What We Build
September 21, 2013
Inspirational Art
I’m actually surprised that more urban polymer artists don’t look out their windows and want to reflect back the cityscape around them. What human beings have created is incredible. We build both functional and artistic structures all over the globe, forever changing the landscape with our huge buildings, bridges, and ports. Some may find this sad as it represents an absence of nature’s creations, but we too are from nature and our creations are still part of this world. We can’t stop the progress of civilization, but at least we can celebrate the beauty we add.
Ana Belchi celebrates the cityscape through a series of pins she created. Nature gets its say in this piece with the added patina and rust, representative of time and corrosion.
Ana goes through a whole series of experiments with patina, which you can find on her blog. She is a wide-ranging polymer artist with beautiful finishes. Take a look over the pieces in her store as well.
Out on the Street
September 4, 2013
Inspirational Art
Every time I visit Cornelia Brockstedt’s website, I just get lost. Her work holds a kind of mysterious curiosity for me. Where did these images come from? Just how does she view the world that she comes up with these unexpected compositions? She has a series called “Street Life” which I find particularly fascinating. There is a mix of organic and man-made in most of it–very much reminiscent of a city street with its asphalt, concrete, and pipes, but among these intentional and planned structures, nature is moving back in to reclaim what once was its territory.
This brooch is easily the most curious of the series. The texture of the emerging vegetation is in all the pieces of this series; but this one, due to the rather aquatic formations, seems more alive and even a little alien. It’s eerie and beautifully fascinating, don’t you think?
And because I can’t resist, here is the other end of the spectrum on her Street Life series. This pendant’s imagery is a bit more easily recognizable–grass growing in between paving stones–which may sound like a rather mundane subject matter; but as you can see, it’s not in the least bit mundane in this presentation.
The other thing about Cornelia’s work is that it shows that she really knows how to take inspiration from other artists and make it her own. She has quite a few pieces listed with credit given to other artists that she learned from; but even though the technique of these other artists is (more or less) apparent, the work is usually quite different from the work of her teachers.
In The Polymer Arts, I decided from the start to focus on technique rather than project tutorials or how-to type articles. These are supposed to give readers new skills and techniques that they can then take to the studio and morph or blend into their own original pieces. Sometimes it is hard to separate the technique from the design when what you learn is taught as a specific project. Well, if you want some excellent examples of how that is done, take a good long look through Cornelia’s website. Some transformations of techniques are more detached from the master artist’s usual designs than others, but they all look to be developed in a way that still reflects something of Cornelia’s aesthetic. And that is precisely what should be done with skills learned in any workshop or from any book.
I’m actually surprised that more urban polymer artists don’t look out their windows and want to reflect back the cityscape around them. What human beings have created is incredible. We build both functional and artistic structures all over the globe, forever changing the landscape with our huge buildings, bridges, and ports. Some may find this sad as it represents an absence of nature’s creations, but we too are from nature and our creations are still part of this world. We can’t stop the progress of civilization, but at least we can celebrate the beauty we add.
Ana Belchi celebrates the cityscape through a series of pins she created. Nature gets its say in this piece with the added patina and rust, representative of time and corrosion.
Ana goes through a whole series of experiments with patina, which you can find on her blog. She is a wide-ranging polymer artist with beautiful finishes. Take a look over the pieces in her store as well.
Every time I visit Cornelia Brockstedt’s website, I just get lost. Her work holds a kind of mysterious curiosity for me. Where did these images come from? Just how does she view the world that she comes up with these unexpected compositions? She has a series called “Street Life” which I find particularly fascinating. There is a mix of organic and man-made in most of it–very much reminiscent of a city street with its asphalt, concrete, and pipes, but among these intentional and planned structures, nature is moving back in to reclaim what once was its territory.
This brooch is easily the most curious of the series. The texture of the emerging vegetation is in all the pieces of this series; but this one, due to the rather aquatic formations, seems more alive and even a little alien. It’s eerie and beautifully fascinating, don’t you think?
And because I can’t resist, here is the other end of the spectrum on her Street Life series. This pendant’s imagery is a bit more easily recognizable–grass growing in between paving stones–which may sound like a rather mundane subject matter; but as you can see, it’s not in the least bit mundane in this presentation.
The other thing about Cornelia’s work is that it shows that she really knows how to take inspiration from other artists and make it her own. She has quite a few pieces listed with credit given to other artists that she learned from; but even though the technique of these other artists is (more or less) apparent, the work is usually quite different from the work of her teachers.
In The Polymer Arts, I decided from the start to focus on technique rather than project tutorials or how-to type articles. These are supposed to give readers new skills and techniques that they can then take to the studio and morph or blend into their own original pieces. Sometimes it is hard to separate the technique from the design when what you learn is taught as a specific project. Well, if you want some excellent examples of how that is done, take a good long look through Cornelia’s website. Some transformations of techniques are more detached from the master artist’s usual designs than others, but they all look to be developed in a way that still reflects something of Cornelia’s aesthetic. And that is precisely what should be done with skills learned in any workshop or from any book.
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