Making Friends with Failure
December 22, 2013
Ponderings
This is a bit longer installment than I usually have on Sunday but I think this strip by Stephen McCranie explains so well how silly it is for us to be so hard on ourselves, to expect perfection in every piece we create, and to miss out on the lessons we can learn from our imperfect creations. It is well worth the read. Click on the image here to see the entire strip. Enjoy.
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Quick and Colorful Geometry
December 21, 2013
Inspirational Art
This piece and the accompanying tutorial don’t really lean organic except maybe in the color choices but they are certainly geometric and it looks like such a fun and easy technique that I just had to share it.
Magali Chauveau is a French artist who uses a cookie cutter or punch to cut out shapes and apply them to a base sheet in order to create the surface design for beads like the ones on the necklace pictured here.
Magali generously shares tutorials on her blog as well as having several books available. To see more of her work, take a look at her Facebook page or view her books on Amazon.
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.
Outside Inspiration: Organic Order
December 20, 2013
Inspirational Art
When searching for artists in other mediums to work into this week’s theme, I was rather surprised to find polymer came up more often than any other medium when searching for organic and geometric in the same search. Ceramics was the next most common. Not that we are the only mediums that mix in both but it would seem clays are more commonly used to express this dichotomy or is it that artists that work with clay feel drawn to both?
Inspired by a part of the Arizona desert known as Arcosanti, ceramic artist Chris Gryder started out playing in dirt using silt, clay and concrete as his primary means of expression. Using silt molds, he patterns these tiles and after firing them, colors the surfaces with slip before firing again. As you can see, his organic inspiration in the desert does not limit him to those forms but rather he finds the geometric patterns and connections between what he has found in nature.
As polymer artists, we can take inspiration not only from his process and all this wonderful texture, but also in the composition of his many wall installations. Polymer would lend itself–and has–to multiple smaller pieces assembled into a larger work. Look at his work on Flickr and his website for much more rich texture and some really creative wall compositions.
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A Stylized Organic Scene
December 19, 2013
Inspirational Art
Some pieces can deftly combine both geometric imagery and organic texture but sometimes, it is one representing the other as it is in this touching piece by Tammy Durham. Both the plant growth and the connection to new life are conveyed by many small circles and a stylized but active and flowing composition.
I love Tammy’s bold use of color and texture found in most of her work which she admits is heavily inspired by Gustav Klimt. Tammy, a polymer clay illustrator from Colorado, has no fear of color as can be seen on her Flickr and Pinterest pages. Take a break from shopping and work and enjoy her joyful imagery for a bit.
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Organic texture, Graphic Form
December 18, 2013
Inspirational Art
Black and white is rather a standard when it comes to creating a graphic look. One can assume that was the basic idea behind Debbie Carlton’s little pieces here. I assume they are earrings–created using mokume in black and white, and what looks to be a little red underneath but then this crackling of gold and the imprecision of the square shapes bring a more organic feel to the pieces. The contrasting textures within the colors and the negative space and scale add energy to the small surface area she has to work with here.
Debbie enjoys combining precious metal clay with colorful polymer in her pieces. She has been exploring the compatibility of these two mediums as seen in her work on her Craft Central and Flickr pages.
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Floral as a Geometric Motif
December 17, 2013
Inspirational Art
Here is another approach that uses what is commonly thought of as classic organic imagery but creates a graphic style using repetition.
From a distance, the repeated pattern on this necklace looks like dots, but when you look closely, you will see flowers. Lucy Struncova uses the floral cane slices to add a stylized but soft organic side to a modern, graphic look that is further enhanced by the rounded, smooth edges of the triangular forms.
As you might have noticed on the photo, this is available as a tutorial … for free even! Just go to Lucy’s blog to see this and several other tutorials you might find of interest. (Drop the URL into Google translate to get the Polish translated for you.)
Lucy’s is an amazing young artist–just a teenager!–but she is working on books and polymer products as well as her tutorials and artful pieces. Be sure to check out her work on Flickr and Pinterest as well.
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.
Merging Graphic and Organic
December 16, 2013
Inspirational Art
Polymer works well for creating almost any look but there are a lot of artists whose work reflects an organic influence while another large portion of the community leans toward more graphic work, heavy into geometric forms and lines. Artists in both camps borrow from the other as well. This week we’ll look at how the two seemingly opposite styles are often combined to create contrast, tension and variation in polymer art.
This is the piece that first got me thinking about this. Jana Lehmann works very heavily in perfectly measured and graphic forms. Her precision can be seen in this necklace but the stylized representation of trees in a kind of spherical landscape brings us back to the idea of a natural scene.
The chosen colors also harken back to the organic in this piece as might the waving hang of the bottom beads. It would be hard to call this geometrically based but there are many concentric circles and the repetition of exact shapes on both sides. It’s a very nicely done reversible piece as well, carrying the same style and sense of precision contrasting organics to both sides.
Jana’s work is quite varied and yet has a signature sense of precision and a flawless finish to all her edges. More of her work can be found on her Flickr photostream and her blog.
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.
Shininess is Catching
December 15, 2013
Ponderings
I don’t know that I need to add anything here. This is as simple as being enthusiastic about your creative endeavors or any other other myriad of wonderful things in your life. Smile and others will smile with you. Laugh and others will laugh along. Strive to do better in everything you do and you will inspire others to do the same.
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 partne
Sparkle on the Tree
December 14, 2013
Inspirational Art
One area glitter and sparkle can comfortably reside is on the holiday tree and in holiday home decor. Jainnie Jenkins was making these ornaments a couple years back but they certainly have a timeless quality about them.
These ornaments are polymer clay overlaid over glass bulb ornaments. Jainnie creates this almost antique effect by layering Pearl-ex powders on the clay. After curing, she scrubs off a lot of the Pearl-ex leaving enough powder to accent the textures and shapes. She has also created similar effects by layering on metallic paints. She found that metallic paints make her work feel a little more loose or organic. Now how often do you hear the words metallic and organic together?
Have a look at more of Jainnie’s work on her Flickr photostream and her blog.
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I think most of us have a repertoire of faux techniques we use regularly but how often do you push that technique, changing up the colors used, the finished texture or even going from solid clay colors to translucents?
Christine Michel created these gorgeous river rocks using what looks like a standard approach to emulating the water smoothed stones and their variation in color and inclusions. It’s a great, realistic looking choice of colors and the use of translucent clay gives the color in the ‘rocks’ additional variation.
If you haven’t tried your hand at faux river rocks, here is a great tutorial by Maria Jam Brown that shows how to create a few different types of rocks (scroll down and click on the red link.) Go have fun with it!
You can also see more of Christine’s work on her Flickr site.
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.
The New Year is just about here. Many of us are thinking about what we will be doing in 2014 including new projects, new shows and maybe even a new direction in our craft work. This week I’ll throw out a few ideas about how to push your work while we enjoy some pretty polymer pieces.
Many of us cover objects with clay. Often it involves canes or sheets of clay, but what if you used the object more like a canvas and added many small elements to create intricate patterns an texture. I think this can really bring that kind of work up a notch or two. Just look at these wedding toast glasses by Inara Kirhenstein from Riga, Latvia.
Inara’s description of her glasses: “Luxury wedding flutes decorated with more than 50 polymer clay flowers, Swarovski rhinestones, seed beads and faux pearls. Small Czech Preciosa seed beads are appliqued one by one.” This kind of application would certainly take a bit of patience but the detailed work certainly pays off. It’s very eye-catching and impressive.
All of Inara’s work is similarly detailed. She does jewelry as well as these kinds of glasses. You can see more of her beautiful work in her Etsy shop.
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.
I suggest focusing on the studio rather than the bank accounts!
In these days between Christmas and New Years, it is a great time to go through your studio, clean it out, and get yourself organized so you can start out the New Year fresh. Go through unfinished projects and decide which you are confident you will complete, and which you need to be resigned to never finishing, tossing them out or recycling them if you can. Go through your supplies and tools and make a list of what you need to replace or stock up on. Then you know what to use those gift cards and Christmas money for! And with after Christmas sales, you can make that money go farther … a lot farther. It will feel really good to start out clean, stocked and organized in the studio for 2014!
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I have been saving a number of pieces by Arden Bardol, hoping to fit this unique work into one of our themes but hadn’t yet found the right place to introduce her work. Arden’s work is a busy mix of varied elements, sometimes graphic, other times quite organic, and many times both. I just find the combinations intriguing and the colors so eye-catching.
Check out just how fun and varied Ardel’s work is on her website.
Hopefully you are winding down from the holiday bedlam and have time to enjoy your family and friends who might have been in town or the ones you went to visit yourself. Have a beautiful weekend!
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.
My first love in crafts was in fiber arts. Weaving, dying, hand-stitched art-to-wear and mixed textiles wall pieces were all part of my early portfolio and exploration of craft art forms. These materials still fascinate me and polymer design ideas often include mixing fiber or drawing inspiration from the art form.
The textures and use of mixed media in today’s fiber arts often remind me of approaches to polymer. Rich, organic texture and intense color are signatures of many of today’s textile artists making the craft a fantastic source for polymer inspiration. This is a wall piece by Helen Suzanne, a texture maniac whose work I get lost in, just checking out all of the techniques and materials used in these pieces.
If you ever have a chance to see fiber art in person, in a gallery that specializes in the craft or a museum that has a collection or a curated show, make seeing it a priority. As with polymer, you get so much more out of the work when seen in person. One can’t help but be wowed by the intensity of the work you see in the details of these pieces. Yeah, the patience of a fiber artist who does work like Helen here just blows my mind. Maybe you can catch the traveling Fiber Art International exhibition, in California right now, or when it moves to South Carolina and Massachusetts in the coming year. Take a look at the FAI website and gallery sections to see just where fiber arts are today.
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.
I met Irene Corman at Synergy this past March. She enthusiastically suggested an article idea of hers which eventually resulted in her sharing her knowledge about teaching polymer art classes in the Fall 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts magazine. Since then, Irene has also answered my call for help in scouting art for the blog and future articles. Her enthusiasm and love of art, not just polymer, has made working with her such a joy.
Irene brought to me this unusual and intriguing artist, Laura Balombini. What a fabulous imagination!
Irene had this to say about why she is drawn to Laura’s work:
“She has created individuality and expression in each bird-form, while controlling any random effects through the simplicity of form and the repetition of each one, holding size and the shape elements that make up each of the birds, constant. Each of the faces and wings differ, creating interest for the viewer, while the even number and placement in 2 rows around the rectangle provide “discipline” for the design. Additional interest comes from the birdlike movement created by the positioning of the heads as they peck, look, stretch their necks, birdlike, yet also, somewhat human in their features. At first glance, the piece has a feel of folk-art, but the naiveté of folk art is transformed into something else when one sees the human features in the faces. The piece seems to tell a story, and also, holds a surprise. Using polymer clay for these forms is an artistic choice that works really well, given its color range, density and malleability.”
Enjoy more of Laura’s imaginative creations on her website.
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.
Read More
As many of you reader’s have seen, we introduced a new section in The Polymer Arts magazine called Polymer Jeweler’s Workbench this past Summer. We created this section to focus on these very popular forms in polymer. Shortly after the first of these articles came out in the Summer issue, Julie Cleveland, owner of Blue Morning Expressions polymer supply and bead shop, as well as being a polymer artist and freelance writer, contacted me about helping with this section. She is now the on-going editor and writer for the PJW section as well as taking on article assignments. She has been amazing to work with, getting in article materials far ahead of the deadline, not just on time. It kind of throws me but in a good way!
One of Julie’s favorite polymer artists is Judy Pollard. Julie says “Her amazing attention to detail, from the tiny fingers and toes to the dash of freckles across the nose, makes her artist dolls unique pieces of art that are created to treasure for a lifetime. They are irresistible in their cuteness. Judy has such a wonderful imagination, and it shows in how she dresses and poses her creations. I can sit and look at her dolls for hours and still find all new details. A wonderful sense of color and a delightful sense of humor can be found in the sweet faces she sculpts.
You can find more of Judy’s adorable creations on her Flickr pages.
Regardless of what you celebrate or believe in, I hope you all spend time with the people you love the most today. A very Merry Christmas to you all.
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.
Nan Josephson came to The Polymer Arts through a freelance job board where I occasionally post calls for freelance writers to help put together articles or edit completed pieces. I was surprised and so delighted to find this precious metal clay artist who recently found polymer and has been drawn in by all its possibilities the way so many of us have. She wrote the article on Contrast in the last issue and has since come aboard to assist in editing and writing the blog posts as well as taking on article assignments for the magazine. Getting her on board this past month was like an early Christmas present for busy, little ol’ me.
One of Nan’s favorite artists is Elise Winters. Nan says “I love the blown glass art of Dale Chihuly, and her work reminds me of his. Chihuly’s glass objects are only isolated movements in a creative continuum. Elise’s ruffles collection, like Dale’s work, has an exaggeration of form and design that creates a sense of wonder and amusement. The flow and luminescence of her work, as well as the liquid feel of the pieces, create an illusion of glass blown objects, which I find exciting.”
It’s hard to find a piece of Elise’s that hasn’t made it thorough the rounds on the Internet but here is one necklace that isn’t usually chosen to represent her work and yet it is such a breathtaking piece.
If you haven’t had a chance to explore Elise’s work before, you can find more of her work on her website and Flickr photostream.
To those of you who celebrate, I hope you have a very happy Christmas Eve tonight with your favorite people.
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.
We’re going to be kind of lax this week with a theme. I am soliciting help from my various staff to bring some of my and their favorite pieces that we have set aside in hopes of posting but have yet to fit into a theme. It is a week of wish lists and the hope for pretty things so it seems appropriate.
My first offering this week is a piece I saw last October by an artist only identified as Krissobe. I wasn’t even sure it was polymer. I thought it could have been dyed wood or bone. It’s the composition that really fascinated me. I can’t even really explain why I find it so alluring but I wasn’t the only one. The piece won first place in what the translator says was a poetry contest. Not sure what that means but we can appreciate why it won, regardless.
My search for more work or places to admire this artist’s work was in vain. We have the artist’s French language blog to peruse for now but if any of you dear readers have more information on this talent, please post in the comment section at the end of this post. (If you get this by email, click on the post’s heading to get to the page where you can leave a comment.) Thanks!
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.
