Outside Inspiration: Tile Elements
September 19, 2014
Inspirational Art
I just love what Ginger found for us today as an outside inspiration. A scene created with tiles, a kind of bas relief where the elements create the imagery and depth from how they are layered and arranged. This is not so very different from some of the polymer scenes we’ve seen this week. The primary difference is that the imagery is created with large swaths of color and texture to create a piecework landscape scene but one that is cohesive and pulls you in.
The wall hanging was created by Chris Sumka, a tile artist. This is the piece’s description:
“The old Palmer place”, 2014, 21″X42″, 237 hours, composed entirely of 12″X12″ r/c porcelain, ceramic and slate floor tile, mounted on r/c 3/4 inch plywood, green, eco friendly art. Large amounts of white grout were left behind to add to the snow effect.”
Now he actually cuts each of these shapes to fit the image from some pretty hard material. If you’ve ever worked with tile, then you know how hard this is and just how tricky it can be to make the right cut and not actually break the tile. I’ve done more than my share of tiling. I’m impressed. We can–and a number of people do–create polymer imagery in a similar fashion. With some pretty darn simple cutting work compared to this!
You can see further detail of this piece on Chris’ Facebook page here and more of his fascinating work including photos of pieces in progress on his Facebook timeline as well.
Our guest blogger partner, Ginger Davis Allman lives in Springfield, Missouri with her husband Gary, her three kids and her many craft obsessions. Subscribe to her blog and look around her website for her well-researched and in-depth posts and articles on polymer related subjects. Support her great information and research as well as treating yourself by purchasing a tutorial or two from this talented lady.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Fondness for a Place
September 16, 2014
Inspirational Art
Ginger’s pick for today is a bit of lovely wall art by New York’s Joan Israel. Like yesterday’s post, this polymer clay landscape scene consists of individual elements that are arranged to tell a story although I think this one is more about the artist than the town.
Although scenes and stories in polymer are most often literal imagery, the dimensionality and playfulness of the material lends itself more readily to symbolism and metaphor rather than realistic illustration. In this piece, the size of the various components relay a hierarchical importance between the images. The river, the sun, and the bird are the largest, most active and contrasting of the elements here. Light, freedom and a gentle meandering from these along with the bright and rich colors gives the viewer a sense that this is a very happy place, one the artist must be very fond of. The position of the menorah top and center helps in identifying the place if you didn’t see the title of the piece to start with. The title is “Israel” by the way, one of Joan’s favorite places, she confesses in her Flicker comments. Her love of the place does shine right through.
Bright colors and stylized imagery is Joan’s trademark from her jewelry to her covered decor to wall pieces like this. For a bright and sunny break in your day, take a look at Joan’s work on her Flickr photostream.
Ginger Davis Allman lives in Springfield, Missouri with her husband Gary, her three kids and her many craft obsessions. Subscribe to her blog and look around her website for her well-researched and in-depth posts and articles on polymer related subjects. Support her great information and research as well as treating yourself by getting yourself a tutorial or two from this talented lady.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Vertical Landscape
November 17, 2013
Inspirational Art
Since I used our Saturday post for the announcement of the next issue being on the way, we are technically short some art for this week so we will forgone some words of wisdom using a great quote and just enjoy some nice art.
Mike Buesseler was a pioneer in polymer clay back in the day. He’s hasn’t done anything in quite a while but when he did work with clay, he worked heavily in mica shift and landscapes.
This vertical triptych of his is one of my favorites. It’s not complicated and the process he used is pretty obvious but it’s a fantastic image that doesn’t need embellishment or distraction. It does take some talent to know when simple says it best
So that is my share for you this Sunday. My offered words of wisdom are just “simple can be the best option”. Work on knowing when to stop, when not to embellish and just let an image speak for itself.
Now back to enjoying sunny and mild November afternoon here in Colorado.
Outside Inspiration: A Felted Landscape
November 15, 2013
Inspirational Art
Another fantastic ‘canvas’ for landscape composition is an object that is “in the round”. That term simply means something can be viewed all the way around its form. What do you work in that can viewed that way? Big beads? Earrings? Vases?
Vases, bowls, boxes and containers of all kinds can be used as landscape composition pieces, with the advantage of being able to develop multiple scenes because they will be viewed from multiple sides. Here is an unusual application of felt in a very colorful, abstract landscape built around the form of a pot.
Sharon Costello will felt just about anything, it seems. Her website features figures, wall art, clothes, lampshades, masks, and covered objects like this vessel using both wet and needle felting methods. Have some fun on her site this afternoon seeing just how inventive one inspired artist can be with her felt. Then ask yourself as a polymer artist, what do you see that you can take back to your studio?
Scene Around the Wrist
November 14, 2013
Inspirational Art
Okay, enough with the necklaces for now. The idea of working a landscape around a piece is a concept suitable for any form that has a stretch of space to cover, which means most three-dimensional forms.
So how about a cuff bracelet? It’s perfect, right? Laura Timmins certainly did a wonderful job creating a cuff and a scene to go about the wrist in this “Sea Floor Cuff”.
A cuff bracelet really is an open canvas for whatever scene or story you might want to tell. There’s no stringing or engineering of the design. Just apply whatever ‘scape you fancy.
It looks like Laura has been busy with her wholesale orders so she hasn’t posted much lately, but it’s always worth a peek at her Flickr pages to see a retrospective of her work. She is always inspiring if not a little daunting with her impeccable finishes. Something to aspire to!
Landscape in the Abstract
November 13, 2013
Inspirational Art
The sense of open space we get from landscapes or any kind of broad outdoor scene can be relayed in abstract as well as literal interpretations. The draw of landscapes is in the flow of change, and maybe even the idea that a story lies in those changes as we see them shift across the length or width of a piece. And if not an actual story, there is at least the possible background to one. Or so that is always how I’ve looked at landscapes of any kind.
We’ll look at one more set of landscaped beads, but this time of a purely abstract nature, where the change in color makes up the variations across the necklace. Nathalie (who prefers to be called Nat and is under Pluie de Perles on both Flicker and CanalBlog) created this simple but effective design to showcase her lovely color scheme and purely abstract ‘scape.
Nat actually created this some 6 years ago, about the time I did my piece I shared on Monday. She did quite a few of these kinds of landscape necklaces with hanging mokume tiles that year. You can see more on her Flickr pages. Scroll down her Photostream page to get to those prior years.
The Landscape of Space
November 12, 2013
Inspirational Art
Landscapes aren’t just about land. Or maybe I should use the term only when talking of land, and should rise to the suggested use of such terms as waterscapes, skyscapes, and moonscapes for other varieties of terrain. But what about vast stretches of scenery for which we don’t have a term? The necklace below is a “scape” of some sort. Maybe a spacescape?
Silvia Ortiz de la Torre always amazes with her ingenious designs and fearless colors. The fitted design of these hanging beads steps just outside of what she commonly does. Silvia is a master of the dramatically sophisticated through highly saturated color and heavy repetition, but here she’s gone a little darker in color and has added all kinds of variation, while still keeping it anchored through the repetition of the mirrored base shapes arranged around that “A”-like center bead.
There is less of a connection between the pieces here than the dragon-scape you saw yesterday, but they are all still related and make up an appropriate scene with the randomness of points we see in the stars.
Enjoy a bit of time on Silvia’s Flickr photostream or her Etsy site for a nice blast of color this Tuesday.
I just love what Ginger found for us today as an outside inspiration. A scene created with tiles, a kind of bas relief where the elements create the imagery and depth from how they are layered and arranged. This is not so very different from some of the polymer scenes we’ve seen this week. The primary difference is that the imagery is created with large swaths of color and texture to create a piecework landscape scene but one that is cohesive and pulls you in.
The wall hanging was created by Chris Sumka, a tile artist. This is the piece’s description:
“The old Palmer place”, 2014, 21″X42″, 237 hours, composed entirely of 12″X12″ r/c porcelain, ceramic and slate floor tile, mounted on r/c 3/4 inch plywood, green, eco friendly art. Large amounts of white grout were left behind to add to the snow effect.”
Now he actually cuts each of these shapes to fit the image from some pretty hard material. If you’ve ever worked with tile, then you know how hard this is and just how tricky it can be to make the right cut and not actually break the tile. I’ve done more than my share of tiling. I’m impressed. We can–and a number of people do–create polymer imagery in a similar fashion. With some pretty darn simple cutting work compared to this!
You can see further detail of this piece on Chris’ Facebook page here and more of his fascinating work including photos of pieces in progress on his Facebook timeline as well.
Our guest blogger partner, Ginger Davis Allman lives in Springfield, Missouri with her husband Gary, her three kids and her many craft obsessions. Subscribe to her blog and look around her website for her well-researched and in-depth posts and articles on polymer related subjects. Support her great information and research as well as treating yourself by purchasing a tutorial or two from this talented lady.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Ginger’s pick for today is a bit of lovely wall art by New York’s Joan Israel. Like yesterday’s post, this polymer clay landscape scene consists of individual elements that are arranged to tell a story although I think this one is more about the artist than the town.
Although scenes and stories in polymer are most often literal imagery, the dimensionality and playfulness of the material lends itself more readily to symbolism and metaphor rather than realistic illustration. In this piece, the size of the various components relay a hierarchical importance between the images. The river, the sun, and the bird are the largest, most active and contrasting of the elements here. Light, freedom and a gentle meandering from these along with the bright and rich colors gives the viewer a sense that this is a very happy place, one the artist must be very fond of. The position of the menorah top and center helps in identifying the place if you didn’t see the title of the piece to start with. The title is “Israel” by the way, one of Joan’s favorite places, she confesses in her Flicker comments. Her love of the place does shine right through.
Bright colors and stylized imagery is Joan’s trademark from her jewelry to her covered decor to wall pieces like this. For a bright and sunny break in your day, take a look at Joan’s work on her Flickr photostream.
Ginger Davis Allman lives in Springfield, Missouri with her husband Gary, her three kids and her many craft obsessions. Subscribe to her blog and look around her website for her well-researched and in-depth posts and articles on polymer related subjects. Support her great information and research as well as treating yourself by getting yourself a tutorial or two from this talented lady.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Since I used our Saturday post for the announcement of the next issue being on the way, we are technically short some art for this week so we will forgone some words of wisdom using a great quote and just enjoy some nice art.
Mike Buesseler was a pioneer in polymer clay back in the day. He’s hasn’t done anything in quite a while but when he did work with clay, he worked heavily in mica shift and landscapes.
This vertical triptych of his is one of my favorites. It’s not complicated and the process he used is pretty obvious but it’s a fantastic image that doesn’t need embellishment or distraction. It does take some talent to know when simple says it best
So that is my share for you this Sunday. My offered words of wisdom are just “simple can be the best option”. Work on knowing when to stop, when not to embellish and just let an image speak for itself.
Now back to enjoying sunny and mild November afternoon here in Colorado.
Read MoreAnother fantastic ‘canvas’ for landscape composition is an object that is “in the round”. That term simply means something can be viewed all the way around its form. What do you work in that can viewed that way? Big beads? Earrings? Vases?
Vases, bowls, boxes and containers of all kinds can be used as landscape composition pieces, with the advantage of being able to develop multiple scenes because they will be viewed from multiple sides. Here is an unusual application of felt in a very colorful, abstract landscape built around the form of a pot.
Sharon Costello will felt just about anything, it seems. Her website features figures, wall art, clothes, lampshades, masks, and covered objects like this vessel using both wet and needle felting methods. Have some fun on her site this afternoon seeing just how inventive one inspired artist can be with her felt. Then ask yourself as a polymer artist, what do you see that you can take back to your studio?
Read More
Okay, enough with the necklaces for now. The idea of working a landscape around a piece is a concept suitable for any form that has a stretch of space to cover, which means most three-dimensional forms.
So how about a cuff bracelet? It’s perfect, right? Laura Timmins certainly did a wonderful job creating a cuff and a scene to go about the wrist in this “Sea Floor Cuff”.
A cuff bracelet really is an open canvas for whatever scene or story you might want to tell. There’s no stringing or engineering of the design. Just apply whatever ‘scape you fancy.
It looks like Laura has been busy with her wholesale orders so she hasn’t posted much lately, but it’s always worth a peek at her Flickr pages to see a retrospective of her work. She is always inspiring if not a little daunting with her impeccable finishes. Something to aspire to!
Read More
The sense of open space we get from landscapes or any kind of broad outdoor scene can be relayed in abstract as well as literal interpretations. The draw of landscapes is in the flow of change, and maybe even the idea that a story lies in those changes as we see them shift across the length or width of a piece. And if not an actual story, there is at least the possible background to one. Or so that is always how I’ve looked at landscapes of any kind.
We’ll look at one more set of landscaped beads, but this time of a purely abstract nature, where the change in color makes up the variations across the necklace. Nathalie (who prefers to be called Nat and is under Pluie de Perles on both Flicker and CanalBlog) created this simple but effective design to showcase her lovely color scheme and purely abstract ‘scape.
Nat actually created this some 6 years ago, about the time I did my piece I shared on Monday. She did quite a few of these kinds of landscape necklaces with hanging mokume tiles that year. You can see more on her Flickr pages. Scroll down her Photostream page to get to those prior years.
Read MoreLandscapes aren’t just about land. Or maybe I should use the term only when talking of land, and should rise to the suggested use of such terms as waterscapes, skyscapes, and moonscapes for other varieties of terrain. But what about vast stretches of scenery for which we don’t have a term? The necklace below is a “scape” of some sort. Maybe a spacescape?
Silvia Ortiz de la Torre always amazes with her ingenious designs and fearless colors. The fitted design of these hanging beads steps just outside of what she commonly does. Silvia is a master of the dramatically sophisticated through highly saturated color and heavy repetition, but here she’s gone a little darker in color and has added all kinds of variation, while still keeping it anchored through the repetition of the mirrored base shapes arranged around that “A”-like center bead.
There is less of a connection between the pieces here than the dragon-scape you saw yesterday, but they are all still related and make up an appropriate scene with the randomness of points we see in the stars.
Enjoy a bit of time on Silvia’s Flickr photostream or her Etsy site for a nice blast of color this Tuesday.
Read More