Crosswise Crafts
August 4, 2019
Inspirational Art, Polymer community news
Heather Campbell – “Keep Circling”
If you read this blog because polymer is your primary art material, do you consider yourself a polymer artist or a mixed-media artist? This question has arisen in a few conversations recently – how to identify oneself as an artist – and also in regard to the content of these blogs posts because a lot of people that are writing me of late have turned out not to be primarily polymer artists, or at least identify themselves as mixed-media rather than polymer artists. I think that’s really cool and I don’t find it terribly surprising that people who work in other art materials are interested in polymer because polymer has so much crossover and such a wide range of possible applications.
I mean, is polymer clay the only material in your art studio? Aside from maybe dedicated caners, I think the majority of us who identify as polymer artists also have drawers and bins and boxes of other things like beads, fabric, paints, paper, resin, and so much more. So, is your polymer art really a type of mixed-media art? And what is mixed-media art really anyways?
And most of all… do the labels really matter?
Labels are important for the purpose of organizing all the information we are inundated with daily, but unfortunately, it also puts people and concepts in restrictive boxes and that can become problematic. When someone is labeled (or calls themselves) a polymer artist, it doesn’t mean that they work only with polymer or even primarily with polymer. They may simply have an affinity for the material more than any other single material.
Not only do we use a lot of other materials in polymer work, but we can also so readily draw inspiration from looking at artwork in materials. I, myself, find fiber art to be an immense resource for ideas in my polymer work, especially modern quilting, so I thought I’d bring you along to explore some of the ways today’s quilt art and polymer creatively crossover.
Crosswise Crafts
Quilt art is a form of fiber art which pushes beyond functional bedcovers and quilted clothing of the past. Fiber Art itself is a relatively recent term, first used shortly after World War II to categorize fine art using natural or synthetic fiber as the material. This speaks to how relatively new the focus has been on fiber as an art form. Luckily, the term quickly worked its way out of the relatively elite world of curators and art historians into a more generalized use encompassing all fiber-based artistic applications, from weaving and quilting to intensely detailed embroidery and monumental outdoor installations.
There has been a tremendous amount of experimentation going on in fiber arts since the latter decades of the twentieth century, something as polymer artists we understand and applaud but, unlike polymer the many forms of fiber art draw from some of mankind’s oldest crafts so experimentation tends to rally not around techniques but around form, nontraditional materials, unusual use and placement of materials, and conceptual approaches, especially those involving cultural issues and activism. This makes it a rich source of inspiration that can really light the way for new possibilities in polymer.
As I’m sure you know, not only do we emulate fiber in polymer, we also have methods of construction and layout with veneers and inlays which use basically the same approach as quilting, less the sewing. Both art forms also technically work in three-dimensions but are commonly composed in two-dimensions which is why I think it’s such a great arena to look to for a creative shot in the arm.
Here is a very direct example of the crossover between quilting and polymer. Lindly Haunani draws the patterns for her polymer quilts directly from classic quilt patterns, like this one based on a half square quilt design.
She uses these wall pieces to examine and teach color. She also applies the concepts to brooches like these lovely pieces.
By the way, Lindly has a series of workshops teaching color through the creation of veneers and polymer quilts coming up in late August/early September at Creative Journey Studios. You can check those out here.
Although classic quilt patterns pop up in polymer quite often, contemporary quilts are nothing like these. Here is an example of traditional quilting techniques but without the traditional patterns by Lisa Jenni. Do the colors or composition poke at your creative brain but with polymer on the mind? It could be an arrangement with alcohol ink dyed polymer, striped canes, and stamped clay medallions, right?
That quilt reminds me a little bit of Gera Scott Chandler’s work. The colors and the emphasis on oblong circles are probably the connections but you see how one could possibly inspire the other, yes?
And how have we not seen something like this piece below done in polymer? This is embroidered quilting by Susan Lenz It’s less than 3’ x 2’ so such a piece in polymer would not be a monumental task. This has given me an idea … I think I know what I’m going to do with all the inchies collected over the years. Let’s all make wall pieces from our collections!
Be sure to look at Susan’s Lancet window series too. They have a similarly open layout but in kind of stained-glass patterns.
Contemporary quilts, like polymer, are not restricted to a two-dimensional canvas or flat layers. There are a lot of things being added into and onto quilts today. Just look at this riot of wonder by Molly Jean Hobbit.
Does this piece bring to mind any polymer artists who also use lots of pieces and materials in their work? Maybe Laurie Mika, Heather Campbell (as seen in the opening image), or even Christi Friesen with her mixed-media mosaics? If you have always liked what these ladies are doing, just imagine the fresh batch of ideas you could get from contemporary quilts.
Want to really delve into the quilt world now? You go down a rabbit hole by simply putting “quilt art” into Pinterest, or you could start on the Contemporary Quilt Art associations gallery pages. Click on each image to get a whole slew of additional quilts by various artists. It’s quite the fabulous (and possibly time gobbling) rabbit hole to go down.
Want to do a little polymer quilting of your own today? Well, you could sit down to this video by Jan Montarsi, demonstrating how to make striped polymer quilt squares. Mind you, he uses his new Create Template, but you could do it without the template if you want to get right to it. If you have the latest edition of The Polymer Studio, Issue #3, go to Jan’s article on multicolor blends first to make some really bright and saturated blended sheets to work with. If you didn’t subscribe or purchase your copy yet, you can get an immediate digital download or order a print edition on the website here. And you can get Jan’s templates here.
Where Two Crafts Collide – working with the Craft Industry Alliance
So, my curiosity about this mixed media labeling question pushed me to do some research early last month and, in the process, I found the Craft Industry Alliance. This is a fairly new organization – it was created in 2015 – but it is growing quite quickly as an information and supportive advocacy trade association for all working craft artists – this includes you!
I really liked that this organization recognizes craft art as a broader community that is not segregated by material or form. Since the founders are primarily fiber artist, however, it started out heavy in that arena, but they are actively growing into other communities. I know this because the president of CIA (gosh, their acronym sounds so covert!) contacted me after I joined their organization online with an earnest request to get to know the polymer community better. After a lovely chat and a few emails, we are now working on polymer based content for the Alliance. How cool is that?
So, what is this organization and what might it do for you? Well, here is the skinny, straight from President, Abby Glassenberg:
Craft Industry Alliance is a community of craft professionals. Strengthen your creative business, stay up to date on industry news, and build connections within a supportive trade association. Artists who are interested in becoming teachers of their craft, writing books, and showing their work in galleries need to think about setting up a solid business foundation from which to grow. Marketing and branding, legal, accounting and tax issues, social media and blogging … these are all issues creative business owners need to think through. Don’t do it alone! Come together with 1,300+ fellow members in a supportive community where you can find solid answers to your questions, make connections with the right people, and find the resources you need. Check it out at https://www.craftindustryalliance.org
As you can see, the organization is focused on active artists who show and sell their work or promote themselves as teachers or writers. It doesn’t really matter how small or how big your creative operation is, you’ll always benefit from a little help and I think it’s a fantastic idea to have a community of people from all areas of craft supporting each other. I’ve always been a little worried that the polymer community has remained a bit insular since we have issues that few other material arenas have, being such a very young material, working with a plastic in an environmentally sensitive world, and battling the “kids art material” image. But growth in this community will come from the outside, not from within so the more we reach out and network with other craft artists and the larger craft community, the more energized and innovative we will be as a whole and that will keep the community growing and vital.
The Sage Sabbatical
So, as most of you probably know by now, August starts my little sabbatical from production work on print publications so I can attend to some health issues. I have to admit, it’s made me a little depressed. It’s just rather sudden and I’m such a workaholic and so used to having a deadline hanging over me all the time so it’s a little unnerving. Luckily, it actually started out busy since we wrapped up the release of The Polymer Studio Issue #3. It turned out just beautiful and we’ve already received so many great comments on it with particular excitement around articles like the fascinating story of Brazil’s polymer master, Beatriz Cominatto, Debbie Crothers’ acrylic and polymer exploration, and Jan’s multi-color skinner blend techniques.
If you’re waiting on your copy, the digital edition went out on the 31st – check spam/junk mail folders if you’re due one and didn’t see it in your inbox. Print editions went to the post office this past Wednesday, so they are on the way too. I have my batch of stock here if you need to order it. Just go to the website.
We also added a Special 3 issue Package of all three of The Polymer Studio issues if you need to do some catching up.
If you’re unfamiliar with my silly little situation that forced me into taking time off, you can find the more-or-less full story in our most recent newsletter here.
If you don’t get our twice a month newsletter, signing up for the newsletter is one of the best ways to stay informed on our publications and new projects, of which there will be something before the year ends even if I can’t do print! But yes, I promise I will not overextend myself and do with the doctor orders!
Speaking of which … I should go now. I hope you are excited by the peek at quilts and the connection to polymer. Have a wonderful rest of your weekend and an inspired week!
The Story Within
July 14, 2019
Inspirational Art
What is it about faux damaged and worn surfaces that we like so much? I mean, it’s everywhere – crackle, antiquing, weathering, patina, torn edges, scratching, distressing – these are all widely used surface techniques in art and in all kinds of decor. But have you ever asked yourself why we are drawn to things that are breaking down and degrading?
Let me say right out the gate, I absolutely adore this kind of surface treatment so don’t stop reading because you think I’m going to try to dissuade anyone from using it. But I do think it’s interesting that artists of all kinds are interested in it and wondered if you ever considered why people, in general, are so attracted to it.
I’ll give you the answer in one simple word – story. Things that are worn, show signs of use, and show the passage of time, have a story, history, a connection leading into the past lives and worlds of other people and places, or are a connection to our own past. Human beings love story. Civilizations of all kinds, and through all time, have told stories or sung songs to keep a culture, event, or person alive in the community or society. Communities everywhere collect evidence of the past – both their own and of others – and engage in the exchange of stories through nearly everything that we do and attend to including banter and gossip, entertainment, all our print and spoken communication sources , and all kinds of visual forms including, and maybe most especially, art. So, it’s no wonder artists love to recreate that innate sense of story by creating the look of aging, wear, breakage and weathering.
Now, you may think you simply like the look and any attraction you have to aged looks has nothing to do with the potential history something might have had or the stories that you could make up, consciously or unconsciously. The thing is, whether it is faux or real aging, we will always associate the look of something worn and weathered with the past and the past means history and history is, well, hi-story. It’s never just what we see that draws us. It’s what we associate with it, what our experiences tell us and our emotions evoke.
If these looks were just about the visuals, more people would be drawing inspiration from gory and grimy imagery alongside the pretty, intriguing, and more benign sources. (There are definitely people who draw texture from gore and grime but they’re not usually doing it to create something with a comfortable, aesthetic beauty.) So yes, the worn and weathered textures are beautiful, but it is psychologically attractive because it represents the passage of time and it’s interaction with the world and us.
Understanding that it is story and not just the beauty of these aged and distressed textures can take your work and designs into a more complex and rich realm because, instead of just thinking “This is a pretty texture, I want to make something with it,” you can start asking yourself, “What is the story behind this texture and why do I want to put it on this piece?” Or conversely, “Why do I want to make that texture into a piece of art?”
This is not to say that you have to write up an actual story or history for the piece that you’re making. I think just being aware that what you’re putting forth does represent a history will help guide you in your choices. After all, the viewer of your work isn’t necessarily going to know what story you associate with it but they will insert their own story, or an emotion associated with a story that the textures elicit, and the whole of the design should support the idea of its history or use.
Let’s look at some work with some of our favorite worn and weathered textures, and not just polymer either – I think we need to branch out a bit, especially in this subject matter, to see just how ubiquitous this type of texture is in art.
All a Story is Cracked Up to Be
Let’s start with an example from an artist who is obviously all about the story in her artwork. Christine Damm’s website and shop name is, after all, “Stories They Tell”. All her work looks weathered or worn, maybe a bit beaten and dinged, but she’s coaxed a persevering beauty out of these rough, color strewn treatments with consistent intention. This piece of Christine’s includes parts of an old vintage hand beater whose actual history of use, neglect, and, now, adoration, is echoed in the polymer clay and combined in a tribal-esque design.
This piece was actually the opening beauty shot for Christine’s article, “Found Fusion: Designing with Polymer & Found Objects”, in the Spring 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts. It’s a fantastic article that will really get you thinking about how enriching found objects can be when added to your work. We still have copies of that issue in print on our website here and you can read more about Christine’s and her process on her website here.
Nadezhda Plotnikova’s “Sunny necklace”, below, is aptly named. Although the surface of the focal beads is quite crackled and the other beads have a rough, weathered look, the necklace is anything but worn out looking. The bright and light colors convey that “sunny” emotion while the surface treatments give it a relaxed and comfortable feel. It’s that same kind of feeling you get from your favorite well-worn comfy jeans (and don’t those jeans have stories!), only with a bit more pizzazz. It seems like the individual beads here would have the stories, though, and the necklace would be a recent gathering of them. Like maybe it could be a collection of old sun-bleached coral washed up on a distant island combined with wave-worn, fantastical rocks, all found and brought together by some seafaring adventurer. Or something like that. What story do you come up with when looking at this?
Like Nadezhda’s above, Tamara of Block Party Press has chosen a light theme for a necklace of visually distressed beads. Her’s however, comes in the form of stylized daisies but the color and treatment is on the dark and heavy side, with its worn-out whites over a dark brown base. It’s a kind of a subdued approach to what we have above, being much less dramatic. I also feel like it’s the kind of thing you might have found in the back of your mother’s jewelry drawer, forgotten and dusty, and just exuding nostalgia. It absolutely begs for a story to be wound around it. It’s the kind of piece that I think would feel instantly a part of your personal history even when new.
Some artwork does not just imply story but is actually created from a story. Our featured artist in the #3 issue of The Polymer Studio is an avid researcher and history lover from Brazil quite inspired by interpreting story. Beatriz Cominatto created the pieces you see in the opening of this post and the one below as part of a series inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people. She researched the history of Brazil’s Marajo Island and the archaeological finds there extensively before starting the series and then developed this into quite the elaborate art installation, complete with simulated archaeological work. These pieces imply story even when you even to those uninformed about Beatriz’s inspiration, due to the consistently applied signs of age and the tribal design.
You can see and read more about this Beatriz’s work, in the next issue as she is our featured interview. She has had the most amazing artistic journey! She’s had a lot of hurdles to jump being so isolated, primarily language-wise, in Brazil, from the rest of the polymer community and yet she grew polymer as an art form there almost single-handedly, even helping to develop Brazil’s own line of polymer clay. You gotta read this article! You can also find out more about her Marajoara series on her feature page in Polymer Journeys 2019.
When I think about cracked and torn pieces in art jewelry, I always think about the metalsmiths. There’s something about taking a jeweler’s saw and developing cracked layers, revealing the jewels or textured surfaces beneath. Both the metalsmiths and admiring collectors seem to be quite drawn to it as the treatment is not at all uncommon. Lexi Erickson’s penchant for this kind of treatment is often paired with pitted and worn metal as in this pendant below.
It almost feels like Lexi’s piece was torn from some old piece of machinery which could lead you to wonder where and what that machine was and maybe what the machine’s purpose was and whether its maker ever imagined it would become a piece of jewelry. No, I’m not saying that’s what she did but that’s the kind of story, or at least e a sense of story, this type of work can invoke, all because of the thoroughness in her treatment of that one layer.
And what about this amazing conglomeration of worn, cracked, scratched and yet intensely beautiful surface treatments on this ceramic vessel below? Lesley McInally’s work is often reminiscent of an old doorframe much in need of painting or the corner of a crumbling old house where the plaster and frame have started to show. And that red dot … so simple and yet it adds so much energy and drama. I don’t think it’s supposed to be blood, but it could represent something of that sort. It really depends on where your mind wants to go with the possible stories buried here.
Creating Your Own Story
So, I want to give you a little, fun challenge today. Go take a look at some of your more elaborate pieces or, if you don’t have anything of your making at hand, look up some of your favorite pieces by other artists. What is the story, for you, in each piece that you look at? Tell yourself as much or as little of the story as comes to you in the first minute or less. Do this with at least 3 pieces, maybe 5. You may discover, during this process, a story in a piece that was only unconsciously there, but once you ask yourself about its possible history, it may become quite obvious. How exciting is that? Or do all of your pieces already come with a fully realized story?
Some artists do work that way, creating full-fledged stories for all their work, although I think it’s more predominant with people who create figures, animals, or creatures of some sort. I learned to do this with my art jewelry, mostly because, when I was selling, I made sure each piece had a title because that really helps to get potential customers thinking about its story and since they write the story, they tend to find a connection to the work, making it much more likely that they would buy the piece. I have a whole article about naming your pieces and the advantages of this in the Fall 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts if you want to read more about that.
My Own Story
First of all, I want to thank all of you who wrote me little personal notes about my physical well-being. You’re also sweet! Mind you, it’s nothing serious but chronic tendinitis does make it very hard to work, I have to say. But I have my workarounds. And for those who wrote me about the earthquakes… I grew up with them and although they are scary in the moment, us native Californians just take it in stride. There were no major injuries from these quakes as it was centered in a fairly unpopulated area and deep in the earth. We were rolling around quite a bit here but nothing even fell over, which was a miracle considering the state of our house.
As for this house renovation, we are supposedly really close to being done but it still looks like a wreck and everything is covered in a layer of white dust from all the plastering. It feels like it’s going to be months after they finish before the house is back to normal, just because of all the house cleaning we get to look forward to and all the organizing. It’s going to be like moving into a new place! Well, it is mostly a new place now, actually. Which is cool! But a lot of work.
The good news is that we do have nearly one whole bathroom done, which is really nice, to say the least. We’re doing the painting on it to save us some bucks while the crew works on the kitchen and tiling the other bathroom. I’m training the family on painting and other home improvement stuff. It’s become quite the family project which is pretty nice. We get to spend paint-spattered time with the teen before she goes off to college in a couple of months!
As for work here at Tenth Muse headquarters, I’m still working on polishing the next issue of The Polymer Studio which is going slower than I’d like because of the tendinitis but I’m going to keep at it. I hope to have the actual publication date next week so stay tuned!
I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a little time to go and find some of the stories in your work–you’ll love doing that! I promise. Have a great week!
Your Morning Book
June 30, 2019
Inspirational Art
Monika Duchowicz’s Slavic Village polymer journal cover
Have you ever gone to a foreign country and found yourself talking like them after being there awhile? It might just be the phrasing but perhaps you take on accents or hand gestures as well. It’s natural to adopt accents and ways of speaking when you are around it a lot. That’s how you learned to talk as a baby and your brain doesn’t completely turn off that learning from what you hear around you.
This phenomenon can happen with things other than language too. As fashion and décor changes around us, we may find our tastes get tweaked along with them. When we peruse social media sites and see artwork online, we may adopt a tendency towards certain types of design, colors, and forms. This can happen over time or even over the course of a day. That means that what you see online and around you can effect what you create.
So how do you keep your own voice and your style unaltered? Well, you can’t, really. Our aesthetic is formed from our interaction with our world but we can do something about the dominance of other influences over our own unique and personal voice. But it’s like muscle memory and that takes regular practice.
Ages ago, I read a book written in 1920 (whose title and author I have shamefully forgotten) on how to be a writer. The author had one line that really struck me. After stating he explained that a writer must get up every morning and, before doing anything else including getting out of bed, he or she must write at least a page of what we would now call free-writing, because this was the only way to insure the writer would wrote with their own voice later in the day. The section ended with him saying, “If you cannot get up and write a page every morning, then you are not a writer.”
At that point, a writer was all I wanted to be, so, fearful that I would not prove up to the task and therefore, I’d never be a real writer (I was rather young and impressionable then), I took that line to heart and I wrote every morning, no matter what, for what was probably about 10 years. Getting married and having a family kind of threw me off the habit but I do try to go back to it each time I stray.
When I don’t do this exercise, I do find that my day to day interactions find their way into my creative work. I found out early on that if I didn’t write in the morning, or tried writing fiction or poetry after a long day of reading academic books or writing training manuals, my writing would feel awkward or stilted. It just didn’t sound like me.
I think this influence of other art we see during the day can similarly affect the art we create as well. So, as part of my morning ritual now, I write for 10-15 minutes and then sketch for about the same amount of time. It is a very pleasant way to wake up and, in the process, I flex my unique voice and get my brain geared up for creative work. I don’t always have time to work in the studio but at least every day I am flexing that visual creative muscle and, I find, it makes my creative time easier to get into when I do get to go play.
Even if you aren’t able to spend productive time creating every day, I think you would find that a morning sketch, a quick “clay doodle” (just sitting at the studio table, playing with your clay for 15 minutes), or just journaling about design ideas will go a long way to concrete you personal voice. It will also show you what you are drawn to or might give you some really unique ideas for new designs. It’s something I would highly encourage.
So, would you be up for that? If you choose to write or sketch in the mornings, you can increase your motivation by creating a beautifully covered sketchbook or journal. And since polymer clay lends itself so well to decorating just about anything, why not make a beautiful cover for a blank book, and then keep it by your bedside? With a gorgeous tome to work in, you’re sure not to miss out on a very useful and fulfilling bit of creative exercise.
A Book and It’s Cover
The first person who comes to mind when talking of polymer covered journals is Aniko Kolesnikova aka Mandarin Duck. She does some of the most interesting and detailed journal covers you can find in polymer these days. And she doesn’t do just the front. She covers the back quite often, like on this one here.
If you are the sculptural type and want a ton of ideas to get you going on a cover design of your own, check out Aniko’s Flickr photostream. If you want more than just ideas, go to her Etsy page for tutorials, including one for that gorgeous peacock cover that was featured in Polymer Journeys 2019.
The other person that comes readily to mind for polymer covered books, and is one of my early influencers, is Chris Kapono, who, like Aniko, also has an affinity for the word Mandarin for some reason, her shop being Mandarin Moon. Chris’ covers are a riotous mixed-media decoration of polymer with glass cabochons, metal charms, beads, and, sometimes, hand-drawn decoration, as you see in the border of this book below.
Books are a perfect canvas for Chris’ style of decorative polymer. She shares her process as well, through tutorials on her Etsy site and in publications such as her tremendous contribution to the Polymer Art Projects – Organics book.
If you would like to create a cover with a more painterly approach, you might aspire to the work of Monika Duchowicz. Her polymer paintings are masterful but she kindly shares process shots on her Instagram account and was so kind to create a tutorial for her style of polymer painting for The Polymer Arts in the Summer 2017 issue.
Here’s another painterly polymer artist, Zhanna Bessonova, who likes to go really large. I just didn’t want you to think it had to be a small journal or sketchbook. Pick the size of the book you want to write or draw in first, then decide the cover.
I know, I know … the work of these very talented ladies might be intimidating to some people but remember, the whole idea is to make something that can help you find and/or hold onto your unique voice so you certainly don’t need to make covers like these—make them your way! Whatever you can create on a flat sheet of polymer can become a journal cover. Create a cover with a mosaic of textured squares, tons of polymer dots, rhinestones, polymer ‘embrodiery or, heck, canes will do, of course! Strangely enough, I couldn’t really find anyone doing cane covered books. I thought clayers had hit everything with cane slices! They must be out there somewhere! (If you know of some, share the links to them in the comments at the end of this post. Click the header if you are getting this by email.)
Also keep in mind, your cover doesn’t have to be complicated. And it doesn’t have to be polymer. Use whatever you like and do as much or as little as you like on it. Look at this lovely but simple book by a French crafter who goes by shop name alone – Avenuedes Fantaisies. It’s just a polymer honeycomb background and some fun rhinestone bees that were probably pins at one time, but it feels joyful.
You really can attach anything you want to your book cover. It’s for you, so if you are up for the challenge, make it yours!
New Issue of The Polymer Studio, coming late July
If you haven’t seen the new cover roaming about social media, here it is! Debbie Crothers’s acrylic on polymer beads grace the front for issue #3. We also have tutorials by Christi Friesen, Anita Long, Beatriz Cominatto, Kathy Koontz and Nika Nakit. There is also a fascinating interview with Beatriz, Brazil’s premiere polymer artist with a branded line of polymer clay, and a peek into the studio of master miniature artist, Angie Scarr. Plus much more.
Start or renew subscriptions or pre-order a copy on the website here.
Painter for a Day
I am off to paint a bathroom today then back to polishing the next issue. We might have a fully functional bathroom by the end of the day Monday but only if I can get this part done today. It’s not that the contractors couldn’t paint it but, well, I’m cheaper—I just require some yummy baked goods and a good audiobook or podcast and I’ll work away! And, honestly, I will do a better job. When it’s your place, you just take extra care with things. So, I am off. Enjoy your Sunday and have a beautiful week! I hope you get up every morning before your mind is otherwise influenced, and you write or create something just for yourself. You deserve it!
Looking Through to Another Dimension
May 25, 2015
Inspirational Art
We haven’t visited the wonderful world of transluscents in awhile, and I have been curious to see what people have been doing lately. Strangely, there is not a lot of recently posted work. Anyone have anything new they’d like to share? I’ll keep searching, but I’m up for some striking new work to be landing in my mailbox, too. Hint, hint.
In the meantime, here is a beautiful piece by Brazil’s Beatriz Cominatto that she created a few years back. It’s not a complex concept, this scale-like layering of cane slices, but it does show off the particular advantage of working with translucents. Instead of considering just the surface of the clay, translucents allow you to focus on the content of the depth of the clay. The layering offers another dimension to the design when translucents are in play, which allows for such criss-cross patterning and other ways to create lines that work in multiple ways.
Beatrice created this in 2012, if the Flickr date is correct. She did a lot of exploring in many different techniques then, so although there is not a lot of translucent, she did some great sushi canes with the translucent clay along with other polymer work. You can explore more of Beatrice’s work on her Flickr page and her website.
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Organic Cohesiveness
May 31, 2012
Inspirational Art, Polymer issues
Nature inspires the art of many of us but how often can you say the entire piece reflects the aesthetics of Mother Nature?
This piece by Beatriz Cominatto is striking not only because of its unexpected and yet still elegant choice of forms for a necklace but because there is no true break from organic construction anywhere along the piece. We are looking at vines twisting down to mature open pods presenting their treasures. From the focal forms all the way around the neckband the piece reflects the shapes and organization of nature.
There are, however, minor breaks from authentic organic here–one that really makes the piece and one that is a departure that could be seen as a missed opportunity.
First the interior of the pods and seeds are metallic–this isn’t a natural version of seed pods but it works because it puts emphasis on the ‘treasure’ aspect of the organic forms, mixing our sense of what treasure is with what nature holds as its most precious gifts. This juxtaposition is what takes this form being just a direct translation of seed pods into something with instilled meaning and added beauty.
The other break from nature is in how the vines are twisted. They are very uniform. This is not normal in nature–not unheard of but not as organic as we usually encounter. A slight variation in the plaiting of the vine forms would have added to the organic theme and interest of the piece. I think it can be helpful to stop before completing a piece and ask if it can be pushed just a little and in this case, it probably could have been. The trick is to know when to stop pushing it. And for this piece, its final form is actually a decent stopping point.
What do you think? And how do you feel about a blog post that both praises and presents constructive criticism of a piece like this?
Beatriz Cominatto hails from São Paulo, Brasil. You can find more of her work on her Flickr page and her website.
Heather Campbell – “Keep Circling”
If you read this blog because polymer is your primary art material, do you consider yourself a polymer artist or a mixed-media artist? This question has arisen in a few conversations recently – how to identify oneself as an artist – and also in regard to the content of these blogs posts because a lot of people that are writing me of late have turned out not to be primarily polymer artists, or at least identify themselves as mixed-media rather than polymer artists. I think that’s really cool and I don’t find it terribly surprising that people who work in other art materials are interested in polymer because polymer has so much crossover and such a wide range of possible applications.
I mean, is polymer clay the only material in your art studio? Aside from maybe dedicated caners, I think the majority of us who identify as polymer artists also have drawers and bins and boxes of other things like beads, fabric, paints, paper, resin, and so much more. So, is your polymer art really a type of mixed-media art? And what is mixed-media art really anyways?
And most of all… do the labels really matter?
Labels are important for the purpose of organizing all the information we are inundated with daily, but unfortunately, it also puts people and concepts in restrictive boxes and that can become problematic. When someone is labeled (or calls themselves) a polymer artist, it doesn’t mean that they work only with polymer or even primarily with polymer. They may simply have an affinity for the material more than any other single material.
Not only do we use a lot of other materials in polymer work, but we can also so readily draw inspiration from looking at artwork in materials. I, myself, find fiber art to be an immense resource for ideas in my polymer work, especially modern quilting, so I thought I’d bring you along to explore some of the ways today’s quilt art and polymer creatively crossover.
Crosswise Crafts
Quilt art is a form of fiber art which pushes beyond functional bedcovers and quilted clothing of the past. Fiber Art itself is a relatively recent term, first used shortly after World War II to categorize fine art using natural or synthetic fiber as the material. This speaks to how relatively new the focus has been on fiber as an art form. Luckily, the term quickly worked its way out of the relatively elite world of curators and art historians into a more generalized use encompassing all fiber-based artistic applications, from weaving and quilting to intensely detailed embroidery and monumental outdoor installations.
There has been a tremendous amount of experimentation going on in fiber arts since the latter decades of the twentieth century, something as polymer artists we understand and applaud but, unlike polymer the many forms of fiber art draw from some of mankind’s oldest crafts so experimentation tends to rally not around techniques but around form, nontraditional materials, unusual use and placement of materials, and conceptual approaches, especially those involving cultural issues and activism. This makes it a rich source of inspiration that can really light the way for new possibilities in polymer.
As I’m sure you know, not only do we emulate fiber in polymer, we also have methods of construction and layout with veneers and inlays which use basically the same approach as quilting, less the sewing. Both art forms also technically work in three-dimensions but are commonly composed in two-dimensions which is why I think it’s such a great arena to look to for a creative shot in the arm.
Here is a very direct example of the crossover between quilting and polymer. Lindly Haunani draws the patterns for her polymer quilts directly from classic quilt patterns, like this one based on a half square quilt design.
She uses these wall pieces to examine and teach color. She also applies the concepts to brooches like these lovely pieces.
By the way, Lindly has a series of workshops teaching color through the creation of veneers and polymer quilts coming up in late August/early September at Creative Journey Studios. You can check those out here.
Although classic quilt patterns pop up in polymer quite often, contemporary quilts are nothing like these. Here is an example of traditional quilting techniques but without the traditional patterns by Lisa Jenni. Do the colors or composition poke at your creative brain but with polymer on the mind? It could be an arrangement with alcohol ink dyed polymer, striped canes, and stamped clay medallions, right?
That quilt reminds me a little bit of Gera Scott Chandler’s work. The colors and the emphasis on oblong circles are probably the connections but you see how one could possibly inspire the other, yes?
And how have we not seen something like this piece below done in polymer? This is embroidered quilting by Susan Lenz It’s less than 3’ x 2’ so such a piece in polymer would not be a monumental task. This has given me an idea … I think I know what I’m going to do with all the inchies collected over the years. Let’s all make wall pieces from our collections!
Be sure to look at Susan’s Lancet window series too. They have a similarly open layout but in kind of stained-glass patterns.
Contemporary quilts, like polymer, are not restricted to a two-dimensional canvas or flat layers. There are a lot of things being added into and onto quilts today. Just look at this riot of wonder by Molly Jean Hobbit.
Does this piece bring to mind any polymer artists who also use lots of pieces and materials in their work? Maybe Laurie Mika, Heather Campbell (as seen in the opening image), or even Christi Friesen with her mixed-media mosaics? If you have always liked what these ladies are doing, just imagine the fresh batch of ideas you could get from contemporary quilts.
Want to really delve into the quilt world now? You go down a rabbit hole by simply putting “quilt art” into Pinterest, or you could start on the Contemporary Quilt Art associations gallery pages. Click on each image to get a whole slew of additional quilts by various artists. It’s quite the fabulous (and possibly time gobbling) rabbit hole to go down.
Want to do a little polymer quilting of your own today? Well, you could sit down to this video by Jan Montarsi, demonstrating how to make striped polymer quilt squares. Mind you, he uses his new Create Template, but you could do it without the template if you want to get right to it. If you have the latest edition of The Polymer Studio, Issue #3, go to Jan’s article on multicolor blends first to make some really bright and saturated blended sheets to work with. If you didn’t subscribe or purchase your copy yet, you can get an immediate digital download or order a print edition on the website here. And you can get Jan’s templates here.
Where Two Crafts Collide – working with the Craft Industry Alliance
So, my curiosity about this mixed media labeling question pushed me to do some research early last month and, in the process, I found the Craft Industry Alliance. This is a fairly new organization – it was created in 2015 – but it is growing quite quickly as an information and supportive advocacy trade association for all working craft artists – this includes you!
I really liked that this organization recognizes craft art as a broader community that is not segregated by material or form. Since the founders are primarily fiber artist, however, it started out heavy in that arena, but they are actively growing into other communities. I know this because the president of CIA (gosh, their acronym sounds so covert!) contacted me after I joined their organization online with an earnest request to get to know the polymer community better. After a lovely chat and a few emails, we are now working on polymer based content for the Alliance. How cool is that?
So, what is this organization and what might it do for you? Well, here is the skinny, straight from President, Abby Glassenberg:
Craft Industry Alliance is a community of craft professionals. Strengthen your creative business, stay up to date on industry news, and build connections within a supportive trade association. Artists who are interested in becoming teachers of their craft, writing books, and showing their work in galleries need to think about setting up a solid business foundation from which to grow. Marketing and branding, legal, accounting and tax issues, social media and blogging … these are all issues creative business owners need to think through. Don’t do it alone! Come together with 1,300+ fellow members in a supportive community where you can find solid answers to your questions, make connections with the right people, and find the resources you need. Check it out at https://www.craftindustryalliance.org
As you can see, the organization is focused on active artists who show and sell their work or promote themselves as teachers or writers. It doesn’t really matter how small or how big your creative operation is, you’ll always benefit from a little help and I think it’s a fantastic idea to have a community of people from all areas of craft supporting each other. I’ve always been a little worried that the polymer community has remained a bit insular since we have issues that few other material arenas have, being such a very young material, working with a plastic in an environmentally sensitive world, and battling the “kids art material” image. But growth in this community will come from the outside, not from within so the more we reach out and network with other craft artists and the larger craft community, the more energized and innovative we will be as a whole and that will keep the community growing and vital.
The Sage Sabbatical
So, as most of you probably know by now, August starts my little sabbatical from production work on print publications so I can attend to some health issues. I have to admit, it’s made me a little depressed. It’s just rather sudden and I’m such a workaholic and so used to having a deadline hanging over me all the time so it’s a little unnerving. Luckily, it actually started out busy since we wrapped up the release of The Polymer Studio Issue #3. It turned out just beautiful and we’ve already received so many great comments on it with particular excitement around articles like the fascinating story of Brazil’s polymer master, Beatriz Cominatto, Debbie Crothers’ acrylic and polymer exploration, and Jan’s multi-color skinner blend techniques.
If you’re waiting on your copy, the digital edition went out on the 31st – check spam/junk mail folders if you’re due one and didn’t see it in your inbox. Print editions went to the post office this past Wednesday, so they are on the way too. I have my batch of stock here if you need to order it. Just go to the website.
We also added a Special 3 issue Package of all three of The Polymer Studio issues if you need to do some catching up.
If you’re unfamiliar with my silly little situation that forced me into taking time off, you can find the more-or-less full story in our most recent newsletter here.
If you don’t get our twice a month newsletter, signing up for the newsletter is one of the best ways to stay informed on our publications and new projects, of which there will be something before the year ends even if I can’t do print! But yes, I promise I will not overextend myself and do with the doctor orders!
Speaking of which … I should go now. I hope you are excited by the peek at quilts and the connection to polymer. Have a wonderful rest of your weekend and an inspired week!
Read MoreWhat is it about faux damaged and worn surfaces that we like so much? I mean, it’s everywhere – crackle, antiquing, weathering, patina, torn edges, scratching, distressing – these are all widely used surface techniques in art and in all kinds of decor. But have you ever asked yourself why we are drawn to things that are breaking down and degrading?
Let me say right out the gate, I absolutely adore this kind of surface treatment so don’t stop reading because you think I’m going to try to dissuade anyone from using it. But I do think it’s interesting that artists of all kinds are interested in it and wondered if you ever considered why people, in general, are so attracted to it.
I’ll give you the answer in one simple word – story. Things that are worn, show signs of use, and show the passage of time, have a story, history, a connection leading into the past lives and worlds of other people and places, or are a connection to our own past. Human beings love story. Civilizations of all kinds, and through all time, have told stories or sung songs to keep a culture, event, or person alive in the community or society. Communities everywhere collect evidence of the past – both their own and of others – and engage in the exchange of stories through nearly everything that we do and attend to including banter and gossip, entertainment, all our print and spoken communication sources , and all kinds of visual forms including, and maybe most especially, art. So, it’s no wonder artists love to recreate that innate sense of story by creating the look of aging, wear, breakage and weathering.
Now, you may think you simply like the look and any attraction you have to aged looks has nothing to do with the potential history something might have had or the stories that you could make up, consciously or unconsciously. The thing is, whether it is faux or real aging, we will always associate the look of something worn and weathered with the past and the past means history and history is, well, hi-story. It’s never just what we see that draws us. It’s what we associate with it, what our experiences tell us and our emotions evoke.
If these looks were just about the visuals, more people would be drawing inspiration from gory and grimy imagery alongside the pretty, intriguing, and more benign sources. (There are definitely people who draw texture from gore and grime but they’re not usually doing it to create something with a comfortable, aesthetic beauty.) So yes, the worn and weathered textures are beautiful, but it is psychologically attractive because it represents the passage of time and it’s interaction with the world and us.
Understanding that it is story and not just the beauty of these aged and distressed textures can take your work and designs into a more complex and rich realm because, instead of just thinking “This is a pretty texture, I want to make something with it,” you can start asking yourself, “What is the story behind this texture and why do I want to put it on this piece?” Or conversely, “Why do I want to make that texture into a piece of art?”
This is not to say that you have to write up an actual story or history for the piece that you’re making. I think just being aware that what you’re putting forth does represent a history will help guide you in your choices. After all, the viewer of your work isn’t necessarily going to know what story you associate with it but they will insert their own story, or an emotion associated with a story that the textures elicit, and the whole of the design should support the idea of its history or use.
Let’s look at some work with some of our favorite worn and weathered textures, and not just polymer either – I think we need to branch out a bit, especially in this subject matter, to see just how ubiquitous this type of texture is in art.
All a Story is Cracked Up to Be
Let’s start with an example from an artist who is obviously all about the story in her artwork. Christine Damm’s website and shop name is, after all, “Stories They Tell”. All her work looks weathered or worn, maybe a bit beaten and dinged, but she’s coaxed a persevering beauty out of these rough, color strewn treatments with consistent intention. This piece of Christine’s includes parts of an old vintage hand beater whose actual history of use, neglect, and, now, adoration, is echoed in the polymer clay and combined in a tribal-esque design.
This piece was actually the opening beauty shot for Christine’s article, “Found Fusion: Designing with Polymer & Found Objects”, in the Spring 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts. It’s a fantastic article that will really get you thinking about how enriching found objects can be when added to your work. We still have copies of that issue in print on our website here and you can read more about Christine’s and her process on her website here.
Nadezhda Plotnikova’s “Sunny necklace”, below, is aptly named. Although the surface of the focal beads is quite crackled and the other beads have a rough, weathered look, the necklace is anything but worn out looking. The bright and light colors convey that “sunny” emotion while the surface treatments give it a relaxed and comfortable feel. It’s that same kind of feeling you get from your favorite well-worn comfy jeans (and don’t those jeans have stories!), only with a bit more pizzazz. It seems like the individual beads here would have the stories, though, and the necklace would be a recent gathering of them. Like maybe it could be a collection of old sun-bleached coral washed up on a distant island combined with wave-worn, fantastical rocks, all found and brought together by some seafaring adventurer. Or something like that. What story do you come up with when looking at this?
Like Nadezhda’s above, Tamara of Block Party Press has chosen a light theme for a necklace of visually distressed beads. Her’s however, comes in the form of stylized daisies but the color and treatment is on the dark and heavy side, with its worn-out whites over a dark brown base. It’s a kind of a subdued approach to what we have above, being much less dramatic. I also feel like it’s the kind of thing you might have found in the back of your mother’s jewelry drawer, forgotten and dusty, and just exuding nostalgia. It absolutely begs for a story to be wound around it. It’s the kind of piece that I think would feel instantly a part of your personal history even when new.
Some artwork does not just imply story but is actually created from a story. Our featured artist in the #3 issue of The Polymer Studio is an avid researcher and history lover from Brazil quite inspired by interpreting story. Beatriz Cominatto created the pieces you see in the opening of this post and the one below as part of a series inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people. She researched the history of Brazil’s Marajo Island and the archaeological finds there extensively before starting the series and then developed this into quite the elaborate art installation, complete with simulated archaeological work. These pieces imply story even when you even to those uninformed about Beatriz’s inspiration, due to the consistently applied signs of age and the tribal design.
You can see and read more about this Beatriz’s work, in the next issue as she is our featured interview. She has had the most amazing artistic journey! She’s had a lot of hurdles to jump being so isolated, primarily language-wise, in Brazil, from the rest of the polymer community and yet she grew polymer as an art form there almost single-handedly, even helping to develop Brazil’s own line of polymer clay. You gotta read this article! You can also find out more about her Marajoara series on her feature page in Polymer Journeys 2019.
When I think about cracked and torn pieces in art jewelry, I always think about the metalsmiths. There’s something about taking a jeweler’s saw and developing cracked layers, revealing the jewels or textured surfaces beneath. Both the metalsmiths and admiring collectors seem to be quite drawn to it as the treatment is not at all uncommon. Lexi Erickson’s penchant for this kind of treatment is often paired with pitted and worn metal as in this pendant below.
It almost feels like Lexi’s piece was torn from some old piece of machinery which could lead you to wonder where and what that machine was and maybe what the machine’s purpose was and whether its maker ever imagined it would become a piece of jewelry. No, I’m not saying that’s what she did but that’s the kind of story, or at least e a sense of story, this type of work can invoke, all because of the thoroughness in her treatment of that one layer.
And what about this amazing conglomeration of worn, cracked, scratched and yet intensely beautiful surface treatments on this ceramic vessel below? Lesley McInally’s work is often reminiscent of an old doorframe much in need of painting or the corner of a crumbling old house where the plaster and frame have started to show. And that red dot … so simple and yet it adds so much energy and drama. I don’t think it’s supposed to be blood, but it could represent something of that sort. It really depends on where your mind wants to go with the possible stories buried here.
Creating Your Own Story
So, I want to give you a little, fun challenge today. Go take a look at some of your more elaborate pieces or, if you don’t have anything of your making at hand, look up some of your favorite pieces by other artists. What is the story, for you, in each piece that you look at? Tell yourself as much or as little of the story as comes to you in the first minute or less. Do this with at least 3 pieces, maybe 5. You may discover, during this process, a story in a piece that was only unconsciously there, but once you ask yourself about its possible history, it may become quite obvious. How exciting is that? Or do all of your pieces already come with a fully realized story?
Some artists do work that way, creating full-fledged stories for all their work, although I think it’s more predominant with people who create figures, animals, or creatures of some sort. I learned to do this with my art jewelry, mostly because, when I was selling, I made sure each piece had a title because that really helps to get potential customers thinking about its story and since they write the story, they tend to find a connection to the work, making it much more likely that they would buy the piece. I have a whole article about naming your pieces and the advantages of this in the Fall 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts if you want to read more about that.
My Own Story
First of all, I want to thank all of you who wrote me little personal notes about my physical well-being. You’re also sweet! Mind you, it’s nothing serious but chronic tendinitis does make it very hard to work, I have to say. But I have my workarounds. And for those who wrote me about the earthquakes… I grew up with them and although they are scary in the moment, us native Californians just take it in stride. There were no major injuries from these quakes as it was centered in a fairly unpopulated area and deep in the earth. We were rolling around quite a bit here but nothing even fell over, which was a miracle considering the state of our house.
As for this house renovation, we are supposedly really close to being done but it still looks like a wreck and everything is covered in a layer of white dust from all the plastering. It feels like it’s going to be months after they finish before the house is back to normal, just because of all the house cleaning we get to look forward to and all the organizing. It’s going to be like moving into a new place! Well, it is mostly a new place now, actually. Which is cool! But a lot of work.
The good news is that we do have nearly one whole bathroom done, which is really nice, to say the least. We’re doing the painting on it to save us some bucks while the crew works on the kitchen and tiling the other bathroom. I’m training the family on painting and other home improvement stuff. It’s become quite the family project which is pretty nice. We get to spend paint-spattered time with the teen before she goes off to college in a couple of months!
As for work here at Tenth Muse headquarters, I’m still working on polishing the next issue of The Polymer Studio which is going slower than I’d like because of the tendinitis but I’m going to keep at it. I hope to have the actual publication date next week so stay tuned!
I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a little time to go and find some of the stories in your work–you’ll love doing that! I promise. Have a great week!
Read MoreMonika Duchowicz’s Slavic Village polymer journal cover
Have you ever gone to a foreign country and found yourself talking like them after being there awhile? It might just be the phrasing but perhaps you take on accents or hand gestures as well. It’s natural to adopt accents and ways of speaking when you are around it a lot. That’s how you learned to talk as a baby and your brain doesn’t completely turn off that learning from what you hear around you.
This phenomenon can happen with things other than language too. As fashion and décor changes around us, we may find our tastes get tweaked along with them. When we peruse social media sites and see artwork online, we may adopt a tendency towards certain types of design, colors, and forms. This can happen over time or even over the course of a day. That means that what you see online and around you can effect what you create.
So how do you keep your own voice and your style unaltered? Well, you can’t, really. Our aesthetic is formed from our interaction with our world but we can do something about the dominance of other influences over our own unique and personal voice. But it’s like muscle memory and that takes regular practice.
Ages ago, I read a book written in 1920 (whose title and author I have shamefully forgotten) on how to be a writer. The author had one line that really struck me. After stating he explained that a writer must get up every morning and, before doing anything else including getting out of bed, he or she must write at least a page of what we would now call free-writing, because this was the only way to insure the writer would wrote with their own voice later in the day. The section ended with him saying, “If you cannot get up and write a page every morning, then you are not a writer.”
At that point, a writer was all I wanted to be, so, fearful that I would not prove up to the task and therefore, I’d never be a real writer (I was rather young and impressionable then), I took that line to heart and I wrote every morning, no matter what, for what was probably about 10 years. Getting married and having a family kind of threw me off the habit but I do try to go back to it each time I stray.
When I don’t do this exercise, I do find that my day to day interactions find their way into my creative work. I found out early on that if I didn’t write in the morning, or tried writing fiction or poetry after a long day of reading academic books or writing training manuals, my writing would feel awkward or stilted. It just didn’t sound like me.
I think this influence of other art we see during the day can similarly affect the art we create as well. So, as part of my morning ritual now, I write for 10-15 minutes and then sketch for about the same amount of time. It is a very pleasant way to wake up and, in the process, I flex my unique voice and get my brain geared up for creative work. I don’t always have time to work in the studio but at least every day I am flexing that visual creative muscle and, I find, it makes my creative time easier to get into when I do get to go play.
Even if you aren’t able to spend productive time creating every day, I think you would find that a morning sketch, a quick “clay doodle” (just sitting at the studio table, playing with your clay for 15 minutes), or just journaling about design ideas will go a long way to concrete you personal voice. It will also show you what you are drawn to or might give you some really unique ideas for new designs. It’s something I would highly encourage.
So, would you be up for that? If you choose to write or sketch in the mornings, you can increase your motivation by creating a beautifully covered sketchbook or journal. And since polymer clay lends itself so well to decorating just about anything, why not make a beautiful cover for a blank book, and then keep it by your bedside? With a gorgeous tome to work in, you’re sure not to miss out on a very useful and fulfilling bit of creative exercise.
A Book and It’s Cover
The first person who comes to mind when talking of polymer covered journals is Aniko Kolesnikova aka Mandarin Duck. She does some of the most interesting and detailed journal covers you can find in polymer these days. And she doesn’t do just the front. She covers the back quite often, like on this one here.
If you are the sculptural type and want a ton of ideas to get you going on a cover design of your own, check out Aniko’s Flickr photostream. If you want more than just ideas, go to her Etsy page for tutorials, including one for that gorgeous peacock cover that was featured in Polymer Journeys 2019.
The other person that comes readily to mind for polymer covered books, and is one of my early influencers, is Chris Kapono, who, like Aniko, also has an affinity for the word Mandarin for some reason, her shop being Mandarin Moon. Chris’ covers are a riotous mixed-media decoration of polymer with glass cabochons, metal charms, beads, and, sometimes, hand-drawn decoration, as you see in the border of this book below.
Books are a perfect canvas for Chris’ style of decorative polymer. She shares her process as well, through tutorials on her Etsy site and in publications such as her tremendous contribution to the Polymer Art Projects – Organics book.
If you would like to create a cover with a more painterly approach, you might aspire to the work of Monika Duchowicz. Her polymer paintings are masterful but she kindly shares process shots on her Instagram account and was so kind to create a tutorial for her style of polymer painting for The Polymer Arts in the Summer 2017 issue.
Here’s another painterly polymer artist, Zhanna Bessonova, who likes to go really large. I just didn’t want you to think it had to be a small journal or sketchbook. Pick the size of the book you want to write or draw in first, then decide the cover.
I know, I know … the work of these very talented ladies might be intimidating to some people but remember, the whole idea is to make something that can help you find and/or hold onto your unique voice so you certainly don’t need to make covers like these—make them your way! Whatever you can create on a flat sheet of polymer can become a journal cover. Create a cover with a mosaic of textured squares, tons of polymer dots, rhinestones, polymer ‘embrodiery or, heck, canes will do, of course! Strangely enough, I couldn’t really find anyone doing cane covered books. I thought clayers had hit everything with cane slices! They must be out there somewhere! (If you know of some, share the links to them in the comments at the end of this post. Click the header if you are getting this by email.)
Also keep in mind, your cover doesn’t have to be complicated. And it doesn’t have to be polymer. Use whatever you like and do as much or as little as you like on it. Look at this lovely but simple book by a French crafter who goes by shop name alone – Avenuedes Fantaisies. It’s just a polymer honeycomb background and some fun rhinestone bees that were probably pins at one time, but it feels joyful.
You really can attach anything you want to your book cover. It’s for you, so if you are up for the challenge, make it yours!
New Issue of The Polymer Studio, coming late July
If you haven’t seen the new cover roaming about social media, here it is! Debbie Crothers’s acrylic on polymer beads grace the front for issue #3. We also have tutorials by Christi Friesen, Anita Long, Beatriz Cominatto, Kathy Koontz and Nika Nakit. There is also a fascinating interview with Beatriz, Brazil’s premiere polymer artist with a branded line of polymer clay, and a peek into the studio of master miniature artist, Angie Scarr. Plus much more.
Start or renew subscriptions or pre-order a copy on the website here.
Painter for a Day
I am off to paint a bathroom today then back to polishing the next issue. We might have a fully functional bathroom by the end of the day Monday but only if I can get this part done today. It’s not that the contractors couldn’t paint it but, well, I’m cheaper—I just require some yummy baked goods and a good audiobook or podcast and I’ll work away! And, honestly, I will do a better job. When it’s your place, you just take extra care with things. So, I am off. Enjoy your Sunday and have a beautiful week! I hope you get up every morning before your mind is otherwise influenced, and you write or create something just for yourself. You deserve it!
Read MoreWe haven’t visited the wonderful world of transluscents in awhile, and I have been curious to see what people have been doing lately. Strangely, there is not a lot of recently posted work. Anyone have anything new they’d like to share? I’ll keep searching, but I’m up for some striking new work to be landing in my mailbox, too. Hint, hint.
In the meantime, here is a beautiful piece by Brazil’s Beatriz Cominatto that she created a few years back. It’s not a complex concept, this scale-like layering of cane slices, but it does show off the particular advantage of working with translucents. Instead of considering just the surface of the clay, translucents allow you to focus on the content of the depth of the clay. The layering offers another dimension to the design when translucents are in play, which allows for such criss-cross patterning and other ways to create lines that work in multiple ways.
Beatrice created this in 2012, if the Flickr date is correct. She did a lot of exploring in many different techniques then, so although there is not a lot of translucent, she did some great sushi canes with the translucent clay along with other polymer work. You can explore more of Beatrice’s work on her Flickr page and her website.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
Nature inspires the art of many of us but how often can you say the entire piece reflects the aesthetics of Mother Nature?
This piece by Beatriz Cominatto is striking not only because of its unexpected and yet still elegant choice of forms for a necklace but because there is no true break from organic construction anywhere along the piece. We are looking at vines twisting down to mature open pods presenting their treasures. From the focal forms all the way around the neckband the piece reflects the shapes and organization of nature.
There are, however, minor breaks from authentic organic here–one that really makes the piece and one that is a departure that could be seen as a missed opportunity.
First the interior of the pods and seeds are metallic–this isn’t a natural version of seed pods but it works because it puts emphasis on the ‘treasure’ aspect of the organic forms, mixing our sense of what treasure is with what nature holds as its most precious gifts. This juxtaposition is what takes this form being just a direct translation of seed pods into something with instilled meaning and added beauty.
The other break from nature is in how the vines are twisted. They are very uniform. This is not normal in nature–not unheard of but not as organic as we usually encounter. A slight variation in the plaiting of the vine forms would have added to the organic theme and interest of the piece. I think it can be helpful to stop before completing a piece and ask if it can be pushed just a little and in this case, it probably could have been. The trick is to know when to stop pushing it. And for this piece, its final form is actually a decent stopping point.
What do you think? And how do you feel about a blog post that both praises and presents constructive criticism of a piece like this?
Beatriz Cominatto hails from São Paulo, Brasil. You can find more of her work on her Flickr page and her website.
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