Artistic Collaborations
June 12, 2012
Inspirational Art, Polymer issues
This year I’ve been doing a lot of chatting with other polymer artists, collaborating–or hoping to–on a variety of projects primarily related to promoting polymer and the image of polymer art. What I would really like to do is artistic collaborations. It is amazing what the creativity and input from another artist can do to push your work and get you think in different directions. You often end up with something that you would have never imagined. That synergistic effect of two or more minds trying to resolve individual visions into one can be so exciting and energizing.
You may have seen the beautiful work of J.M. Syron and Bonnie Bischoff combining woodworking and polymer. Their large piece of furniture are well-known but I adore their lamps.
Cynithia Toops regularly collaborates with jewelry smith Chuck Domitrovich. Chuck set up a wonderful Flickr page with their in-progress and finished work.
One of favorite collaborations is this very interesting wood and polymer piece by Porro Sahlberg and Peter Sahlberg Leppikallio. The “Trilobite Cabin” was included in “500 Cabinets” by Lark Books. Click on the photo to go to the page with the detail of the side which is just wonderful.
So … have you considered collaborating?
Timmins Technique in Full Color
June 11, 2012
Technique tutorials
No one makes swirls lentils like Laura Timmins. And I have never seen anyone put together a more concise, accessible and interesting way of explaining such a complex process.
This is really a pretty cool visual of how Laura builds the components that make her gorgeous lentils. She created this quite a few years ago to help explain to her customers how she uses polymer clay to make her work. She has found that the popularity of polymer has made explaining the material and process less necessary than in the past but it’s still a fun and colorful visual to have.
What do you use, if anything, to educate people about your process when at public events?
Keeping Up with The Polymer Arts magazine
June 10, 2012
The Polymer Arts magazine news
Would you like to be a writer or contributor for The Polymer Arts? Do you often wonder when your next issue will be on the way? Do you like little tips and tricks in your mailbox a couple times a month?
In our TPA newsletter, we keep you up to date on new and upcoming issues, the types of articles and art we are looking to acquire for future issues and we add a tip and/or trick to give you something to think about and improve in your art process.
Our next newsletter goes out this week with ideas for contributions for future issues. (You don’t need to be a writer to contribute, just have some great ideas and good information for your fellow artists and we’ll help you craft an article.) Also news on back issue specials and the best of our blog and Facebook posts.
You can sign up for our twice monthly newsletter on our website. Look for the form on the left hand side.
Inspired by Ceramic Textures
June 9, 2012
Inspirational Art
So, I thought we’d spend some time on this blog each week looking at potential inspiration from areas outside of polymer. We already take so many techniques and processes from other types of art so it’s not a stretch to think that there is just a ton of non-polymer art that can inspire our work.
Here we have ceramic artist Andy Rogers, He is quite the texture fiend. (Geez … sounds like someone else we know!) The colors, forms and texture he uses could all be replicated in polymer. I also like the arrangement of forms he puts together to link and contrast them in one cohesive composition. This kind of presentation of polymer work is not that common but doesn’t it get you thinking about what you might be able to do with your work?
Do you have favorite artists or pieces of art that aren’t polymer but has influenced what you do? If so, I would love to help you share that here on the TPA blog. Send links to me at sbray@thepolymerarts.com
Clay Carnival in Las Vegas anyone?
June 8, 2012
Polymer community news
You may have read the article in the present Summer 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts magazine and as I promised, we are announcing that Clay Carnival registration is now open! Clay Carnival Las Vegas 2012 will be October 18 – 21st at the Imperial Palace Hotel.
This is 4 days of total polymer clay immersion with 8 instructors and one of the easiest, best laid out set-ups. You get there, get a spot in one of the 3 or 4 workrooms and the instructors come to the room so you get to spread out and play straight through without all the packing hassle at the end of the day. And it’s in Vegas! Play with clay during the day (oh, my that rhymed all too well!) then play out into the lights of the Las Vegas nights.
There is a core group of 4 instructors – Judy Belcher, Kim Cavender, Leslie Blackford and Donna Kato and each year they invite four more. This year they also have Sarah Shriver, Wendy Malinow, Dawn Schiller, and Natalia Garcia. Six of the eight classes are already posted on the website including information on Sarah Shriver’s Acorn pendants you see here. Clay is provided by Van Aken International for classes. The event is capped off by the Pizza Party Carnival Night of which we had lots of photos in the article so you can see just how much fun this group is. Do consider joining this year if you can.
So are you going? I’ll be there again (it was too much fun to miss) and bringing my camera and light box to get shots of attendees artwork for the blog and magazine.
Don’t forget to follow the news and announcements on their blog or on Facebook.
Pretty Little Wonderland Girls
June 7, 2012
Inspirational Art
Today we’re going to just admire something pretty for the sake of it being pretty. Doll art is just so incredible.
This is a pair by artist Nicole West who makes incredibly detailed polymer dolls. The expressions on their face here, the choice of color for the eyes and accents on the skin and the pairing of these two is just gorgeous.
Her comments: ” These pop goth girl are sculpted with every detail including fingernails and fine hair eyelashes. Their eyes are a bright pink/purple and are hand made by the artist. They reflect light for added depth and realism. They are not computer generated.” That is a lot of dedication to detail!
These are for sale on Ebay. Wouldn’t they be a wonderful gift to receive!
Working with Quiet Space
June 6, 2012
Inspirational Art
The response to the Stroppel article in our recent Summer 2012 issue and the fan base she and the technique have is bringing more and more variations of it out of the woodwork. (If you are a fan of this technique do check out the Stroppel Cane Flickr group.)
Here Nikolina Otržan of Croatia combines Stroppel canes with a Rex Ray influenced design. Visual texture (remember that discussion in the texture article in the Spring 2012 issue?) contrasted with large smooth spaces make the small area of Stroppel caning really stand out. This approach is not unlike utlizing white space in a painting or drawing (or in the layout of a magazine, actually) to bring the eye into the primary area of focus. The ‘quiet’ spaces recede in importance, playing up the busy spaces.
So if you have a texture, cane or other surface treatment with a lot of color and/or detail, you might consider balancing it out with calm, broad, solid spaces in order to direct the viewer’s eye where you want them to focus.
Thanks to Maja DeLorean for bringing her friend Nikolina’s work to my attention!
Want More Organizational Help?
June 5, 2012
Tips and Tricks
Since there was so much excitement over the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts magazine and all the organizational ideas it had, I figured many of you would be interested in this little book or organizational wisdom, Controlling Creative Clutter which is presently on sale for a mere $6.99 for a digital copy!
This book is structured as a workbook primarily text based rather than just being lots of photos. It’ll get you thinking about how and why you have your space organized the way you do and help you work out ideas on how to change it to make it more usable and you more productive.
The author, Diane Dobson-Barton is also the author of Polymer People, a three book series on realistic sculpting in polymer clay. (A must for any polymer figurative sculptor.)
You can check out these wonderful books here as well:
Attending to Your Back Sides
June 4, 2012
Inspirational Art
Let’s start this week with some thoughts about our back sides. (Ok … where did your mind go?!) The back of our art, especially in jewelry, can be too easily ignored or at least is treated with less consideration and attention to detail than the side we consider the front. But if you think about it, the person who owns that piece sees the back all the time. Wouldn’t you want your customers to be just as pleased or awed by what they see on the back as they are by the side that every one else sees? I think it’s such a missed opportunity to leave the back plain. How fun is it to know that the work of art around your neck or on your wrist is hiding a beautiful surprise on the back side.
This is why I so adore the work of Daniela D’Uva. She lives in Italy and works under the name Alkhymeia. All of her pieces have a carefully considered back side, some so detailed as to be more stunning than the front, making them readily reversible. (click on the photo to see the detail here.)
What do you do with your back sides?
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If you read the “Polymer Resurrection Workshop” article in the last issue of The Polymer Arts, you saw how easy it is to make successful mokume gane from scrap. I’ve been hearing from a lot of people who have been taking this scrap approach so when I ran across this tutorial by Elizabeth Campbell,, I thought I really ought to share. Here’s a resulting piece from the technique:
This is a a fun variation on the mokume gane challenge that does not require sorting the clay at all. You just use your “mud pile.” It’s perfect for leftover canes pieces and the little bits of clay you have at the bottom of your scrap bin.
If you are getting into the Bargello technique from that same article, Elizabeth has a quick overview on creating a Skinner blend Bargello sheet as well.
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A couple weeks ago, Cynthia posted a piece on Polymer Clay Daily about faux soutache done in polymer clay by Olimpia Corvino.I had just been perusing an actually soutache artist’s site a couple days before but couldn’t find it at the time. Well, it was an Etsy store and here is the piece that drew me in and had me investigating.
This piece by Miriam Shimon is titled “Once Upon a Time” and is a Bead Dreams 2012 Finalist piece. Obviously! Well, I didn’t see the rest of the competition but this just blew me away. If you are unfamiliar with soutache, it is simply a narrow and flat decorative type of trim used with drapery or clothing, usually to hide a seam. Not dissimilar from flattened ropes of polymer (hint, hint!) As demonstrated by Olimpia, there are such possibilities in terms of borrowing form, flow, and detail, for a polymer artist to borrow from this bead and fiber art form.
And, besides, it’s just so darn pretty to look at.
Read MoreCoffee in the morning is such an entrenched tradition in America and elsewhere that even those of us who can’t drink caffeine anymore will still get up and make a pot of decaf for some psychological pick-me-up.
Now, what if you have that coffee (caffeinated or not) in a cup like this …
Eleni Tsaliki has a thing for bring colors and fun imagery. Using Angeli Del Rosario’s suggestions for renewing old items from the “Polymer to the Rescue” article in our present issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, you could help save the earth and brighten your morning by repairing old mugs with cheery polymer additions.
Eleni has a whole series of pick me up mugs on her Flickr page along with other things to brighten up your Thursday.
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I thought I knew all the really amazing polymer clay doll artists but as usual, there are more! Eneida Rosa makes the most amazing sculptures – not just because of their realism and her obvious skill with the material – but because these are real women with the small ‘imperfections’ that certain industries would like us to think don’t exist.
This piece, “Alisha,” has to be my favorite. This woman is no waif. She has healthy curves and all the things that make a woman truly sexy (so says a survey of my male friends). She’s still looking to be in better shape than me (I so need to cut down on eating out!) but how wonderfully refreshing to see a not-so-flat belly and a little unevenness across the thigh.
There is now a backlash in the fashion industry against those emaciated looks and unhealthy demands made on fashion models that too many woman try to compete with. We should keep this in mind in our artwork as well.
Although one of the advantages – as well as a draw for making art – is creating whatever we think beauty is, even when it’s unrealistic. How much more helpful can we be to society and the female self-image if we portray the beautiful women of polymer sculpture as gorgeous emulations of real, healthy-looking women that we could realistically all aspire to be?
So hat’s off to Eneida for her wonderful and realistic work.
Read MoreMaybe it’s the heat but the river-like element in these earrings by Karen Park draws me in.
The graduated blues and earth tones bring up images of a river bank and the scattered gold on brown looks like the eddies where one might go gold panning.
Wouldn’t you like to be in a place like this right now?
I thought today – as a heat wave continues to cross much of the country – that something refreshing like this would be a welcome image for all you readers.
Read MoreStarting July 1, Voila.eu.com will be running an eight-month course on “How to Become a Better Artist.” There’s a short post about it on their homepage:
How To Become a Better Artist: An 8-month journey
If you are asking yourself these questions:
- Are my ideas good enough to spend more time on them?
- Why are some pieces “wow” and others “blah”?
- How is my work perceived?
Then this course will help you:
- Identify worthwhile ideas and mature them,
- Ensure that you effectively capture your good ideas,
- Understand how to learn from and accept criticism.
Starting July 1, 2012, the course will build on the wealth of experience and images from the last two years of Polymeristas of the Month competitions.
The course is free and available to all. Only members will have access to the archives.
Sign up on www.voila.eu.com to become a member and join in on this great opportunity! You can read more on Voila in the Summer Issue of The Polymer Arts magazine.
Read MoreYou have probably seen Sandra McCaw’s work, if not on the internet somewhere, then in a polymer clay book or two. Sandra does amazing cane work and applies her canes to beautifully constructed jewelry usually combined with precious metals. This brooch is a great example of her use of line and color.
In her own words:
“My inspiration derives from a fascination with the interplay of color, line and form. In working with polymer clay, I am able to create complex patterns where lines seem to lose their distinction and blend, and where colors bloom and merge. Polymer clay, with its richness of color and flexibility, allows me to create the intricate patterns that I love.”
‘Nuf said.
Hope you all had a beautiful weekend.
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As craft artists, we are more commonly drawn to three-dimensional arts and crafts because the construction and formation of a piece is something we know so well ourselves. But inspiration can be found in many of the two-dimensional arts as well.
This painting by Laura Zollar has a wealth of color and visual impact that could be easily translated into polymer illustration.
I would love to walk into a room and see something like this on a wall but built up with sculptural polymer which would then give it the added dimension of change … the shifting of shadows as light changes in the room and the alteration of view as you move around it.
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Adding a bit of sparkle and shine can be just what’s needed to enliven a piece. But in most cases, use of the bling-y stuff is best done in small doses, using crystals and bright gems as accents to catch the light and a potential viewer’s eye. But for every rule there is an exception and here is a case where the nearly over the top use of crystals is actually quite appealing.
I thought this was polymer at first – and this certainly could be done with polymer – but it is actually a colored epoxy called Gemoglue, which is sold in Europe.
The crystals are embedded into balls of this sculptable epoxy with gems that reflect the color of the mixed epoxy. The restrained use of color keeps this from becoming garish. The randomness of the placement and the varied size keeps it from becoming predictable.
This piece was found on Gemoglue’s Flickr page which is full of sparkle and shine but all very tastefully done. We’ll be exploring the use of “Shimmer and Shine” in the Winter issue of The Polymer Arts towards the end of the year.
Want to try some colored epoxy but aren’t in Europe? Try Apoxie Sculpt’s colored resin clays.
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