Goodies, Giveaways and Friesen on the Brain
July 24, 2015
Inspirational Art, Polymer issues, The Polymer Arts magazine news
We sort of kinda interrupt this art blog to tip you off about a chance to grab a bundle of goodies, get some special discounts and have your opinions and wishes heard! Then we’ll talk art.
Reader’s Wish List Survey
Take a little survey and let us know what you want to see on the blog, as well as in the magazine and in our upcoming projects as we plan for the rest of 2015 into 2016. As a thank you for your time, you’ll find these discounts and a Goodie Giveaway at the end of the survey:
—The Polymer Arts 10% off code for subscriptions and back issues on our website.*
–ILove2Craft.com 10% off code for your entire purchase at ILove2Craft.com (featuring Lisa Pavelka and Christi Friesen products.)*
–A chance to win one of two Goodie Boxes that will include a variety of tools and supplies from Polyform, Staedtler, Jacquard, CF Originals, and more (each valued at $40+).* **
The Fine Print: *Discounts and entering for the Goodie Box giveaways end at midnight PDT on August 2nd, 2015. Your promo codes will pop up on a Thank You page after you submit the survey. **Due to the unpredictability of out of country shipping times and circumstances, we will substitute clays and other sensitive materials with durable items for winners living outside the US.
Okay … now for some art to end our week. Summer colors and summer fun had been the theme, but I have Christi Friesen on the brain so we’re going to try to combine this all with some “Mechanical Botanicals” by CF herself.
Why so much Friesen distraction? For one, both the discount and the goodie box you can get by taking the survey can help you stock up on CF Originals goods (Have you seen the new little Swellegant Sampler kit! So cool … you can try it all! It’s not in the Goody Box, but you can grab it at ILove@Craft.com with that discount code mentioned!)
Also, I spent part of the day working on the latest article she’s whipped up for us at The Polymer Arts magazine … “Embellishments”! Boy, she can pack a lot of tips and tricks into a handful of pages! And the pictures! She is a generous contributor, I tell you. (I know … I need to get the line-up for the Fall issue out to you all, but it’s been an interesting wrangling of content this quarter. Next week, I promise!)
The other reason everything seems to be coming up Christi is that, well Christi came up to see me on her way out of town Wednesday. We stayed up way too late and came up with way too many amazing ideas and even more questions. One of them was about how to categorize work. And even whether we should.
Take a look at these oil cans. They’re decorative. And they’re sculptural. There is polymer, but it’s at least half other materials. So is it polymer art? Mixed-media? Multi-media? For shows, books and even on blogs and in articles, we find ourselves looking for categories and labels and ways to put things into a particular box. But do we need to?
Don’t worry. We didn’t come up with the answer to the universe and everything or the definitive answers to these questions either the other night. We did decide that maybe backing off the labels and categories so we stop mentally boxing things in so often could be a good thing though. So, let’s not say that this is polymer art or mixed media or sculpture or decor. Let’s just say it’s bits of the artist that is here for all of us to enjoy. And most of the time, that should be enough.
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.
Dots and Bits and Limiting Labels
July 13, 2015
Inspirational Art
Today, let’s ponder a broad combination of themes from French artist, Ouedd. Here, lines of white dots play the part of contrast to densely gathered leaf forms with rich, graduated colors applied in a polymer embroidery-type manner. I also thought this might be called a type of mosaic, but do dense patterns of parts alone define a mosaic?
Merriam-Webster says mosaics are “a surface decoration made by inlaying small pieces of variously colored material to form pictures or patterns.” This would be a mosaic then, right? But, Google’s dictionary says, “A picture or design made from small pieces of colored tile, glass, or other material set in mortar.” Oh, well, it is not really set in a mortar. So, maybe it’s not mosaic.
I just think it is best to say it is a richly colored pendant whose erratic primary texture has been thoughtfully broken up by orderly white lines.
Of course, it really doesn’t matter what the type of work here is called. When we label something it is, in our mind and in the mind of anyone that ascribes to that application of the label, limited by that label. Take “polymer artist” as an example. If you consider yourself a polymer artist, do you forever limit your creative endeavors to polymer work only?
I do very much appreciate that we need labels in order to help us organize, in our minds, all the information that comes to us and all the people we meet, but it just seems like we could move beyond them with individuals we know, especially ourselves and, as an extension, the work we do. For instance, do you realize that, usually, when someone we just met asks “What you do?”, we usually say “I am …” tacking on the label that our work or career gives us. That is not what we ‘do’; that is what we ‘are’, or more precisely, what we label ourselves as. You could say “I’m a polymer artist”, but is that all you are? Maybe you could say, “I create polymer art … among other things.” Then you are this vast, complex, person of endless possibilities and action. Doesn’t that sound like a truer way of presenting ourselves? And without the label you are free to create whatever you like with whatever you like without worrying that you are falling outside of some boundaries.
I bring this up because I’ve had two conversations recently with people apologizing for not fitting a label they think the rest of the world may have put them under. My thoughts … it doesn’t matter. Do what you need to do and throw the labels out.
To see an example of art that shows off the endless possibilities of polymer and of artists who play with the medium, take a peek at Oeudd’s Flickr pages and her interesting array of work. Then there is Ouedd’s blog that is fun and a bit silly, especially if you don’t speak French and use the Google translator.
We sort of kinda interrupt this art blog to tip you off about a chance to grab a bundle of goodies, get some special discounts and have your opinions and wishes heard! Then we’ll talk art.
Reader’s Wish List Survey
Take a little survey and let us know what you want to see on the blog, as well as in the magazine and in our upcoming projects as we plan for the rest of 2015 into 2016. As a thank you for your time, you’ll find these discounts and a Goodie Giveaway at the end of the survey:
—The Polymer Arts 10% off code for subscriptions and back issues on our website.*
–ILove2Craft.com 10% off code for your entire purchase at ILove2Craft.com (featuring Lisa Pavelka and Christi Friesen products.)*
–A chance to win one of two Goodie Boxes that will include a variety of tools and supplies from Polyform, Staedtler, Jacquard, CF Originals, and more (each valued at $40+).* **
The Fine Print: *Discounts and entering for the Goodie Box giveaways end at midnight PDT on August 2nd, 2015. Your promo codes will pop up on a Thank You page after you submit the survey. **Due to the unpredictability of out of country shipping times and circumstances, we will substitute clays and other sensitive materials with durable items for winners living outside the US.
Okay … now for some art to end our week. Summer colors and summer fun had been the theme, but I have Christi Friesen on the brain so we’re going to try to combine this all with some “Mechanical Botanicals” by CF herself.
Why so much Friesen distraction? For one, both the discount and the goodie box you can get by taking the survey can help you stock up on CF Originals goods (Have you seen the new little Swellegant Sampler kit! So cool … you can try it all! It’s not in the Goody Box, but you can grab it at ILove@Craft.com with that discount code mentioned!)
Also, I spent part of the day working on the latest article she’s whipped up for us at The Polymer Arts magazine … “Embellishments”! Boy, she can pack a lot of tips and tricks into a handful of pages! And the pictures! She is a generous contributor, I tell you. (I know … I need to get the line-up for the Fall issue out to you all, but it’s been an interesting wrangling of content this quarter. Next week, I promise!)
The other reason everything seems to be coming up Christi is that, well Christi came up to see me on her way out of town Wednesday. We stayed up way too late and came up with way too many amazing ideas and even more questions. One of them was about how to categorize work. And even whether we should.
Take a look at these oil cans. They’re decorative. And they’re sculptural. There is polymer, but it’s at least half other materials. So is it polymer art? Mixed-media? Multi-media? For shows, books and even on blogs and in articles, we find ourselves looking for categories and labels and ways to put things into a particular box. But do we need to?
Don’t worry. We didn’t come up with the answer to the universe and everything or the definitive answers to these questions either the other night. We did decide that maybe backing off the labels and categories so we stop mentally boxing things in so often could be a good thing though. So, let’s not say that this is polymer art or mixed media or sculpture or decor. Let’s just say it’s bits of the artist that is here for all of us to enjoy. And most of the time, that should be enough.
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.
Today, let’s ponder a broad combination of themes from French artist, Ouedd. Here, lines of white dots play the part of contrast to densely gathered leaf forms with rich, graduated colors applied in a polymer embroidery-type manner. I also thought this might be called a type of mosaic, but do dense patterns of parts alone define a mosaic?
Merriam-Webster says mosaics are “a surface decoration made by inlaying small pieces of variously colored material to form pictures or patterns.” This would be a mosaic then, right? But, Google’s dictionary says, “A picture or design made from small pieces of colored tile, glass, or other material set in mortar.” Oh, well, it is not really set in a mortar. So, maybe it’s not mosaic.
I just think it is best to say it is a richly colored pendant whose erratic primary texture has been thoughtfully broken up by orderly white lines.
Of course, it really doesn’t matter what the type of work here is called. When we label something it is, in our mind and in the mind of anyone that ascribes to that application of the label, limited by that label. Take “polymer artist” as an example. If you consider yourself a polymer artist, do you forever limit your creative endeavors to polymer work only?
I do very much appreciate that we need labels in order to help us organize, in our minds, all the information that comes to us and all the people we meet, but it just seems like we could move beyond them with individuals we know, especially ourselves and, as an extension, the work we do. For instance, do you realize that, usually, when someone we just met asks “What you do?”, we usually say “I am …” tacking on the label that our work or career gives us. That is not what we ‘do’; that is what we ‘are’, or more precisely, what we label ourselves as. You could say “I’m a polymer artist”, but is that all you are? Maybe you could say, “I create polymer art … among other things.” Then you are this vast, complex, person of endless possibilities and action. Doesn’t that sound like a truer way of presenting ourselves? And without the label you are free to create whatever you like with whatever you like without worrying that you are falling outside of some boundaries.
I bring this up because I’ve had two conversations recently with people apologizing for not fitting a label they think the rest of the world may have put them under. My thoughts … it doesn’t matter. Do what you need to do and throw the labels out.
To see an example of art that shows off the endless possibilities of polymer and of artists who play with the medium, take a peek at Oeudd’s Flickr pages and her interesting array of work. Then there is Ouedd’s blog that is fun and a bit silly, especially if you don’t speak French and use the Google translator.
