A Feast of Canes
March 7, 2017
Inspirational Art
The Spring issue is out and as usual, there is a bit of chatter on it out there in the social network world but there is an unusually high level of enthusiasm out there this issue. Is it that fabulously colorful cover? The wide variety of articles by or about amazing artists like Donna Greenberg, Christi Friesen, Wiwat Kalmpornjiwit, and Sylvie Peraud? So far the most talked about articles are the Lariat making, Donna’s inspiration from the past and Christi’s treatise on armatures which was pretty eye-opening since she picked the brains of some of the most amazing artists for which armatures are essential, namely Ellen Jewett (with that incredible opening piece!) and Adam Thomas Rees who I knew built his own animal shapes but had no idea how he did these huge things. But Christi revealed that for us.
The one thing we couldn’t do in Christi’s article was blow up some of the images so you could really see the detail of the work these artist’s do. Adam layers canes onto animal shapes in a manner reminiscent of Jon Anderson though they were developing their work around the same time so I don’t think Adam came to this idea from seeing Jon’s work although either of them may have influenced the other since. But other than canes on animal shapes, they have different approaches. Adam’s pieces are huge and his canes are large, broad patterns and often very bright. He sometimes mixes up other sculptural textures and additions to his creatures that create a feast of interesting details for the eye to roam over. The hanging matted hair like texture built up on this one creates a swath of white to give the eye a resting place below all that intense color and pattern above.
Just open Adam’s website and try not to be startled by the creature staring out at you. It’s beautiful but intense! Take some time out today and enjoy Adams colorful patterns in his galleries. And grab your copy of the Spring issue of The Polymer Arts on our website here.
_________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.
_________________________________________
Spirited Patterns
April 16, 2015
Inspirational Art
A week of dramatic patterns would not be complete without a little Jon Anderson. You have likely seen at least a few of his larger, cane covered animals or maybe his bowls or even his guitars. But, have you seen his jewelry?
Jon’s fascination with canes is all about the pattern. The forms he covers are more of a canvas than the source of inspiration. Of course, animals and the spirit of them is where his finds a home for his patterns, but his canes come from what he has seen on his travels in other decorative artwork, as well as architecture and the decorative elements of buildings.
Jon has such an amazing eye for how to lay out the canes in a way that enhances the form. Also, his canes are so carefully created and reduced that he can bring them down to a size that can be applied onto forms as small as the pendants you see here. This means that many of us can afford to collect a few, even when our budgets are small.
Although Jon is American, he lives and creates in Bali with his wife who takes care of his promotions and PR. He also has an agent in the US who takes care of the sales and distribution of his work, so Jon gets to just focus on his art. Lucky, lucky guy.
You can read one of his only personal interviews in the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts and see more of his work on his 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.
The Guys Have It
September 23, 2013
Inspirational Art
I’ve had several conversations recently about the ratio of men to women working in polymer. I’m not sure I’m really the authority on the subject, but we do know it’s small. I seem to recall that Cynthia Tinnapple and Judy Belcher pulled up a statistic at Synergy 3 but I can’t recall the exact number, only that we are an overwhelmingly female-dominated art form. That poor handful of guys!
So this week, I thought I’d highlight a handful of our guys, trying to stick with the ones that don’t get seen around quite so much.
First, for your pattern- and color-viewing pleasure, we have Adam Thomas Rees. His work is similar to that of Jon Anderson, who we have featured on here and in the magazine; but for the most part he works on a larger scale and the focus is more on color rather than controlled patterns.
I can’t say if Adam was influenced by Jon or if they individually came to work in cane-covered animal forms separately, but I think I see some influence by other men in polymer here. At the very least, there are some canes that look quite a bit like the the mica-shift canes of Dan Cormier. Maybe its just that these guys are all sticking together!
If you know of any guys in polymer (or are one of them!) that aren’t getting the attention you think they deserve, write me at sbray(a)thepolymerarts.com with a link to their work, and let’s see about getting them highlighted this week!
Covering the Original Artistic Voice
April 30, 2013
Inspirational Art
Since there seems to be a lot of conversation about originality lately, I thought we’d focus on that idea for a bit this week (which is a great excuse to just bring the most stunning work I can find to post for you!) Finding your own original voice versus copying or following trends has been a point of discussion since Synergy 3 with the widely shared talk, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly in the Age of the Internet given by Harriete Berman, to comments and links here, to other articles and posts making the rounds like this one regarding copying posted by Ronna Sarvas Weltman on her Facebook page over the weekend. Originality is a very hard thing to teach. But awareness of what it is may be the first step in finding your own original artistic voice.
Covering objects with cane slices is in no way an original idea. But if someone did it for the first time today and for weeks after other people started doing it, would they be copying this innovative artist? Not necessarily. It is not the process or the skill that makes a piece unoriginal but the ability for a person to make what they see or learn their own personal expression (see Sunday’s post for the more in depth philosophical discussion on this). There are techniques, concepts and approaches to making art with your material of choice. Learned well, they become a skill. This will not make one an artist. It is what you do with it, how you make it your own, let it express what you see and care about. So … how can covering with cane slices be wholly original?
This frog is a Jon Anderson piece (see the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts for a gallery of his work and bio based on the only interview he has ever given.) It is completely covered with cane slices. However, every slice has been placed with purpose and as a way to express what Jon wants to portray about this creature and the colors and patterns he has been inspired by throughout his life.
Jon chooses the patterns on his slices, the colors and the way he lays them out to emphasize the form of the frog as well to embody his sense of what is beautiful. He also embeds symbols such as the moth on the frog’s head that give you reason to pause and wonder what else this is about besides the frog. There are a few other artists that use the same patterned approach to covering forms with cane slices but I have never seen any of their pieces that could be mistaken for Jon Anderson’s. His approach is a reflection of himself, the individual, the original person that his life and experience has formed.
Who would you consider the most original artist that works in the forms, techniques and/or approaches that you do? (And it’s okay if you think it’s you. It may very well be!)
The Spring issue is out and as usual, there is a bit of chatter on it out there in the social network world but there is an unusually high level of enthusiasm out there this issue. Is it that fabulously colorful cover? The wide variety of articles by or about amazing artists like Donna Greenberg, Christi Friesen, Wiwat Kalmpornjiwit, and Sylvie Peraud? So far the most talked about articles are the Lariat making, Donna’s inspiration from the past and Christi’s treatise on armatures which was pretty eye-opening since she picked the brains of some of the most amazing artists for which armatures are essential, namely Ellen Jewett (with that incredible opening piece!) and Adam Thomas Rees who I knew built his own animal shapes but had no idea how he did these huge things. But Christi revealed that for us.
The one thing we couldn’t do in Christi’s article was blow up some of the images so you could really see the detail of the work these artist’s do. Adam layers canes onto animal shapes in a manner reminiscent of Jon Anderson though they were developing their work around the same time so I don’t think Adam came to this idea from seeing Jon’s work although either of them may have influenced the other since. But other than canes on animal shapes, they have different approaches. Adam’s pieces are huge and his canes are large, broad patterns and often very bright. He sometimes mixes up other sculptural textures and additions to his creatures that create a feast of interesting details for the eye to roam over. The hanging matted hair like texture built up on this one creates a swath of white to give the eye a resting place below all that intense color and pattern above.
Just open Adam’s website and try not to be startled by the creature staring out at you. It’s beautiful but intense! Take some time out today and enjoy Adams colorful patterns in his galleries. And grab your copy of the Spring issue of The Polymer Arts on our website here.
_________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.
_________________________________________
Read MoreA week of dramatic patterns would not be complete without a little Jon Anderson. You have likely seen at least a few of his larger, cane covered animals or maybe his bowls or even his guitars. But, have you seen his jewelry?
Jon’s fascination with canes is all about the pattern. The forms he covers are more of a canvas than the source of inspiration. Of course, animals and the spirit of them is where his finds a home for his patterns, but his canes come from what he has seen on his travels in other decorative artwork, as well as architecture and the decorative elements of buildings.
Jon has such an amazing eye for how to lay out the canes in a way that enhances the form. Also, his canes are so carefully created and reduced that he can bring them down to a size that can be applied onto forms as small as the pendants you see here. This means that many of us can afford to collect a few, even when our budgets are small.
Although Jon is American, he lives and creates in Bali with his wife who takes care of his promotions and PR. He also has an agent in the US who takes care of the sales and distribution of his work, so Jon gets to just focus on his art. Lucky, lucky guy.
You can read one of his only personal interviews in the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts and see more of his work on his 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.
I’ve had several conversations recently about the ratio of men to women working in polymer. I’m not sure I’m really the authority on the subject, but we do know it’s small. I seem to recall that Cynthia Tinnapple and Judy Belcher pulled up a statistic at Synergy 3 but I can’t recall the exact number, only that we are an overwhelmingly female-dominated art form. That poor handful of guys!
So this week, I thought I’d highlight a handful of our guys, trying to stick with the ones that don’t get seen around quite so much.
First, for your pattern- and color-viewing pleasure, we have Adam Thomas Rees. His work is similar to that of Jon Anderson, who we have featured on here and in the magazine; but for the most part he works on a larger scale and the focus is more on color rather than controlled patterns.
I can’t say if Adam was influenced by Jon or if they individually came to work in cane-covered animal forms separately, but I think I see some influence by other men in polymer here. At the very least, there are some canes that look quite a bit like the the mica-shift canes of Dan Cormier. Maybe its just that these guys are all sticking together!
If you know of any guys in polymer (or are one of them!) that aren’t getting the attention you think they deserve, write me at sbray(a)thepolymerarts.com with a link to their work, and let’s see about getting them highlighted this week!
Since there seems to be a lot of conversation about originality lately, I thought we’d focus on that idea for a bit this week (which is a great excuse to just bring the most stunning work I can find to post for you!) Finding your own original voice versus copying or following trends has been a point of discussion since Synergy 3 with the widely shared talk, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly in the Age of the Internet given by Harriete Berman, to comments and links here, to other articles and posts making the rounds like this one regarding copying posted by Ronna Sarvas Weltman on her Facebook page over the weekend. Originality is a very hard thing to teach. But awareness of what it is may be the first step in finding your own original artistic voice.
Covering objects with cane slices is in no way an original idea. But if someone did it for the first time today and for weeks after other people started doing it, would they be copying this innovative artist? Not necessarily. It is not the process or the skill that makes a piece unoriginal but the ability for a person to make what they see or learn their own personal expression (see Sunday’s post for the more in depth philosophical discussion on this). There are techniques, concepts and approaches to making art with your material of choice. Learned well, they become a skill. This will not make one an artist. It is what you do with it, how you make it your own, let it express what you see and care about. So … how can covering with cane slices be wholly original?
This frog is a Jon Anderson piece (see the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts for a gallery of his work and bio based on the only interview he has ever given.) It is completely covered with cane slices. However, every slice has been placed with purpose and as a way to express what Jon wants to portray about this creature and the colors and patterns he has been inspired by throughout his life.
Jon chooses the patterns on his slices, the colors and the way he lays them out to emphasize the form of the frog as well to embody his sense of what is beautiful. He also embeds symbols such as the moth on the frog’s head that give you reason to pause and wonder what else this is about besides the frog. There are a few other artists that use the same patterned approach to covering forms with cane slices but I have never seen any of their pieces that could be mistaken for Jon Anderson’s. His approach is a reflection of himself, the individual, the original person that his life and experience has formed.
Who would you consider the most original artist that works in the forms, techniques and/or approaches that you do? (And it’s okay if you think it’s you. It may very well be!)
Read More