Markedly Punctured

How is everyone holding up out there? I’m guessing that most of you reading this are not bored. That is one of the advantages of being a creative – we have tons of ideas to work on and a great imagination to work with so let’s keep at that!

I’ve not only had a busy week, I have also been under the weather. Is it the coronavirus? Probably. I have had most of the symptoms, although none too severe, and my husband spent hours in close quarters with someone hospitalized for it not long after while I have rarely left the house but was super cautious when I did, being the (then) annoying lady in line asking everyone to stay 6 feet away from her. I got through the illness with tons of vitamin C and other immune support supplements (having a nutritionist in the family is really helpful!) while my husband never showed signs so we are all good here and I just have that dry cough hanging on. It did, however, slow me down this week.

So, I’m going to share with you a slightly pared down version of the one thing I completed this week which was the Virtual Art Box weekend nudge. So, if you got your VAB nudge yesterday, you’ve seen this, not that a second read isn’t useful!

In the VAB this month we talk about a rather basic but very important design element, the mark. This last weekend of the month, I want to talk about a rather common mark although it’s rarely thought of in those terms. Most of you would simply call them holes. This refers to any kind of puncture that goes through (or nearly through) the material or form that you’re working with.

I, like many people, am fascinated by holes. You can see things through them, revealing layers, depth, and the space beyond. They draw the eye. Think about traveling past caves in a canyon wall or passing an open window. You try to look in, if even just briefly, don’t you? Think of the hollow in a tree trunk or the big holes in a piece of artisan bread. You take notice of these, I bet.

This is why holes are such strong marks. They will be noticed. If there is just one or a spare few, they usually become focal points. When there are many, we usually try to take them all in, see into and through them all. That causes our eye to wander all over the piece, peeking in at all the open spaces. But small holes used as marks are particularly intriguing because we have to take a closer look to see in and beyond them, inviting the viewer to get a bit more intimate with the piece.

Let’s look at a few examples and pay attention to how you look at them. How strongly are you drawn to the holes? Can you imagine the piece without those puncturing marks? How would it change the piece if the holes were just surface marks and not punctures?

 

We can start with the opening image – a brooch with some variation in hole marks by Sabine Spiesser simply titled, Reef 1. What draws your eyes first? It might be the red, being a strong draw itself, but did you stop to look into the little holes?

Sona Grigoryan’s holes nearly take over her pieces sometimes, as in these brooches.

 

Sometimes holes become edges, as readers discovered in February in the Virtual Art Box with the featured pin lace technique, but in the enameled piece by Danielle Embry that opens this post, we can see through them clearly to the bright yellow background beyond. This brooch made 10 years ago, and I didn’t know when I picked it that she had titled it “Corona”, but it feels visually metaphorical for us all right now. Kind of gives me shivers actually.

Holes as marks don’t have to be round or organically scattered as most of the above are. They can be any shape and can be orderly, even to the point of creating an image as show in this ceramic bowl by Annie Quigley who does nothing but make holes in her ceramics.

 

Okay, now it’s your turn to find holes being used as marks. Go look at work in your studio and see if you use holes and if so, how do you use them? Are they used as marks or for functional purposes or maybe you don’t know or recall your intention with those holes?

If you’re not seeing holes in your work, I would normally say go out and look for them at galleries and shops, but most of us can’t and shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing. So how about a virtual tour. Or 30? Click here to get a list of virtual tours. This list is actually more than museums which I thought was neat in case you have young ones with you that might really enjoy a virtual tour of an aquarium or zoo. There are some wonderful places to virtually visit here.

Ok, now to go rest up for a bit as I have much to write this coming week between sewing masks and keeping up with isolated family and friends. (We have THE busiest social schedule we’ve ever had, and its all virtual!) Please, everyone take care of yourselves and make the most of your indoor time with a lot of creative exploration!

 

 

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/?fbclid=IwAR0-pI2eqMCBE6M1fERp5XsNRmR7ydW2szeBCtMAHXBSleY2cfwsnVf4VZA

https://www.craftcast.com/ 30% off code: Spring2020

Christi Friesen free play days, next one on Sunday

The Winter Cover, 1/2 off Polymer Journeys SALE, & other news

My apologies for not getting the blog out yesterday. It is a whirlwind over here as we get the next issue ready and deal with some ongoing technical and third-party service issues in other areas.

But here you go. Your sneak peek at the Winter 2017 – Line issue whose cover will be graced with the beautiful work of Emily Squires Levine who is the featured artist interviewed in this issue. This great end of the year issue will come out third week of November.

Along with that must-read article, you can also look forward to …

  • Design with Line
  • The Art of Emily Squires Levine
  • Creative Extruding
  • More Tools from Other Trades
  • Etched Impression Plates
  • Simulation in Soutache
  • Color Spotlight:  Sabine Spiesser
  • Getting into Galleries
  • Jewelry Styles for Men
  • Growing Your Guild
  • Russian Polymer Quilt Project
  • … and much more!

To ensure you don’t miss out, go here for subscriptions and renewals.

And … we are working on the next couple projects so we thought we’d keep working on making room and this time, we’ve got Polymer Journeys on sale for a straight 50% off for print editions, 15% off digital editions, and if you buy both, you can get the digital edition for only $5! You can grab this deal on our website as well.

There is also news about changes in our subscription and ordering process which was run through a service that has, unfortunately not provided consistent service and has frustrated more than a few readers, and we just can’t have that. So this is all back in-house where we can monitor every single order ourselves. We do lose the online portal for you to check on your subscription and change your address but we’ll be able to offer more discounts and specials as well as having a cleaner and easier ordering system.

Get all this news in our newsletter which you can find online here. If you would like to sign up to receive our twice monthly newsletter, just drop your email into the form on our home page.

_________________________________________

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.

    The Great Create Sept 15 blog   businesscard-3.5inx2in-h-front   Shades of Clay Sept 15 Blog

_________________________________________

Fall Glass

November 4, 2016

sabine-spiesser-glass-shardsHere is a little more autumn color for the week. I think this is a brooch although it doesn’t say. I did have something else in mind from the ever-exploring Sabine Spiesser but then I alighted upon this little experiment while enjoying her Flickr photos and a couple of things about it caught my eye.

I find this interesting not only because it’s a faux textured glass technique and yummy colors but also because of a comment Sabine made in regards to it:

“Unfortunately I noticed that alcohol inks fade in bright light in Pardo clay. I left an old piece in a bright spot where it gets some sunshine and after about 4 months all colours except for red were gone. That was quite a shock. I have to rethink what I am doing.”

It makes me wonder if this is just a problem with Pardo, or all translucents or alcohol inks in general. I’m going to do some research and then my own tests. I’ll post my results in our newsletter, where all such tips usually land in my world. If you aren’t on our twice monthly newsletter list, you’re missing out on tips, community news, first sales announcements, and some of our magazine news. You can sign up on the left hand side of our website’s home page. In the meantime, enjoy a view of Sabine’s work on her Flickr pages and website.

 

Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Try something different with a faux technique you like to do. If it’s faux stone, create forms you don’t usually see them in or texture them in a way that would be near impossible in a real stone. If it’s metal, create something organic-looking, like a silver flower or a copper pod. Just because we can mimic nature’s material doesn’t mean we need to recreate it only in the forms that nature presents it. Let go and try something different.

_________________________________________

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.

Shades of Clay Sept 15 Blog   never knead -july-2015c-125   The Great Create Sept 15 blog   businesscard-3.5inx2in-h-front

_________________________________________

Design Inspired by Man-Made

September 16, 2013

We spend a lot of time looking at inspiration that comes directly from nature here so I thought this week we should look at things inspired by man. That turned out to be a tall order. Man-made inspiration seems to make up only a fraction of inspiring sources for polymer artists which made finding subjects for this week’s theme challenging. It is even more challenging if I try to eliminate man-made creations that were inspired by nature themselves. It all comes back to nature at some point, really, but this week I aim to find work inspired by our purely functional forms. We’ll see how that goes.

Of course, when you first think about man-made inspiration in our community, the steampunk trend is likely to come immediately to mind. I will try not to make this a steampunk week but let’s start with that as a first example. Mind you, I like the steampunk aesthetic having been exposed to its basics even before there was such a categorized aesthetic but it is harder and harder to find it done well these days.

I think the original idea of steampunk–an fantasy-esque alternate history of Victorian times with anachronistic technology–has been rather buried under some misconception that it can be simply represented by the presence of watch gears. I am not a purist and I don’t believe an idea should be preserved in its original form just for the sake of preserving it but it is a little disappointing that the idea of steampunk or even just the borrowing of elements of that aesthetic is so often used as the only reason for creating a piece rather than creating work that calls for including such elements.

What exactly does that mean? Well, you can say “I want to create a steampunk piece based on a heart shape.” That’s fine but I would not call that making art. If you instead wanted to show the idea of love being an automated emotion for some people or if you wanted to contrast human emotion with the machinery of our every day world then a heart that has gears and metal plates created with these concepts in mind could become art as long as it also follows rules of good design.

The fact is, too much steampunkery is slapped together without concern for concept or good design. Watch gears and screw heads tossed onto a form do not alone make a piece beautiful or interesting. So I decided my first task was to find a piece that was inspired by steampunk but for which good design obviously came first. I think this piece by Australia’s Sabine Spiesser is exactly that. Can you see why?

sabine time

 

In this piece Sabine uses watch gears as visual design elements, creating lines and focal points within the beads that make up this necklace. She is visually presenting an abstraction, time, as a rich and beautiful concept with movement, color and texture.  The gears are laid out in an orderly fashion which can be read as reflecting on how we use the organizational construct of time. Time visually winds its way through the piece, presenting itself in both large a small ways in much the same way as we think of time with its big and small moments in our lives. I can’t say that Sabine had these specific ideas in mind as she created the necklace but she does end up with a piece using watch parts to build and support the design, not to have watch gears just for the sake of it.

This is a really detailed piece so you will want to be sure to visit her Flickr page and see the piece in her detailed shots as well as look at the beautiful pieces she’s been making of late. She has really done some great work expanding on Eugena’s faux cloisonné technique as well as creating work that is becoming more and more recognizable as her own fresh, original, artistic voice.

 

Inspiration Coming Down the Line

December 13, 2012

We work in a very considerate community. There is much credit given to the artists who inspire us, and on Flickr and various blogs, clayers eagerly list the artists whose techniques they are practicing or who they drew their approach from.

This pendant, by Zuzana (Verundela on Flickr) of the Czech Republic, looks to be a combination of influences as well as materials. I would not call the liberal use of mica powders, embedding watch gears and wire into clay, and topping off a piece with resin unusual, but these approaches all came from somewhere else. Or at least they do not often come to us in a moment of pure, uninfluenced flash of genius. Even when we are not aware of it, other artists bring their influence to us by creative osmosis.

Here, however, we get a glimpse of the influential creative trail. Zuzana gives credit for this piece to Sabine Spiesser of Australia for the rather celestial looking faux enamel and wire work. But if you wander off into Sabine’s Flickr pages (papagodesigns), you’ll find she credits her faux cloisonne work to Eugena Topina of Maryland here in the US. Eugena’s wire bordered faux cloisonne enamel was one of the first tutorials I ever attempted to follow back in the days when I was expanding myself beyond the basics. The technique has been around for a while, but credit is still being considerately passed on. I also really like how global this influence can be … bouncing across the globe from the US to Australia to Eastern Europe. That is the wonderful thing about being an international community and a community very big on sharing and helping each other grow.

 

Markedly Punctured

March 29, 2020
Posted in ,

How is everyone holding up out there? I’m guessing that most of you reading this are not bored. That is one of the advantages of being a creative – we have tons of ideas to work on and a great imagination to work with so let’s keep at that!

I’ve not only had a busy week, I have also been under the weather. Is it the coronavirus? Probably. I have had most of the symptoms, although none too severe, and my husband spent hours in close quarters with someone hospitalized for it not long after while I have rarely left the house but was super cautious when I did, being the (then) annoying lady in line asking everyone to stay 6 feet away from her. I got through the illness with tons of vitamin C and other immune support supplements (having a nutritionist in the family is really helpful!) while my husband never showed signs so we are all good here and I just have that dry cough hanging on. It did, however, slow me down this week.

So, I’m going to share with you a slightly pared down version of the one thing I completed this week which was the Virtual Art Box weekend nudge. So, if you got your VAB nudge yesterday, you’ve seen this, not that a second read isn’t useful!

In the VAB this month we talk about a rather basic but very important design element, the mark. This last weekend of the month, I want to talk about a rather common mark although it’s rarely thought of in those terms. Most of you would simply call them holes. This refers to any kind of puncture that goes through (or nearly through) the material or form that you’re working with.

I, like many people, am fascinated by holes. You can see things through them, revealing layers, depth, and the space beyond. They draw the eye. Think about traveling past caves in a canyon wall or passing an open window. You try to look in, if even just briefly, don’t you? Think of the hollow in a tree trunk or the big holes in a piece of artisan bread. You take notice of these, I bet.

This is why holes are such strong marks. They will be noticed. If there is just one or a spare few, they usually become focal points. When there are many, we usually try to take them all in, see into and through them all. That causes our eye to wander all over the piece, peeking in at all the open spaces. But small holes used as marks are particularly intriguing because we have to take a closer look to see in and beyond them, inviting the viewer to get a bit more intimate with the piece.

Let’s look at a few examples and pay attention to how you look at them. How strongly are you drawn to the holes? Can you imagine the piece without those puncturing marks? How would it change the piece if the holes were just surface marks and not punctures?

 

We can start with the opening image – a brooch with some variation in hole marks by Sabine Spiesser simply titled, Reef 1. What draws your eyes first? It might be the red, being a strong draw itself, but did you stop to look into the little holes?

Sona Grigoryan’s holes nearly take over her pieces sometimes, as in these brooches.

 

Sometimes holes become edges, as readers discovered in February in the Virtual Art Box with the featured pin lace technique, but in the enameled piece by Danielle Embry that opens this post, we can see through them clearly to the bright yellow background beyond. This brooch made 10 years ago, and I didn’t know when I picked it that she had titled it “Corona”, but it feels visually metaphorical for us all right now. Kind of gives me shivers actually.

Holes as marks don’t have to be round or organically scattered as most of the above are. They can be any shape and can be orderly, even to the point of creating an image as show in this ceramic bowl by Annie Quigley who does nothing but make holes in her ceramics.

 

Okay, now it’s your turn to find holes being used as marks. Go look at work in your studio and see if you use holes and if so, how do you use them? Are they used as marks or for functional purposes or maybe you don’t know or recall your intention with those holes?

If you’re not seeing holes in your work, I would normally say go out and look for them at galleries and shops, but most of us can’t and shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing. So how about a virtual tour. Or 30? Click here to get a list of virtual tours. This list is actually more than museums which I thought was neat in case you have young ones with you that might really enjoy a virtual tour of an aquarium or zoo. There are some wonderful places to virtually visit here.

Ok, now to go rest up for a bit as I have much to write this coming week between sewing masks and keeping up with isolated family and friends. (We have THE busiest social schedule we’ve ever had, and its all virtual!) Please, everyone take care of yourselves and make the most of your indoor time with a lot of creative exploration!

 

 

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/?fbclid=IwAR0-pI2eqMCBE6M1fERp5XsNRmR7ydW2szeBCtMAHXBSleY2cfwsnVf4VZA

https://www.craftcast.com/ 30% off code: Spring2020

Christi Friesen free play days, next one on Sunday

Read More

The Winter Cover, 1/2 off Polymer Journeys SALE, & other news

October 24, 2017
Posted in ,

My apologies for not getting the blog out yesterday. It is a whirlwind over here as we get the next issue ready and deal with some ongoing technical and third-party service issues in other areas.

But here you go. Your sneak peek at the Winter 2017 – Line issue whose cover will be graced with the beautiful work of Emily Squires Levine who is the featured artist interviewed in this issue. This great end of the year issue will come out third week of November.

Along with that must-read article, you can also look forward to …

  • Design with Line
  • The Art of Emily Squires Levine
  • Creative Extruding
  • More Tools from Other Trades
  • Etched Impression Plates
  • Simulation in Soutache
  • Color Spotlight:  Sabine Spiesser
  • Getting into Galleries
  • Jewelry Styles for Men
  • Growing Your Guild
  • Russian Polymer Quilt Project
  • … and much more!

To ensure you don’t miss out, go here for subscriptions and renewals.

And … we are working on the next couple projects so we thought we’d keep working on making room and this time, we’ve got Polymer Journeys on sale for a straight 50% off for print editions, 15% off digital editions, and if you buy both, you can get the digital edition for only $5! You can grab this deal on our website as well.

There is also news about changes in our subscription and ordering process which was run through a service that has, unfortunately not provided consistent service and has frustrated more than a few readers, and we just can’t have that. So this is all back in-house where we can monitor every single order ourselves. We do lose the online portal for you to check on your subscription and change your address but we’ll be able to offer more discounts and specials as well as having a cleaner and easier ordering system.

Get all this news in our newsletter which you can find online here. If you would like to sign up to receive our twice monthly newsletter, just drop your email into the form on our home page.

_________________________________________

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.

    The Great Create Sept 15 blog   businesscard-3.5inx2in-h-front   Shades of Clay Sept 15 Blog

_________________________________________

Read More

Fall Glass

November 4, 2016
Posted in

sabine-spiesser-glass-shardsHere is a little more autumn color for the week. I think this is a brooch although it doesn’t say. I did have something else in mind from the ever-exploring Sabine Spiesser but then I alighted upon this little experiment while enjoying her Flickr photos and a couple of things about it caught my eye.

I find this interesting not only because it’s a faux textured glass technique and yummy colors but also because of a comment Sabine made in regards to it:

“Unfortunately I noticed that alcohol inks fade in bright light in Pardo clay. I left an old piece in a bright spot where it gets some sunshine and after about 4 months all colours except for red were gone. That was quite a shock. I have to rethink what I am doing.”

It makes me wonder if this is just a problem with Pardo, or all translucents or alcohol inks in general. I’m going to do some research and then my own tests. I’ll post my results in our newsletter, where all such tips usually land in my world. If you aren’t on our twice monthly newsletter list, you’re missing out on tips, community news, first sales announcements, and some of our magazine news. You can sign up on the left hand side of our website’s home page. In the meantime, enjoy a view of Sabine’s work on her Flickr pages and website.

 

Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Try something different with a faux technique you like to do. If it’s faux stone, create forms you don’t usually see them in or texture them in a way that would be near impossible in a real stone. If it’s metal, create something organic-looking, like a silver flower or a copper pod. Just because we can mimic nature’s material doesn’t mean we need to recreate it only in the forms that nature presents it. Let go and try something different.

_________________________________________

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.

Shades of Clay Sept 15 Blog   never knead -july-2015c-125   The Great Create Sept 15 blog   businesscard-3.5inx2in-h-front

_________________________________________

Read More

Design Inspired by Man-Made

September 16, 2013
Posted in

We spend a lot of time looking at inspiration that comes directly from nature here so I thought this week we should look at things inspired by man. That turned out to be a tall order. Man-made inspiration seems to make up only a fraction of inspiring sources for polymer artists which made finding subjects for this week’s theme challenging. It is even more challenging if I try to eliminate man-made creations that were inspired by nature themselves. It all comes back to nature at some point, really, but this week I aim to find work inspired by our purely functional forms. We’ll see how that goes.

Of course, when you first think about man-made inspiration in our community, the steampunk trend is likely to come immediately to mind. I will try not to make this a steampunk week but let’s start with that as a first example. Mind you, I like the steampunk aesthetic having been exposed to its basics even before there was such a categorized aesthetic but it is harder and harder to find it done well these days.

I think the original idea of steampunk–an fantasy-esque alternate history of Victorian times with anachronistic technology–has been rather buried under some misconception that it can be simply represented by the presence of watch gears. I am not a purist and I don’t believe an idea should be preserved in its original form just for the sake of preserving it but it is a little disappointing that the idea of steampunk or even just the borrowing of elements of that aesthetic is so often used as the only reason for creating a piece rather than creating work that calls for including such elements.

What exactly does that mean? Well, you can say “I want to create a steampunk piece based on a heart shape.” That’s fine but I would not call that making art. If you instead wanted to show the idea of love being an automated emotion for some people or if you wanted to contrast human emotion with the machinery of our every day world then a heart that has gears and metal plates created with these concepts in mind could become art as long as it also follows rules of good design.

The fact is, too much steampunkery is slapped together without concern for concept or good design. Watch gears and screw heads tossed onto a form do not alone make a piece beautiful or interesting. So I decided my first task was to find a piece that was inspired by steampunk but for which good design obviously came first. I think this piece by Australia’s Sabine Spiesser is exactly that. Can you see why?

sabine time

 

In this piece Sabine uses watch gears as visual design elements, creating lines and focal points within the beads that make up this necklace. She is visually presenting an abstraction, time, as a rich and beautiful concept with movement, color and texture.  The gears are laid out in an orderly fashion which can be read as reflecting on how we use the organizational construct of time. Time visually winds its way through the piece, presenting itself in both large a small ways in much the same way as we think of time with its big and small moments in our lives. I can’t say that Sabine had these specific ideas in mind as she created the necklace but she does end up with a piece using watch parts to build and support the design, not to have watch gears just for the sake of it.

This is a really detailed piece so you will want to be sure to visit her Flickr page and see the piece in her detailed shots as well as look at the beautiful pieces she’s been making of late. She has really done some great work expanding on Eugena’s faux cloisonné technique as well as creating work that is becoming more and more recognizable as her own fresh, original, artistic voice.

 

Read More

Inspiration Coming Down the Line

December 13, 2012
Posted in

We work in a very considerate community. There is much credit given to the artists who inspire us, and on Flickr and various blogs, clayers eagerly list the artists whose techniques they are practicing or who they drew their approach from.

This pendant, by Zuzana (Verundela on Flickr) of the Czech Republic, looks to be a combination of influences as well as materials. I would not call the liberal use of mica powders, embedding watch gears and wire into clay, and topping off a piece with resin unusual, but these approaches all came from somewhere else. Or at least they do not often come to us in a moment of pure, uninfluenced flash of genius. Even when we are not aware of it, other artists bring their influence to us by creative osmosis.

Here, however, we get a glimpse of the influential creative trail. Zuzana gives credit for this piece to Sabine Spiesser of Australia for the rather celestial looking faux enamel and wire work. But if you wander off into Sabine’s Flickr pages (papagodesigns), you’ll find she credits her faux cloisonne work to Eugena Topina of Maryland here in the US. Eugena’s wire bordered faux cloisonne enamel was one of the first tutorials I ever attempted to follow back in the days when I was expanding myself beyond the basics. The technique has been around for a while, but credit is still being considerately passed on. I also really like how global this influence can be … bouncing across the globe from the US to Australia to Eastern Europe. That is the wonderful thing about being an international community and a community very big on sharing and helping each other grow.

 

Read More
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