September 15, 2019 Inspirational Art

Don’t you love when something you put out in the world actually has a real and positive effect on other people? Last week’s post about movement really hit a chord with a lot of people. I just love that! To get such a lot of you thinking and jazzed about trying something new really makes my day! Thanks to you all who wrote me or posted messages. Please keep the feedback coming in. Criticism and suggestions as well as stories of your inspired studio ventures are all most welcome!

Last week’s discussion about movement was all based around jewelry, largely because kinetic movement is necessarily a consideration of good jewelry designs because anything worn has the potential for movement. The human body does move about a lot. But functional and even decorative objects as well as sculptural artwork can be designed to have movement with beautiful and intriguing results.

I am pretty sure that the majority of my blog readers work in jewelry as a primary form and if that’s you, don’t think that design in these other forms I’m going to talk about today doesn’t apply to you because jewelry and sculptural objects have a lot of crossover. Most art jewelry is a kind of small sculpture with the added complication of wearability thrown in. So, if you work exclusively in jewelry, look at the way these artists add movement to their objects and sculptures and consider how their approach might be translated in jewelry. And if you work a lot in functional or decorative objects, well, I have some great ideas for you today, but I hope you look at the design of jewelry for inspiration as well.

Not Standing Still

Many, many moons ago, just a few weeks after graduating art school, I packed up everything I owned into my long bed Toyota truck and drove from southern California to the middle of New Mexico, eventually landing in Albuquerque. I had no job there, I didn’t know anyone, I had no place to live, and I was completely alone. I was there because I had been through there once and fell in love with the landscape and I had desperately wanted to experience something besides California.

That move was crazy and scary and eventually proved to be one of the most difficult times of my life, but it was also one of the most magical periods of my life. To this day I will declare that my sudden uprooting then was one of the best things I could have possibly done. I knew it was a risky thing to do but you never really know who you are, what you can do, or how strong you are until you really push yourself way beyond your comfort zone and introduce yourself to completely new things.

Think about it… what would you say the most magical time of your life was? Not places but experiences, things that really opened up your eyes and fired up your passion. I bet it was something very new to you and probably a little scary and maybe even something that made you very uncomfortable initially. And I bet you wouldn’t trade it for anything. And why would we not trade in these often difficult and life altering experiences? Probably because they opened up new vistas in our life, helped up to understand ourselves, allowed us to grow and believe in ourselves like we never had before. Well, that crazy move alone was what I think of as the most magical time of my life.

Santa Fe, New Mexico was at the center of this magic back then. There were no jobs in Santa Fe so I couldn’t live there but I drove up there every chance I got to wander through the galleries and the artist studios and explore the truly deserted ghost towns that dotted the land around there. I remember walking into one gallery and seeing a small inverted teardrop pot just inside the door in glazes of matte oranges and greens. There was a small protrusion, a loop of clay, at the throat of the pot from which hung beads, a tiny bundle of reeds, and feathers and they fluttered lightly in the breeze as I entered. Talk about magic! I was mesmerized by the mix of those colors and the liveliness of those gently dancing accents. I was working in wood and wearable art at the time and suddenly decided everything would have something that moved. That’s when I first fell in love with the idea of kinetic energy in art and although it fades to the background sometimes, I always drawn back to it. What are you drawn back to over and over?

Nowadays, a leather thong with beads and feathers around the neck of native American pottery is not an unusual thing. You see them in gift shops throughout the Southwest so that whole idea now has a kitschy, touristy vibe but done right, it can still make a piece feel alive in a way that no amount of surface detail can. For that reason, I find it surprising that there are not more examples out there. In fact, the only person I could find working with dangling components on polymer vessels is Christi Friesen. I mean, what would this vessel be without its many pretty dangling bits and how alive must it look when they are swinging?

I am sure there are other polymer vessels with dangling accents or more, but I couldn’t find them for this post. if you know of others doing that kind of thing on vessels, please send me the links in the comments here. Commenting is better than sending me an email because then we can all see what additional sources of inspiration there might be. If you get this by email you could always click the title of the post at the top to take you to the online blog where you can post a comment.

Dangles are not the only way to enliven a decorative object that would otherwise sit in relative stillness. There are a number of people who add airy, springy bits that will bounce and wave in passing. Jeffrey Lloyd Dever is one of those in the small circle of polymer vessel makers for which movement is often added. It doesn’t hurt the liveliness of his pieces that they also look like they might get up and clamber off at any moment.

Ok, let’s set my fascination with lively vessels aside and look at the most kinetic of artwork–mobiles. Mobiles are all about balance and movement. They are inherently energetic because, even when still, we know that the slightest breeze will get these hanging (or sitting, in the case of mobile’s desktop cousin, the stabile) creations moving. Mobiles are often credited to the 20th century artist Alexander Calder but only because his work was given the name “mobiles” (by Marcel Duchamp not Calder himself actually) in 1931. Previously deemed “kinetic sculpture”, mobiles and decorative pieces that move have been around since prehistoric times, primarily in the form of windchimes and complex hanging charms and ornaments.

Kinetic sculpture was recognized as an art form only around the second decade of the 20^th century, primarily due to a handful of Russian artists. The first artist to use the balance construction that is so familiar in mobiles today was actually the visual artist (best known for his photography) Man Ray. Using a series of wooden coat hangers and a cart and plow pulling design used for centuries all over Europe and elsewhere (Yes, the hook up to the animals is not a hanging one but the pulling weight of the animals is the same as the hanging weight of elements on mobile), Man Ray figured out how to perfectly balance multiple layers of coat hangers. You can go to mobile artist Marco Mahler’s website for his brief account of mobile history and pictures of Man Ray’s first mobile, complete with his early instructions for making your own.

Now, if you want to attempt a not so complex mobile design and in polymer, you might take inspiration from Marie-Charlotte Chaillon whose mobile opens this post. She smartly mixes her version of Carol Blackburn’s moebius twists with loose spirals and scattered balls for a very energetic and fun look. It might seem a complex piece at first but a quick inspection will show that all parts are hooked onto a simple set of crossed bars. You could do that kind of thing, right? Or you can go even a tad more simplified and hang a series of elements vertically, like with this mobile of hers.

Debra Ann, the inventor of the NeverKnead (that fantastic machine that saves you from tons of cranking on your pasta machine and readily works to soften hard clay blocks) is also the artist behind Atomic Mobiles. Although she makes her mobiles (or her stabiles, verticals, atomic screens, or earrings … she is very much into kinetic art!) from acrylic sheets rather than polymer clay, the principles are all the same. Here is one of her stabiles with a painted acrylic base.

Although she probably could have made the above stabile with polymer, the use of the acrylic material is more practical, probably quicker to create and more stable, especially for the base. Get a nice stable base out of whatever material makes the most sense for the construction of your own piece then polymer can take over for the hanging elements.

And as I mentioned at the beginning, kinetic sculptural art can readily be translated into jewelry and I couldn’t resist at least one example. Just look at this pair of earrings by TyAnn Zeal, with polymer for the earring base and brass for the dangles. The weight of the metal dangles will quickly get the closely arranged pieces back in position after any vigorous headshaking. With polymer, if you make mobile like earrings, you may want to make the dangling pieces somewhat thick so they too have some weight to keep them from flipping all over the place all the time.

Although these blog posts can never be completely comprehensive on any one subject, and there is so much more I could share on this subject, I would really be truly remiss if I did not include Georg Dinkel’s artwork in a discussion of kinetic sculptural pieces. Although not all of his work has moving parts, they all look like they could. He does love creating his mechanical pieces though and he loves putting videos together to show off the movement. They can be quite entertaining.

Ok, Georg’s hand cranked pieces might be hard to translate into jewelry but maybe some moving gears on a pendant? Or a hand-cranked brooch? They have potential, right?

Moving Forward  

I’m hoping these items might get a few more of you thinking about movement and how it might work in your own creations. Next week I’m going to share with you the secrets of creating visual movement. There are some pretty simple tricks to add high-energy and liveliness to your pieces without attaching separate actual moving parts. Although the kinetic energy is fantastic, it is sometimes not the most functional way to instill that level of energy. There are many other ways!

In the meantime, especially if you make decorative or functional objects, consider how you might be able to add a simple dangle, a string of beads, or a springy stalk with an accent on the end to bring some liveliness to a design that seems to need just a bit more energy. Or, using spare beads or unused elements you already have on hand, why not make a simple vertical mobile or even try your hand at balanced mobiles if you’ve never done them. You can find full instructions for creating polymer mobiles along with kinetic jewelry in the Summer 2016 – Movement issue of The Polymer Arts available on our website. It’s only $7.95 to get those tutorials in print (or $5.95 for a digital edition) along with all the other great content.

Slow Progress 

For those wondering how I am doing, I’ve hit some kind of plateau with the arm. It has been flaring up randomly all week after a fairly good week last week. It’s frustrating that for all the care and physical therapy, its not that much better than a month ago. But there will be no giving up here. Just like with a design or technique that has been giving you trouble, if you keep at it, you will break through. I am sure that will be the case with this arm too!

On the other hand, my metabolic issues are making progress and I am sleeping and feeling much better! So, there is progress somewhere. Yay!

There has also been progress on future production plans. I’ve been in some pretty intense talks with my managing editor, Anke Humpert, and I think we are close to a plan for getting back to some version of production with maybe some creative and practical changes. I do beg your patience for a little bit longer as its still hard to judge when I will be able to get back to print work but we are working on it. We will have some truly wonderful things to share with you in the not too distant future. I promise!

So, for now, go off and have a wonderful, energetic, and moving week!