The work is by sculptor Jamie North. They are made of cement, marble waste, limestone, coal ash, organic matter and various Australian plants and stand about 5 feet(165cm) high. This scale is a bit bigger than what we usually work with in polymer but the planter could be scaled down if one is so inspired.

I mean, who says that we must create large, open-mouthed vessels for plants to live in? Out in nature, they creep and poke out of just about anything that will catch a couple of grains of soil and a spot of moisture. I have only to step into the yard of my house in Colorado where high desert plants grab every open opportunity. Over here in California, they are not quite so desperate but they still perch in the oddest places. So, when making vessels, why not head out and see what kind of pockets of opportunity nature has provided that plants take advantage of as inspiration for your own vessels?

You might also look to Jamie’s work for how to translate what nature has to inspire us with. Jaime was first inspired to make these structures when considering “the way in which our native Port Jackson fig (Ficus rubiginosa) sprouts from the cracks of building mortar in Sydney.” Contrasting the straight and geometric sides with rough and tumble sides, he makes us aware of how well nature will adapt to whatever structures we throw in its path.

These were created in 2014 but since then, Jaime has made quite a number of other forms. Enjoy a trip through his projects on his website and check out this interview for more on his inspiration and ideas.

Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Let nature dictate a piece. Go out and explore whatever natural world and formations you have close to you. Borrow forms, textures, lines, or even observed relationships between nature and man and bring those ideas back to your studio to inspire a new piece.

_________________________________________

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.

   The Great Create Sept 15 blog   businesscard-3.5inx2in-h-front   Shades of Clay Sept 15 Blog

_________________________________________

Chaos and Quilting

April 19, 2014

This necklace by Aussie artist Robyn Gordon has a quilted textile feel to the shell designs used in the pendant and beads. The beads are shaped like turret sea snail shells while the pendant is an assemblage of several shell shapes. The details on the shells have faux sewing patterns and the beads are similar to rolled fabric beads. This particular necklace is made from polymer clay and silk thread and is part of the Powerhouse Museum Collection in Sydney, Australia.

ba884d07fd9112b60def85c03f24d652

Even though Robyn’s background is primarily in drawing, painting, and mixed media work, she was drawn to polymer jewelry adornment because it provides a direct communication between maker and wearer. If you would like to know more about this artist, browse through her website or take a peek at her gallery page.

 

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.

Blog2 -2014-02Feb-5   Millefiori eggs   14P1 cover Fnl

Inspiration Coming Down the Line

December 13, 2012

We work in a very considerate community. There is much credit given to the artists who inspire us, and on Flickr and various blogs, clayers eagerly list the artists whose techniques they are practicing or who they drew their approach from.

This pendant, by Zuzana (Verundela on Flickr) of the Czech Republic, looks to be a combination of influences as well as materials. I would not call the liberal use of mica powders, embedding watch gears and wire into clay, and topping off a piece with resin unusual, but these approaches all came from somewhere else. Or at least they do not often come to us in a moment of pure, uninfluenced flash of genius. Even when we are not aware of it, other artists bring their influence to us by creative osmosis.

Here, however, we get a glimpse of the influential creative trail. Zuzana gives credit for this piece to Sabine Spiesser of Australia for the rather celestial looking faux enamel and wire work. But if you wander off into Sabine’s Flickr pages (papagodesigns), you’ll find she credits her faux cloisonne work to Eugena Topina of Maryland here in the US. Eugena’s wire bordered faux cloisonne enamel was one of the first tutorials I ever attempted to follow back in the days when I was expanding myself beyond the basics. The technique has been around for a while, but credit is still being considerately passed on. I also really like how global this influence can be … bouncing across the globe from the US to Australia to Eastern Europe. That is the wonderful thing about being an international community and a community very big on sharing and helping each other grow.

 

A Passion Story

June 9, 2019
Posted in

My apologies for the lateness of this post. Nothing has quite worked out the way I had planned this week. From yet a new plumbing problem and further demolition being planned to the sad yet exciting news that my assistant and keeper of lists, Sydney, is moving on to work with a business helping people with eating disorders to the graduation of our teen, setting up for the next issue and our vacation preparations, it has been beyond busy here. I wrote this on a plane to Australia and still am not sure when I’ll get to post it.

The craziness of this week, has, however, had its moments of clarity and calm, at least enough to have a couple of conversations on a subject that is very dear to me … passion. So I thought I’d share my thoughts and, perhaps, get you thinking about your passions and your voice. But, alas, I can’t do the usual research in my present situation, so I am going to tell you some stories about me instead, just a little view of a life driven by my passions and need to be creative and expressive. My apologies for the lack of photos. I’ll make up for it in the coming weeks.

This text is actually from a talk I gave with Dan Cormier and Tracy Holmes at Eurosynergy in Malta in 2014 titled Finding your Artistic Voice. My story isn’t purely about polymer art though as writing has been the larger part of my creative journey.

My journey as a writer started when I was very young. I was writing stories in my head from the time I had language enough to do so. I wrote my first book at age 9 and, encouraged by an insightful teacher who saw something in this fearful, quiet, and intensely shy child, I became determined to be a writer. I was lucky to find a passion as a child as my voice developed at an age when I did not think about having to please anyone besides myself or follow what others did. I still try to return to a childlike state in my mind as much as I can—the child mind is so unencumbered with little or no critic, less of a need to ‘fix’ what they are doing, and seeing the world as still new and intensely interesting.

Because of that, my journey as a writer has been very organic and relatively unencumbered. But it did have its challenges. My undergraduate college work was in art but I went back for my Master’s in Writing in San Francisco, the birthplace of beatnik poetry and a lot of great but very edgy & alternative writing. I concentrated on poetry but I wrote for the average person. I wrote about normal things—nature, everyday struggles, and just things I saw out my window or on a walk.

I was heavily criticized by the other students for not doing something “different”. Sure, most all my subjects have been written about thousands of times but they were not written by me and they were not filtered through my eyes. Back then, it never occurred to me to give in to criticism because my writing was so ingrained in me and I grew up just writing what I wanted and didn’t question my subject choices. As a result, I think my work had a recognized honesty and my writing was well received by my professors and department heads. I was nominated for a number of awards and I continuously published for nearly 5 years. Half the other students in my master’s program couldn’t say that.

Eventually, and somewhat ironically, I stopped publishing because I ended up spending more time at readings and shows than writing and I wanted to focus on the writing more. Although the creative writing efforts didn’t go where I had hoped, that focus allowed me to build a career in writing as a freelancer, although it was non-fiction magazine articles and training materials. But in these, I found my passion for teaching and sharing knowledge with others.

Visual art, although an intense passion now, was a long time developing. I actually didn’t see myself as a visual artist at all until I was in my late teens when I accidentally ended up in an advanced Life Drawing class and couldn’t get out of it right away. However, being forced to do the initial assignments, I found that visual arts came quite naturally to me. But with writing being my “thing”, I just thought of art as something fun to do. I was eventually convinced by two different professors to change my major from writing to art, my eventual reason being that I felt I had a lot more to learn about art than writing.

In art school, I was still able to draw on my childlike wonder and sense of exploration, probably because I had kept it alive in my writing all through my younger years. After art school, I worked in charcoal and fiber as well as mixed-media but wasn’t driven to make a career of art until polymer found me nearly 18 years after art school. My polymer journey was quite different than my previous creative treks. I found that I had lost a lot of my childlike tendencies and was out of practice having taken years off my creative endeavors to work and take care of family. But, like many of you, when I found polymer, I became obsessed. I quit my writing career so I could be a full-time artist and so, obviously, I geared what I did to make a living but that gave me a very different focus to start with than I had when I started writing or when I started art school.

My dual drive—to make a living as well as explore this fascinating medium—pushed me to learn as much as I could in 4 months and then I started doing shows, so from the start, my polymer art was about selling it. Although I was initially making art that made me happy, it was not long before I was making art according to what I thought would sell. That resulted in some gimmicky things that were more for and about the market than me. I sold well enough for a while but I slowly began to dislike my work and when that happened, coincidence or not, my sales started to slow.

Eventually, I went back to freelance writing part-time in order to allow myself to start making what I wanted. Not having to count on my art alone to pay my bills was very freeing. Strange thing though … I sold a lot more for better prices when I just did what I wanted.

What happened? For one, I think I was happier with my work, finding so much more joy in what I was doing, and I think it showed it came through in the work, making the art more desirable. I returned to combining other mediums in my work which allowed me really explore the medium in ways I had not done before. I was back to selling out at nearly every show, was invited to teach classes and spoke at shows in rooms so packed that I was often moved me to bigger rooms to accommodate. I believe my success at that time was due largely to my passion showing rather than external pressures driving what I did.

Eventually, though, my passions changed (they will do that!) as I was missing the broad sharing of knowledge that writing allowed, so I started a magazine, thinking it would give me time to develop my art in new directions. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time for my art since then but only because the magazine was such a success. I am still pondering my passions though and what I’ll do next. That’s part of what I want to do on this trip. Consider where my passions truly lie these days and decide if the changes I’ve made recently are feeding them or might there be more changes in the near future?

I’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks and I’ll get photos up then too. Thanks for being patient with me while I travel and think about your passions and what you are doing in the meantime identify what you love most about what you do and whether or not you are feeding your true passions.

(Apologies for typos and odd grammar. I’m not going to have time to proof this very well and my dyslexia is out and causing havoc with this jetlag! I hope you enjoy my story nonetheless.)

Read More

Adapting Nature

July 1, 2017
Posted in

In my search for other creative planter ideas, I came across these amazingly lovely upright planters, of sorts. The work is by sculptor Jamie North. They are made of cement, marble waste, limestone, coal ash, organic matter and various Australian plants and stand about 5 feet(165cm) high. This scale is a bit bigger than what we usually work with in polymer but the planter could be scaled down if one is so inspired.

I mean, who says that we must create large, open-mouthed vessels for plants to live in? Out in nature, they creep and poke out of just about anything that will catch a couple of grains of soil and a spot of moisture. I have only to step into the yard of my house in Colorado where high desert plants grab every open opportunity. Over here in California, they are not quite so desperate but they still perch in the oddest places. So, when making vessels, why not head out and see what kind of pockets of opportunity nature has provided that plants take advantage of as inspiration for your own vessels?

You might also look to Jamie’s work for how to translate what nature has to inspire us with. Jaime was first inspired to make these structures when considering “the way in which our native Port Jackson fig (Ficus rubiginosa) sprouts from the cracks of building mortar in Sydney.” Contrasting the straight and geometric sides with rough and tumble sides, he makes us aware of how well nature will adapt to whatever structures we throw in its path.

These were created in 2014 but since then, Jaime has made quite a number of other forms. Enjoy a trip through his projects on his website and check out this interview for more on his inspiration and ideas.

Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Let nature dictate a piece. Go out and explore whatever natural world and formations you have close to you. Borrow forms, textures, lines, or even observed relationships between nature and man and bring those ideas back to your studio to inspire a new piece.

_________________________________________

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.

   The Great Create Sept 15 blog   businesscard-3.5inx2in-h-front   Shades of Clay Sept 15 Blog

_________________________________________

Read More

Chaos and Quilting

April 19, 2014
Posted in

This necklace by Aussie artist Robyn Gordon has a quilted textile feel to the shell designs used in the pendant and beads. The beads are shaped like turret sea snail shells while the pendant is an assemblage of several shell shapes. The details on the shells have faux sewing patterns and the beads are similar to rolled fabric beads. This particular necklace is made from polymer clay and silk thread and is part of the Powerhouse Museum Collection in Sydney, Australia.

ba884d07fd9112b60def85c03f24d652

Even though Robyn’s background is primarily in drawing, painting, and mixed media work, she was drawn to polymer jewelry adornment because it provides a direct communication between maker and wearer. If you would like to know more about this artist, browse through her website or take a peek at her gallery page.

 

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.

Blog2 -2014-02Feb-5   Millefiori eggs   14P1 cover Fnl

Read More

Inspiration Coming Down the Line

December 13, 2012
Posted in

We work in a very considerate community. There is much credit given to the artists who inspire us, and on Flickr and various blogs, clayers eagerly list the artists whose techniques they are practicing or who they drew their approach from.

This pendant, by Zuzana (Verundela on Flickr) of the Czech Republic, looks to be a combination of influences as well as materials. I would not call the liberal use of mica powders, embedding watch gears and wire into clay, and topping off a piece with resin unusual, but these approaches all came from somewhere else. Or at least they do not often come to us in a moment of pure, uninfluenced flash of genius. Even when we are not aware of it, other artists bring their influence to us by creative osmosis.

Here, however, we get a glimpse of the influential creative trail. Zuzana gives credit for this piece to Sabine Spiesser of Australia for the rather celestial looking faux enamel and wire work. But if you wander off into Sabine’s Flickr pages (papagodesigns), you’ll find she credits her faux cloisonne work to Eugena Topina of Maryland here in the US. Eugena’s wire bordered faux cloisonne enamel was one of the first tutorials I ever attempted to follow back in the days when I was expanding myself beyond the basics. The technique has been around for a while, but credit is still being considerately passed on. I also really like how global this influence can be … bouncing across the globe from the US to Australia to Eastern Europe. That is the wonderful thing about being an international community and a community very big on sharing and helping each other grow.

 

Read More
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