Giving Voice to Vision

Alev Gozonar, Herd Psychology I, 2019

Do you consider yourself one of those people who like to talk about their art, or do you want never to talk about it, like it might lose some of it’s magic if you try to explain it?

I think a lot of artists feel a little of both. We love what we do so much that we want to share it with anyone who has the slightest interest, but at the same time, we don’t want to over analyze it for fear of diminishing the personal and often mysterious process that is the creation of art work.

You don’t have to be over analytical about your art in order to verbalize what you do but you should consider how putting your thoughts about your process and what drives you to create into writing can help both yourself and those who view your work.

Let’s look at a few artists and their words to see how authentic and intelligent discussions of one’s work can illuminate and grow our appreciation for the art and its creator.

 

From the Mouth of Artists

For some artists, their intention is wound up intensely in the stories they would like to tell. Christine Damm is an artist who believes so strongly in the power of storytelling, that she named her business “Stories They Tell”. In her own words:

Stories They Tell is the name I call my company, because I am a storyteller. For me, life is a process, a journey, a transformation, an unfolding. And as our lives tell a story, so does our art. We – and it– are shaped by what we’ve done, who we’ve met, what we’ve learned, what we’ve struggled with or succeeded at. Life is an intersection with other souls, other lives, other ways of seeing, other ways of living. Art expresses that in a wonderful and ever-changing, topsy-turvy marvel of creation and discovery.

This paragraph from her website is an honest expression of how she sees the world and how that viewpoint lives with her and her day to day creative work. You can tell that it is a heartfelt view and description of herself, right? She’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but she is saying it in her own words, and it gives us an understanding of what is important to her and what drives her creative process.

 

Alev Gozonar is a very conceptual artist. She clings to, and explores, words, stories, and specific ideologies as she creates. In the piece below I found on Instagram, she tags her images with just a handful of descriptors, primarily #concrete and #brutalism, referring to an architectural style in the mid-20th century that was characterized by monolithic, blocky, concrete elements. She contrasts the concrete shapes with delicate floral petals in this piece, but in other pieces in this line, the polymer petals are spattered or covered in concrete rather than just existing alongside the harsh building material, so there’s both an interesting juxtaposition and an immersion of the delicate in the hard and harsh. (You can find those other pieces on her Instagram page.) Now read how she sees her work. Her statements about reveal even more layers to her approach. In her words:

The dominant theme in my works is the composition of a whole via the repetition of parts.  This can be seen as an extension of my textiles education and has become a cornerstone of my identity as an artist. If I make an attempt to describe the general framework of my artwork, I would say that the most important starting points for me are the emotional losses and gains I have experienced in various phases of my life, my observations about life, my personal experiences and the way all of these things reflect on daily life, behavior and emotional states. 

Now what do you think when you look at this piece, or at the piece that opens this blog? Does it change how you see them?

 

Debra Adelson is a jewelry artist working in a “centuries old Bohemian cold work glass technique. Cold working does not use heat but, rather, water to keep the glass cool while manipulating it using abrasives such as sandblasting, grinding, drilling, and cutting.”

Look at her pieces below. If you did not know what her process was, you might take but a very quick glance at her work but you would not have had a lot to ponder. However, you now know something of her process and so probably have an increased appreciation and so, you’ll linger longer to identify how her process forms the work.


She has a very specific design process as well and often photographs her work to show the original inspiration which further informs us about the piece. For instance, it will be hard to look at the amber colored brooch and not see the water worn slot canyon walls, now that we have seen the photograph – the image is forever connected in our minds to that brooch, even if we see it without the image.

So, yes, images can help but, still, Debra gives us further insight into her process and thoughts with this selection of words from her online bio:

I am inspired by the natural world and our relationship to it. My pieces pay homage to changing forces that shape our landscape—both natural and manmade. I seek to create harmony in my work and find balance between our need to shape our environment while preserving and respecting the natural world. Each series begins with a distinct inspiration or concept. I base the initial piece on an image, a moment in nature and experiment to come up with my ‘visual language’ that tells a story for the series.

Her work is really amazing so do stop and click through to look at the colorful and very interestingly carved glass “gems” on her Instagram page or website.

 

Obviously, this is just a small taste of what people post to talk about their art. I might suggest that, as you zip around online and run into various artists that you admire or work that inspires you, go to their websites and read the ‘About’ page or their artist statements. The more of these you read and the more aware you become of how statements inform the artwork, the easier it will be for you to form a statement, a bio, or other text about you and your work that is authentic and truly brings across what it is you would like people to see in what you do.

 

Me and My Projects

I can’t tell you how energized and excited I am these days! For one, the Virtual Art Box which was released a bit over a week ago, has been so enthusiastically received (for which I am so relieved as I wondered how people would like it) and, secondly, because I’m getting to write tons about the things I am most passionate about! I get up in the morning and write like a mad woman. It just comes pouring out. I have to actually stop myself so I can make room for some guest artists and writers. When was the last time you were so excited about something that you could hardly think of anything else? It’s a great feeling!

It truly helps my enthusiasm to have such glowing comments sent to me (“This changed my life, already!”, “This was just what I needed. I thought I was burned out on creating but that wasn’t it …”, “I feel like I’m taking a college course!”) but I was a bit overwhelmed and emotional at moments. I am trying, in everything I do with my publications and projects, to affect other people’s lives in a positive and nurturing way but, unlike when teaching in person, in this business, you don’t get a clear idea of what people are doing with what they learn. But with the Creative Pursuits (a challenge and form in the Virtual Art Box that lets readers connect with me on their focus and goals) and the social media pages, not to mention the kind emails and messages I’ve been getting, I’m hearing exactly what your fellow polymer enthusiasts are up to and what they want. It’s fascinating and creates such energy for me and, I think, it will do so for the active VAB members. It’s so exciting!

If you aren’t getting the VAB, you can join in today by buying the one month February box, no subscription required, and then you can  check out what we are doing. You can get a subscription right now too although that won’t start you until March. Whatever you do, I just hope you have a chance to get in on this energy.

 

 

Lindly Needs a Little Love

If you have not already heard, one of our very dear community leaders and pioneers, Lindly Haunani, had a horrific accident a bit over a week ago. She has multiple broken bones, including bones in her dominant hand, and although she is sure to recover, it is going to be a very long and difficult road. Of course, this community jumped in to help her out in a huge way, but she will need your continued love and support for quite a while.

Take a look at her Go Fund Me page and send Lindly a little love this Valentine’s weekend if you can.

Additional fundraising avenues are being worked on as well. I will keep you updated on those and her well-being as I get news.

 

Shimmer and Shine … and Get Published.
Deadline for submission of ideas is March 15th

Scheduling this for Fall 2020, the Polymer Arts Projects – Shimmer and Shine book will, like the PAP – Organic’s book, feature numerous in-depth tutorials by some of our community’s most accomplished artists.

If you feel you are one of these folks that have something fantastic to offer readers for this theme, I am now open for submission ideas. Here are the basic guidelines:

  • As the theme is Shimmer and Shine, the project should be shiny, glitzy, sparkly, or blingy but also artistic, well-designed, and skillfully conceived.
  • The tutorial should work for readers in the experienced novice to moderately advanced range. This will not be for absolute beginners.
  • The tools and materials, or workable alternatives, should be obtainable by the majority of our worldwide readership.
  • The project should have a specific technique or look that can be reproduced in different forms and styles with examples of possible variations shown.
  • Artists submitting should be experienced at photographing their process and writing detailed tutorials.

This special publication offers payment and profit sharing for our contributing artists. Keep an eye on these newsletters for your submission opportunity next month. Check out the Polymer Arts Projects – Organics  book for further examples of the kind of tutorials we will be looking for.

At this time submit just the summary of your idea–just a few sentences–and links or small attachments to images of the technique and/or pieces of the kind your proposed tutorial would include. Send them to sage(a)tenthmusearts.com. My response will be sent after the March 15th deadline.

I look forward to your ideas!

Well, my dear readers, I do hope you’ve had a loving weekend. I’m off to spend the rest of it with my sun and stars. I hope you have an exciting and creative week!

The Story Within

July 14, 2019

What is it about faux damaged and worn surfaces that we like so much? I mean, it’s everywhere – crackle, antiquing, weathering, patina, torn edges, scratching, distressing – these are all widely used surface techniques in art and in all kinds of decor. But have you ever asked yourself why we are drawn to things that are breaking down and degrading?

Let me say right out the gate, I absolutely adore this kind of surface treatment so don’t stop reading because you think I’m going to try to dissuade anyone from using it. But I do think it’s interesting that artists of all kinds are interested in it and wondered if you ever considered why people, in general, are so attracted to it.

I’ll give you the answer in one simple word – story. Things that are worn, show signs of use, and show the passage of time, have a story, history, a connection leading into the past lives and worlds of other people and places, or are a connection to our own past. Human beings love story. Civilizations of all kinds, and through all time, have told stories or sung songs to keep a culture, event, or person alive in the community or society. Communities everywhere collect evidence of the past – both their own and of others – and engage in the exchange of stories through nearly everything that we do and attend to including banter and gossip, entertainment, all our print and spoken communication sources , and all kinds of visual forms including, and maybe most especially, art. So, it’s no wonder artists love to recreate that innate sense of story by creating the look of aging, wear, breakage and weathering.

Now, you may think you simply like the look and any attraction you have to aged looks has nothing to do with the potential history something might have had or the stories that you could make up, consciously or unconsciously. The thing is, whether it is faux or real aging, we will always associate the look of something worn and weathered with the past and the past means history and history is, well, hi-story. It’s never just what we see that draws us. It’s what we associate with it, what our experiences tell us and our emotions evoke.

If these looks were just about the visuals, more people would be drawing inspiration from gory and grimy imagery alongside the pretty, intriguing, and more benign sources. (There are definitely people who draw texture from gore and grime but they’re not usually doing it to create something with a comfortable, aesthetic beauty.) So yes, the worn and weathered textures are beautiful, but it is psychologically attractive because it represents the passage of time and it’s interaction with the world and us.

Understanding that it is story and not just the beauty of these aged and distressed textures can take your work and designs into a more complex and rich realm because, instead of just thinking “This is a pretty texture, I want to make something with it,” you can start asking yourself, “What is the story behind this texture and why do I want to put it on this piece?” Or conversely, “Why do I want to make that texture into a piece of art?”

This is not to say that you have to write up an actual story or history for the piece that you’re making. I think just being aware that what you’re putting forth does represent a history will help guide you in your choices. After all, the viewer of your work isn’t necessarily going to know what story you associate with it but they will insert their own story, or an emotion associated with a story that the textures elicit, and the whole of the design should support the idea of its history or use.

Let’s look at some work with some of our favorite worn and weathered textures, and not just polymer either – I think we need to branch out a bit, especially in this subject matter, to see just how ubiquitous this type of texture is in art.

 

All a Story is Cracked Up to Be

Let’s start with an example from an artist who is obviously all about the story in her artwork. Christine Damm’s website and shop name is, after all, “Stories They Tell”. All her work looks weathered or worn, maybe a bit beaten and dinged, but she’s coaxed a persevering beauty out of these rough, color strewn treatments with consistent intention. This piece of Christine’s includes parts of an old vintage hand beater whose actual history of use, neglect, and, now, adoration, is echoed in the polymer clay and combined in a tribal-esque design.

This piece was actually the opening beauty shot for Christine’s article, “Found Fusion: Designing with Polymer & Found Objects”, in the Spring 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts. It’s a fantastic article that will really get you thinking about how enriching found objects can be when added to your work. We still have copies of that issue in print on our website here and you can read more about Christine’s and her process on her website here.

 

Nadezhda Plotnikova’s “Sunny necklace”, below, is aptly named. Although the surface of the focal beads is quite crackled and the other beads have a rough, weathered look, the necklace is anything but worn out looking. The bright and light colors convey that “sunny” emotion while the surface treatments give it a relaxed and comfortable feel. It’s that same kind of feeling you get from your favorite well-worn comfy jeans (and don’t those jeans have stories!), only with a bit more pizzazz. It seems like the individual beads here would have the stories, though, and the necklace would be a recent gathering of them. Like maybe it could be a collection of old sun-bleached coral washed up on a distant island combined with wave-worn, fantastical rocks, all found and brought together by some seafaring adventurer. Or something like that. What story do you come up with when looking at this?

 

Like Nadezhda’s above, Tamara of Block Party Press has chosen a light theme for a necklace of visually distressed beads. Her’s however, comes in the form of stylized daisies but the color and treatment is on the dark and heavy side, with its worn-out whites over a dark brown base. It’s a kind of a subdued approach to what we have above, being much less dramatic. I also feel like it’s the kind of thing you might have found in the back of your mother’s jewelry drawer, forgotten and dusty, and just exuding nostalgia. It absolutely begs for a story to be wound around it. It’s the kind of piece that I think would feel instantly a part of your personal history even when new.

 

Some artwork does not just imply story but is actually created from a story. Our featured artist in the #3 issue of The Polymer Studio is an avid researcher and history lover from Brazil quite inspired by interpreting story. Beatriz Cominatto created the pieces you see in the opening of this post and the one below as part of a series inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people. She researched the history of Brazil’s Marajo Island and the archaeological finds there extensively before starting the series and then developed this into quite the elaborate art installation, complete with simulated archaeological work. These pieces imply story even when you even to those uninformed about Beatriz’s inspiration, due to the consistently applied signs of age and the tribal design.

You can see and read more about this Beatriz’s work, in the next issue as she is our featured interview. She has had the most amazing artistic journey! She’s had a lot of hurdles to jump being so isolated, primarily language-wise, in Brazil, from the rest of the polymer community and yet she grew polymer as an art form there almost single-handedly, even helping to develop Brazil’s own line of polymer clay. You gotta read this article! You can also find out more about her Marajoara series on her feature page in Polymer Journeys 2019.

 

When I think about cracked and torn pieces in art jewelry, I always think about the metalsmiths. There’s something about taking a jeweler’s saw and developing cracked layers, revealing the jewels or textured surfaces beneath. Both the metalsmiths and admiring collectors seem to be quite drawn to it as the treatment is not at all uncommon. Lexi Erickson’s penchant for this kind of treatment is often paired with pitted and worn metal as in this pendant below.

It almost feels like Lexi’s piece was torn from some old piece of machinery which could lead you to wonder where and what that machine was and maybe what the machine’s purpose was and whether its maker ever imagined it would become a piece of jewelry. No, I’m not saying that’s what she did but that’s the kind of story, or at least e a sense of story, this type of work can invoke, all because of the thoroughness in her treatment of that one layer.

 

And what about this amazing conglomeration of worn, cracked, scratched and yet intensely beautiful surface treatments on this ceramic vessel below? Lesley McInally’s work is often reminiscent of an old doorframe much in need of painting or the corner of a crumbling old house where the plaster and frame have started to show. And that red dot … so simple and yet it adds so much energy and drama. I don’t think it’s supposed to be blood, but it could represent something of that sort. It really depends on where your mind wants to go with the possible stories buried here.

 

Creating Your Own Story

So, I want to give you a little, fun challenge today. Go take a look at some of your more elaborate pieces or, if you don’t have anything of your making at hand, look up some of your favorite pieces by other artists. What is the story, for you, in each piece that you look at? Tell yourself as much or as little of the story as comes to you in the first minute or less. Do this with at least 3 pieces, maybe 5. You may discover, during this process, a story in a piece that was only unconsciously there, but once you ask yourself about its possible history, it may become quite obvious. How exciting is that? Or do all of your pieces already come with a fully realized story?

Some artists do work that way, creating full-fledged stories for all their work, although I think it’s more predominant with people who create figures, animals, or creatures of some sort. I learned to do this with my art jewelry, mostly because, when I was selling, I made sure each piece had a title because that really helps to get potential customers thinking about its story and since they write the story, they tend to find a connection to the work, making it much more likely that they would buy the piece. I have a whole article about naming your pieces and the advantages of this in the Fall 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts if you want to read more about that.

 

My Own Story

First of all, I want to thank all of you who wrote me little personal notes about my physical well-being. You’re also sweet! Mind you, it’s nothing serious but chronic tendinitis does make it very hard to work, I have to say. But I have my workarounds. And for those who wrote me about the earthquakes… I grew up with them and although they are scary in the moment, us native Californians just take it in stride. There were no major injuries from these quakes as it was centered in a fairly unpopulated area and deep in the earth. We were rolling around quite a bit here but nothing even fell over, which was a miracle considering the state of our house.

As for this house renovation, we are supposedly really close to being done but it still looks like a wreck and everything is covered in a layer of white dust from all the plastering. It feels like it’s going to be months after they finish before the house is back to normal, just because of all the house cleaning we get to look forward to and all the organizing. It’s going to be like moving into a new place! Well, it is mostly a new place now, actually. Which is cool! But a lot of work.

The good news is that we do have nearly one whole bathroom done, which is really nice, to say the least. We’re doing the painting on it to save us some bucks while the crew works on the kitchen and tiling the other bathroom. I’m training the family on painting and other home improvement stuff. It’s become quite the family project which is pretty nice. We get to spend paint-spattered time with the teen before she goes off to college in a couple of months!

 

As for work here at Tenth Muse headquarters, I’m still working on polishing the next issue of The Polymer Studio which is going slower than I’d like because of the tendinitis but I’m going to keep at it. I hope to have the actual publication date next week so stay tuned!

I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a little time to go and find some of the stories in your work–you’ll love doing that! I promise. Have a great week!

High On Art

June 23, 2019

Just flew in from Australia yesterday so I’m a bit jetlagged still but I wrote up some thoughts on the plane and pulled some pretties to demonstrate some more ideas on passion in your art, so here goes.

If you are reading this, chances are, you are passionate about art, either creating it or supporting its creation. Can we take just a few spare seconds to admire and be amazed by that passion of yours? I’d suggest that you stop at this moment and really let the emotion of that passion of yours come to the forefront, letting it blossom in the memory of what drives you to create or be supportive of creativity. Can you feel it? Close your eyes if you don’t feel it yet and just give it a few seconds to come to the surface so I can pose a few questions while that emotion is coursing through you.

Got it now? Okay. So, tell me … what color is your passion? Close your eyes if you need to and see what color blooms in your mind.

Then ask, does your passion have a temperature? Is it cool and constant or warm and rolling? Or something else entirely?

What does it act like? Is it like a soft, persistent wind, or a crashing ocean or something in between?

It doesn’t matter what metaphors you come up with for the feeling, you just want something concrete to hold onto. With those sensations and images in mind now, ask yourself, is that feeling there when you sit down to create? Does that passion spill out onto your worktable and direct your work? Does it drive you to come up with ideas or search out and soak up great art and other inspiring sights and sounds?

With all these metaphors and answers in your mind, I want to ask the core question that just couldn’t be put forth until you were in the right mindset:

Do you like what you create and why you create?

That might sound like a strange question because who would continue to create art while not liking it? Well, many of us do. That’s been at the heart of several conversations I’ve had recently, all related to trying to make a living from creative endeavors. That need to pay one’s bills is not the kind of drive that we really want to direct our work if fulfilling our passion is at all a goal of ours.

The fact is, letting out your passion and letting it guide you feel risky because you are putting a bit of yourself out there into the world in that process. Or a lot of yourself sometimes. It’s scary, isn’t it, putting your latest work out, wondering what people will think, whether it will sell or whether the receiver will like it? But it’s thrilling too, especially when people respond to it, when they connect to your work and to you. It’s a serious high.

You deserve to get that high on art. Don’t you think?

 

High on Creativity

I bet you can spy those artists who do get that high on a regular basis, people who let their passion run wild and lead their work. Here are just a few of my personal favorites but start thinking of your own as I go through them.

One of the first people that comes to mind is Ellen Jewett. She has worked in polymer, epoxy, and paper clay, using no tools but her hands and a brush, and makes only what she wants to make. Here is but one of her mind-blowing sculptures.

Her work is born of a unique and driving passion. In her own words:

At first glance my work explores the more modern prosaic concept of nature: a source of serene nostalgia but this is balanced with the more visceral experience of ‘wildness’ as remarkably alien and indifferent.  Upon closer inspection of each ‘creature’ the viewer may discover a frieze on which themes as familiar as domestication and as abrasive as domination fall into sharp relief.   These qualities are not only present in the final work but are fleshed out in the process of building. Each sculpture is constructed using an additive technique, layered from inside to out by an accumulation of innumerable tiny components.  Many of these components are microcosmic representations of plants, animals and objects.  Some are beautiful, some are grotesque and some are fantastical.  The singularity of each sculpture is the sum total of its small narrative structures.

I encourage you to take the time to read her full artist statement. You may be surprised by her approach and amazed by her insights into her own work and purpose.

 

I have found that many of insanely passionate artists are also similarly intense thinkers. Some of these passionate thinkers take their love of art a step further by sharing their passion through education as a way to spark and inspire the creativity of others. Christine Dumont is just such an artist, giving polymer and mixed media artists a place to push themselves and grow through her website Viola and its related projects.

Her own work comes about as a result of intense exploration. She does not create to sell, and I think this gives her a freedom that an artist dependent on their work for their income may find harder, although not at all impossible, to achieve.

Christine will actually be in Switzerland teaching this mix of polymer and metal September 14-15, 2019. If you are interested in joining the class, you can message her directly through her website.

 

As demonstrated by Christine’s passion for teaching, a creative passion doesn’t have to manifest itself purely in your art. Teaching, which takes a particular passion of its own, is just one alternate avenue to steer one’s creative passions. Giving back to others is another way. We had a whole section of community recognition for polymer artists who give back in our first edition Polymer Journey in 2016. We have so many giving and generous people in this community! One of those beautiful people is Wendy Moore who I had the unparalleled pleasure of staying with this past week in Canberra, Australia.

Her creative passion was intertwined with a passion to give back to others when she founded the Friends of Samunnat alongside Nepalese lawyer Kopila Basnet, to help support and give independence to women who were victims of violence. Wendy’s passion and empathy for others is seen directly in her art as well, including this piece I photographed at her home but which you can also find in the Polymer Journeys 2019 edition. It is a representation of her “confusion and angst relating to issues about how we move forward in relationships with Australia’s indigenous people.”

Wendy’s passion has not gone unnoticed outside the polymer community either. It was recently announced that she has been awarded the 2019 Order of Australia medal by the Australian Governor-General for her contribution to the international community of Nepal! This is one of a set of awards and appointments the Australian government uses as a principal way of recognizing outstanding citizens. Join me in a big congratulations to (a probably very embarrassed and blushing) Wendy Moore. Read more about the award along with her interview in this article here.

And you can also look forward to reading in depth about Wendy, her journey, her work, and her life in issue #4 of The Polymer Studio later this year, so keep up those subscriptions!

Here are a few pics from my time with Wendy. I’ll get more photos of the trip up on Facebook where you are welcome to follow me.

 

Wendy and I contemplating the insanity of this immense tapestry which recreated a much smaller painting in every nuance. At the Australian Parliament house’s Great Hall.

 

Forest labyrinth built by some passionate creative person in the bush just beyond Wendy’s house. Wendy and I are walking it with my step-daughter and Wendy’s granddaughter.

 

Photos by Brett Varon

There are so, so many other artists I could point out as examples of deeply passionate people who let that passion drive the work they do, both in and outside the studio. But this is all I have in me to write just now. Right now, I am very passionate about sleep!

However, I would encourage you to continue this search for passion in your daily perusals of artwork online. I would challenge you to keep an eye out for work in which the artist’s passion is intensely obvious and try to imagine the emotion and drive that they must have to create the wonderful work they share with us.

If you aren’t feeling a glimmer of what you think these dynamos must have, perhaps it’s time to assess what you are doing and why. Perhaps you need to infuse your work with new inspiration and materials (as suggested in last week’s post) or maybe you would be more fulfilled spending some of your time teaching (which might include writing articles for publications like The Polymer Studio. Check out our guidelines.) or maybe you need to step back and ensure you are creating in a fulfilling and meaningful way for you, not just for your customers. If your work is infused with your passion, you’ll sell it and you’ll get noticed. Just note how highly passionate art grabs your attention!

Okay, off for more sleep so I can hit the ground running on Monday as I aim to get Issue #3 off to the printer in early July. It’s shaping up to be a really gorgeous issue but I’m still having my challenges here as the house is still in various stages of construction (the worst of it being there are no working sinks except the one in the garage) but the bones of the kitchen are in so that is awesome! Now I can start working on the back-splash I designed. Well, maybe after this next issue if off to the printer.

In the meantime, have a wonderful, inspired, and passionate week!

Simply Stunning

Tanya Mayorova

Given the choice, would you create a necklace that was easy and quick to make and was still stunning, or would you explore an unknown technique with an unknown outcome that might take hours or days? For some of you, the answer may be complicated because you like to explore and you don’t even question how long it will take or whether you will be successful because you just want to see what material can do. I get that. That’s pretty much how I approach what I do. Not that I wouldn’t mind some of my explorations being quick and easy and more often successful than not. Being challenged and failing, though, are absolutely necessary parts of creating art but that doesn’t mean that everything we make should be frustrating and difficult.

I think, by default, we all gravitate toward the easy option when given a clear-cut choice. Easy means less frustration, less room for error, and less time involved but it can also be considered a bad choice. And I’m not just talking about the creative process. For instance, you might grab a paper plate instead of one that you have to wash, or you toss your groceries in a plastic bag provided by the store rather than bringing in your own reusable one. Those examples highlight the reason for our environmental issues right now, our desire for ease and convenience being at the root of our environmental tragedies. So, yes, taking the easy route can sometimes have a negative effect that that’s not always true. There is nothing wrong with choosing the easiest route to drive home or having yoga pants and a T-shirt as your default attire when not at work. And some very easy things are actually better. Fruit and a boiled egg for breakfast is a lot easier than making pancakes and bacon and is better for you too. And when creating your polymer components, simple techniques and forms are often not only an efficient way to create and express yourself but they allow you to concentrate on composition, contrast, form, and other design elements rather than getting you wrapped up in technique.

With social media and our online access to so much artwork, I think our minds are saturated with certain ideas about what we should be creating and, because of that, we may have a hard time finding our own voice or we may have an unconscious sense of how pieces should look or be put together rather than finding a look of our own. Or we are romanced by gorgeous, complex pieces so we try to make our work more complex as well without knowing if simple elements may be very thing we need to do or say what we want.

Part of the problem comes from the idea that simple and easy means boring. But it certainly doesn’t have to be. To illustrate this, I’d like to look at beads today. In polymer jewelry, the bead is the most basic element you work with. The idea of a bead encompasses all types of forms though, from the simple round bead to complex sculpted and layered mixed-media elements. But let’s explore the more classic idea of a bead, as a single element that is repeated in some fashion in a piece of adornment and let’s see how you might create easy beads that are anything but basic and boring.

A little note … Some of you long time polymer enthusiasts out there may recognize a few of these pieces as several were widely circulated back when but, even if you’ve seen these before, look at them with new eyes and see if some familiar techniques but unused techniques aren’t worth a revisit now. You’ll approach them differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago, and you never know what serendipitous discovery might be unearthed.

 

Beads Beyond the Basic

Round beads are, of course, the most common bead form and are a classic that are always great for showing off canes, color, and surface design. Still, round beads can get pretty complicated, one, because it can be difficult to make them perfectly round, and secondly, because to keep them from being boring often leads us to add complexity in the color scheme or how the surface is treated. But what if you took your round bead and just worked on the form? Go ahead … grab some clay, make a rough round bead, and then start messing with the form. Pinch it, press it, pull it, or roll it into a variation on a round bead or cure and carve it.

Genevieve Williamson started out with a round bead to create these side textured chunky disks. Just look at the variation here plus I bet you can think up a few other ways to quickly and easily change them up with different clays, inclusions, or texturing of the sides.

Tube beads can be a tad tricky, primarily when it comes to creating the hole for stringing them. An extruder with a core adapter makes the job much easier but you can also create easy, attractive, and unique tube beads from any surface treated clay sheet simply by wrapping a strip around a tube of your choosing. Here’s a whole selection by Tonya Mayorova who went really wide with her bead openings. As you can see, all kind of surface treatments adapt well to these wide tube beads, from mosaics like you see on the bottom of the stack, to carved, impressed, mokume gane, and seed bead wrapped. The beads here are all similar in width but she uses the same approach with skinnier varieties such as in the necklace that opens this post.

 

Tanya doesn’t have a tutorial posted for this, but I can help you with that:

  1. Pick a favorite surface treatment to create a sheet of clay with and then wrap the sheet around anything that can go in the oven. I keep a few pieces of aluminum and copper tubing for just such projects. Make sure the pieces are straight and have unobstructed lengths so beads can slide off after curing.
  2. Wrap the clay around the tube until the clay sheet overlaps then cut down through the length of the overlapping clay and then remove the excess clay.
  3. Carefully blend the seam where the ends meet.
  4. If the clay sheet has a smooth and even surface, you can lay it on the worksurface and, using a tissue blade, let it roll crosswise under the blade ‘s edge to cut each individual bead cut. Then just cure the stack as is.
  5. Alternately, you can cure just after you blend the seam then cut the beads off it with a craft knife or slide it off the rod and use a jeweler’s saw to cut your beads.
  6. You can string your tubes on multiple strands of stringing materials such as cording or leather thongs, a selection of various colored embroidery thread, colored Tigers tail, ribbon, etc.

Tanya has even more variations of this idea ready for your perusal on her Flickr photostream here. She also recently agreed to create a feature tutorial for Issue #3 of The Polymer Studio so be sure to subscribe or keep up your subscription to the magazine to get that beautiful project.

 

The beads below also require just a sheet of treated clay. These are similar to a popular paper bead technique you may have seen as well. They start with a sheet cut into narrow, long triangles that are then rolled up, starting with the wide end so that each overlap leaves part of the surface of the lower layer visible. It works with any sheet of polymer, treated or untreated, textured or not.

I love how Margit Bohmer keeps the triangles, created from a mokume gane sheet, really narrow so that the beads are nearly as big in diameter as they are wide. There is still plenty of surface showing but they blend into each other because the narrow bead doesn’t angle away as much at the point where they touch. As you likely already know, the longer the bead, the more space you’ll see between the bottom edges of the bead ends. These rolled up beads are also angled on their ends which can make them sit askew but the shallower the angle (like on these narrower beads) the more neatly they line up.

Margit has created the longer beads as well so you can compare them here or just look through her Flickr photostream to see what you like better. And if you want a full polymer tutorial on these types of beads, check out Emma Ralph’s classic tutorial here.

 

Another, maybe even easier, way to use sheeted clay for beads is to just roll up flat sections of clay without overlapping, in a loose, freeform way. This works really nicely with an organic treatment or texture. Just look at how lovely these wrapped textured beads are. They are simply flat sections of polymer impressed on a handmade texture plate and curled up on an angle.

These are created by Rebekah Payne who generously posted a tutorial here on how to make them.

 

A similar concept can be employed with snakes of clay. Just roll out or extrude lengths of solid, marbled, mica shift (see this post from earlier this month) or striped polymer and then wrap the strands up on a skewer, long thin knitting needle, or other thin rod and cure. You’ll end up with coiled beads like these created by Emma Todd, below..

 

You can also roll the beads, after wrapping them up, back and forth under an acrylic block or other small tile to level the strands, creating a smooth bead surface. Don’t use the rod to roll the bead as it will act like a rolling pin on the inside of it and widen the stringing hole. Unless you want that. You can also take them off the rod and gently press their length between thumb and forefinger to compress the coils a bit more and make flat ended cylindrical beads.

 

The interior of clay beads have a lot of hidden potential too, and they can so easily and quickly be revealed by just cutting them open. Here is my all-time favorite example of creating stunning beads by cutting the form. These fabulous beads are by Desiree McCrorey. Click the image to see her tutorial for this. Be sure to check out the beads she makes from the cut scraps at the end too!

Not only can you create simple yet complex looking beads by cutting stacks, you can use this technique with old canes as well. See Desiree’s tutorial for the same beads using canes here. And look around the site for other great tutorials. These are all older tutorials, but timeless techniques.

 

Beads Away!

The examples above are all easy to make, don’t take much time, and allow for your own take on composition, contrast, texturing, etc. So, I would like to suggest that you pick a couple you like and see if you can sneak in sometime today or this coming week to try them out to see which, if any, simple but expressive beads suit you.

There are also some publications you might want to check out if you are on a bead making bender or feel you will be after all this.

  • My favorite polymer bead book is Carol Blackburn’s Making Polymer Clay Beads. There are beads for all levels of clayers and lots of jumping off points for those who like to explore.
  • Although these get a bit more complex, the beads in Grant Diffendaffer’s book, Polymer Clay Beads are just stunning and there are so many tips in this book.
  • If you really just want to try some new surface treatments or get other ideas for changing up your own bead ideas, Marie Segal’s, The Polymer Clay Artist’s Guide, is such a thorough exploration of techniques. It’s my go to book for creative brainstorming on polymer treatments.
  • Of course, there are tons of ideas in The Polymer Studio and, especially for the more exploratory folks, in the back issues of The Polymer Arts. Grab a few of these in print or digital and let serendipity lead you into new creative territory. By the way, about 65% of The Polymer Arts issues are still available in print but quite a few are about to sell out completely so if you like your material in print, snatch them up while I still have them.
  • For further inspiration in the form of eye-candy, pick up your copy of Polymer Journeys 2016 and/or 2019. Both are just brimming with ideas of all kinds. If you need a copy, get them on the website here.

 

Holes

Our foreman, standing guard at the pit to our main drain line in our front yard … there’s another guy down there!

For those of you mildly entertained by the situation here at Tenth Muse central, all I have to report is, well, holes. I counted 8 points of egress big enough for the entry of adventurous birds or, in 2 cases, an adventurous racoon, thanks to the workers punching through our walls for new plumbing and a new electrical panel. Its kind of unnerving to stand in the middle of one’s house and see so many wide-open entries into the space.

There are also some deep holes! The nearly 3 foot deep hole in the master bath is big enough for a couple suitcases of cash (like I have enough cash even in single dollar bills to fill a couple suitcases, not after all this work!) but the 7 foot deep one in the front yard is ready for hiding bodies. Or maybe just my entire stash of failed art projects. That craziness has us now investigating xeriscaping and ground cover plants because between the trench and the well at the end of it (and all the dug up soil covering the area around it), that grass ain’t coming back. It didn’t grow well there anyways. So now we are plant shopping. I never much liked shopping before (unless if was for art materials!) but, man, am I getting burned out on that particular activity. The shopping part, not the plants. I’ve been enjoying my plants, with all the spring flowers in bloom. The garden has been my escape from all the chaos and noise!

However, in all this, I have managed to clear up the studio table and started working on new stuff! It’s amazing what can happen when you don’t have distracting chores like housecleaning (although I miss having a house to clean!) Keep an eye on my personal Instagram page for new pieces and, hopefully, new poetry to accompany it. Find me @thesagearts

 

Now off to enjoy a rare cool and rainy Sunday. I hope you have a beautiful Sunday to relax in and a great week ahead!

A Dramatic Shift

April 28, 2019

Pier Voulkos boxes

Of all the fabulous polymer clay techniques, which would you say is the most dramatic? There are certainly a lot of them that can be bright and colorful, shiny and sparkling, dramatic and graphic, but could you pick out just one that you think has the most impact when first seen?

I have to say, the one technique that really pops for me is mica shift. It can be colorful, shimmery, and quite dramatic, and has the added effect of looking three-dimensional when it is not. And who doesn’t love a visual illusion?

Mica shift has waned in popularity of late. I’m not sure why because it is just such a gorgeous technique. But when I started researching the idea of making mica shift the theme this week, I found myself on really old posts and pages, looking at work that was created 10, 20 or 30 years ago. That made me all the more determined to bring this technique’s wonderful effects back into the limelight here.

For those unfamiliar with the technique or how it works, here is a little history and explanation for you.

The effect itself is a result of manipulating the mica in metallic clays into orderly layers that you can then manipulate in a controlled manner. This can be done because mica, a shiny, silvery, layered mineral, forms tiny flakes when ground up. The flat side of these flakes are reflective, but the sides are not (like a mirror.) So, if mica is flat side up, it reflects light, but a stack of mica seen from the side is just dark.

You control the mica in your clay by conditioning it in a pasta machine, folding the sheeted clay in half and running it through over and over. The pasta machine rollers, squeezing the clay down, also nudges the flakes to lay flat. Eventually, all the flat faces of all those tiny flakes are facing up in the sheet, causing it to be reflective and shiny.

So then imagine what happens to all those perfectly flat flakes if you press something into them? The flakes get tilted, showing their dark sides (gosh, sounds like some people I’ve known!) That’s where the control comes in. You decide where to distort that perfectly flat sea of face up flakes with a texture sheet, a blade, or hand tools, and where there is distortion, there will be dark outlines of tilted mica. Those outlines are there under the surface too, as the flakes, like tiny dominoes, knock each other over under the invading lines of a texture sheet or a hand tool.

You can also just play with the difference between the shiny surface and the dark sides by stacking mica sheets and cutting it up, rolling sheets into a cane, or twisting or folding a narrow stack, just to name a few approaches. In these cases, the sides of the original layers stay dark and the surface stays shiny, so you have dramatic contrast.

Mica shift in polymer has been called by other names over the years. One of the original innovators of this technique, Pier Voulkos, (those are her boxes opening this post) called it her “invisible caning”. Later, Karen Lewis referred to Pier’s technique as chatoyant, a French term meaning to shine like a cat’s eye, which is used in gemology to describe the bright reflected bands of light caused by aligned inclusions in a stone. That’s certainly fitting for polymer mica shift too.

Let’s take a look at some truly dramatic and lovely examples of this technique.

Shifty Ideas

Around the same time period that Pier was experimenting with her invisible canes, Mike Buesseler was playing with mica clay sheets and “ingots”, stacking then cutting, twisting, texturing and curling up sections of these sheets and ingots to create beads and surface design.

Here is a beautiful necklace using a very simple technique of twisting a square strand of stacked mica sheets.

I would explain more about Mike but, instead, I’m going to let him explain for himself in what is, to this day, the best video class that I have ever viewed. No joke. I’d rather you stop reading this post and watch that video, if it’s all you have time for today. The video is well over an hour-long and it is twenty years old but, no matter how long you’ve been working with polymer or how much you think you know about mica shift, it is well worth your while. It also has an interesting little story about how it came to be a free master class for all. Check it out on YouTube here.

 

Grant Diffendaffer has long been my polymer clay hero. His mica shift and designs are breathtaking. Although he worked with techniques derived from all the early developed mica shift techniques, his most impressive are his impression pieces. This type of mica shift, sometimes called “ghost shift”, is created by impressing a texture into a sheet of well-conditioned mica clay and then the raised layer of clay is shaved off with a very sharp tissue blade making a smooth surface but leaving the illusion of dimension. Grant created his own texture sheets and then applied them to mica clay Skinner blends. His choice of blended colors surrounded by textured black makes for some very dramatic pieces.

 

Some of the most dramatic and graphic mica shift you’ll see to this day comes from the studio of Dan Cormier. A lot of his effects come from cutting and puncturing straight down through the clay. When using a blade, the clay shifts only in the cuts where the blade separates the clay causing just a hairline distortion and thus, very thin dark lines. Puncturing shifts more clay as the tool pushes clay aside to get through. The advantage of these distortions, however, is that the design is present and consistent all the way through the stack.

 

Here’s another take on mica shift from my own table. These gauge earrings might seem a bit more shimmery than a lot of mica shift as I add plain mica powder (bought from handmade cosmetic suppliers) and translucent clay to my metallic polymer clay to bring up the shimmer a notch. These are created from Skinner blend sheets that were stacked, twisted, and rolled smooth before curling them up. They also receive a lot of denim buffing. My mica shift effect is actually the same basic technique that Mike used for the necklace you see above but I twisted it tighter and rolled it smooth with an acrylic plate.

 

Just so you know, 3 of the artist’s mentioned here no longer work in polymer clay which is why you aren’t getting the abundance of information and links I can usually offer. Pier, Mike and Grant are all multi-disciplinary creatives who moved on to another creative form—Pier returned to dancing, Mike to music and Grant has stayed in crafts but has been exploring a variety of materials and forms. Regardless, we can sure be grateful for their time with us!

 

Curious Shift

If this little discussion of mica shift has you anxious to get to the studio table and try it out, I heartily encourage you to do so. In fact, I would like to challenge you all to create a little (or a lot) of mica shift this week. I’m going to do the same, creating some new designs with ideas I came up with after researching this post. I’ll share what I’ve done next week and post them to my personal Instagram page.

Do you think you can you get in one mica shift project before the end of the week? Try it and then please send me a photo or link you would be willing to share online, and I’ll see what I can share at the end of next week’s post. You could also just post to Instagram and tag with #polymerartschallenge or message me on Facebook at The Polymer Studio page or write back if you’re getting this by email.

If you have some great mica shift pieces to add to the discussion, leave a comment at the end of the post for us to check out.

And with that, I have to run. Its been a crazy week. There were some problems with production  and getting Issue #2 of The Polymer Studio wrapped up (the release for the new issue will be in a couple of days, April 30th, so keep an eye out for it in your inbox, if you have a digital edition coming, and your mailbox in the weeks to come. Or subscribe or order the issue on our website!) and then we’ve been having problems with the city getting our plans through so we can move forward with the renovations here at the house (many people are still rebuilding from the huge fires we had in November, so they are busy beavers at the planning offices) but, finally, the demolition begins tomorrow and there is still a last few things to prepare. Good news though … we put the refrigerator on the porch instead of in my studio! Yay! We moved the liquor cabinet in here instead. MUCH better idea. I think. Or will it be weird that I can pour a glass of port without leaving my chair here? Well, we shall see.

Until next Sunday my dear readers … have a wonderful week!

 

 

Splitting the Difference

April 21, 2019

Happy Easter or Chag Sameach or simply happy Sunday to you! I wasn’t sure I was going to get this one out between holidays and family and wrapping up the latest issue of The Polymer Studio (there has been a slight delay with the printer so we still have time to get you on the list for the first shipment from the printer if you subscribe or pre-order before Monday night  … go here to get yours) and picking out shower and floor tile (yes, there is a tad more drama at Tenth Muse headquarters, a.k.a. home, which I will expound upon at the end for those of you find it humorous to see what craziness I’m steeped in.)

So, have you ever been in the middle of a busy, stressful, crazy, chaotic day and then all of a sudden you just are coming up with new art projects from out of nowhere? Well, yesterday I was in this ginormous tile shop, putting white tiles against dark tiles and smooth stone surfaces next to busy mosaics trying to see what works and, of course, being so design focused, when it didn’t work I would ask myself why, and when it did, I asked myself why as well. (My mind is like a three-year-old… Why this? Why that? Why…?) This led to considering how I pair up surfaces in my own artwork. The fact is, I don’t do a ton of it, but I do really like it.

I think this also came to mind because I had the pleasure of online chatting with Kimberly Arden, a potential contributor for a future issue, and she showed me some of her pendants and earrings which are often a split canvas – one side is busy with canes or extruder veneers and one side is a lightly textured black with a flower or other form laid on it in using just a few canes, like the one you see opening this post. So, I’m there comparing tiles and thinking about her pendants which got me thinking about how often we pair up surfaces in art and next thing you know, I’m writing you this post with all this in mind. That’s how these themes happen!

So, let’s just ponder the idea of having two different surfaces next to each other on the same canvas or form. How is this done to in a way that still creates a cohesive piece and what are the different ways this can be applied?

 

Splitting the Canvas

Two or more different surfaces on the same canvas or form is a great method for creating contrast but like any other element, two surfaces that are not alike do have to have some kind of connection to make them work together in a piece. Yes, that connection is there physically when the surfaces are within the same framework in or attached to a singular object, but that is not usually enough. The best way to ensure a connection is to have at least one design element that is the same or very similar.

For instance, both sides could be the same color but very different textures. Olga Bulat does this in this necklace. Making it monochromatic keeps us focused on that texture and that difference which creates the energy in the piece.

 

Now, Olga could have had two different colors in the above piece but the colors themselves would have had to have some commonality. For example, both sides could be pastel, or both might be similarly bright. They could even be next to each other or completely opposite each other on the color wheel (because complete opposites also connect in our mind as being related but in an opposing fashion, if that makes sense. Think how much green and red there is at Christmas time. It works, color wise, right?)

Below is an example of using different colors but with the same texture so that there is commonality in the texture, but at the same time, the colors are also completely opposite (a dark, rich, warm brown versus a light, colorless, cool gray). These opposites are paired in our mind the way good and evil, young and old, and night and day are paired conceptually.

This is the genius of Meisha Barbee who also puts the canvas split on the horizontal (notice how many of the examples I show you today are split vertically – vertical has a lot of energy but it doesn’t mean that vertical is right for every piece.) Just changing the color however does not give the work a ton of energy so she adds a band of multicolored spots. I added a few more examples below the first pendant so you can see the various ways she pairs up the competing sides of the canvas. She uses large bands to separate when the surface pattern is subtle but goes for a simple slim line on the one with a bottom half already busy and full of extruded canes slices.

 

And speaking of changing up directions, you can also change up the point at which they meet. It doesn’t have to be a straight line or a simple curve Here is a simple design, actually done in terra-cotta, offered by a website called Tradenimbo. The zigzag line splits up the two sides with enough energy to carry the simple graphic look. Note how the pendant is the stronger design between it and the earrings, with the dots being a place of focus and rest for the eye as it jumps back and forth between the two sides.

 

Juxtaposing two different surface designs doesn’t mean it needs to be on the same canvas facing the viewer in the same direction. It could be on something three-dimensional so that the viewer has to walk around to compare. Or take it a step further and have a different surface on the front and back or get really ingenious and make it a curved surface so you can see both sides at the same time as Arden Bardol does with these whimsical earrings of hers.

 

You can also contrast different surfaces by creating one surface on the outside and another on the inside. Martina Buriánová did that here with two surfaces contrasted in pattern and treatment, yet with similar or highly contrasting colors which make a strong connection between them.

 

 

Splitting up is Not Hard to Do

If you find these contrasting surfaces interesting, click on any of the above artist names to see additional pieces for further inspiration. Then get to work trying your own!

Here is a simple series of steps you can try right now … A Cane Split Canvas:

  1. Choose a cane (or a few canes that go together) and pick a base clay in a complementary color.
  2. Roll a thick sheet of the solid color and apply canes to just one section, trimming or lining them up to create a boundary between a cane side and a solid clay color side.
  3. Burnish the canes into the clay sheet so the surface is smooth.
  4. Then, texturize a similar sized section next to the canes. You can use something as simple as sandpaper or add lots of tiny dots with a hand tool or stripes or lines or whatever you like, but I think you will find it more successful if the texture is very different from the canes. So, for instance, if you applied a series of flower canes with dots in the center, don’t texturize with dots but rather create something quite unlike anything in the flowers, such as a lot of orderly vertical lines or go for the randomness of a filter sponge texture. The cool thing about applying texture here is that if you don’t like it you can burnish it away and try something else.
  5. Once you have a texture that you like, use a cookie cutter, first as a frame to find the section to cut that includes the two sides– it doesn’t have to be half canes and half texture. In fact, 1/3 to 2/3 will probably look nicer in many cases. Move your cookie cutter around to see what you like.
  6. Once you find the section you like, cover it with plastic wrap and cut with your cutter.
  7. Your new split canvas form can be used as the beginning of a more complex piece or punch a hole at the top and you have a pendant or the first of a pair of earrings.

Now, if you want to splice together two different sheets of clay onto the same piece, you might want to check out this tutorial by Samantha Burroughs.

You may also want to take a look at the first issue of The Polymer Studio for the great tutorial by Julie Picarello who has a beautifully simple way to splice together a mokume gane slice and simple textured clay.

Got any great split canvases of your own? Share it with us by leaving a comment or a link at the end of the post!

 

Now for the Great Tile Adventure

Story time! For those entertained by the little dramas of my little life.

So, as you might have read in previous posts, we have been forced to do a kitchen renovation earlier than planned, in part because of a drain that collapsed under the slab on the kitchen side. The bad news came when the plumbers came out to plan the job and determined that the drain in the master bath was about to go as well so in addition to the kitchen, we have to tear out the shower in the bathroom. Oh, joy!

Actually, we were kind of happy about this because we really dislike that shower. It’s like a tiny tile covered phone booth, which is great for singing in but, not big enough for even a tiny mobile recording studio to make that worthwhile, it’s otherwise rather claustrophobic feeling. This is not to say that the news and the added cost to the budget didn’t give me a few more gray hairs, but I won’t be sad to see that go.

So, after spending two hours in a tile shop yesterday, mostly searching for just the right basic white but still subtly veined tile (veins in a cool, not a warm gray on a cool but not bright white – we are both artists so the color conversations have been quite intense) to go with our more dramatic accent choices and coming home and putting every tile sample we bought up against the wall, and not finding any to be quite right, I went into my studio for something and there in my stack of tiles on my studio table was the exact pattern of tile we were looking for. And I’ve been curing clay on it for the last six years! Now we just have to see if we can find eight full boxes of it somewhere!

Here I am giving my better half the not so great news that our ideal tile came from my studio stash and I don’t remember where I got it. But at least we know what we like!

I’m also, by the way, designing and making our kitchen backsplash which will, of course, have polymer in it somehow. So that should be exciting. Especially the part where I have to figure out how to carve out the time to do actually make that happen. But I will!

So, with my head full of tile images, I say goodbye to you for now. Have a wonderful rest of your holiday weekend and a great coming week.

A Big, Bold Challenge

April 14, 2019

Kathleen Nowak Tucci, Secret Garden Necklace

Have you considered challenging yourself creatively with something you’ve never done before, or at least not for a long time? I have a lot of creative friends who are doing just that right now and, as I work towards having free time again after an exceedingly busy couple of years, I am too considering what to start in on. My mind, probably like yours, never stops churning up ideas so the designs in my head and in my sketchbook have progressed into a variety of new possibilities. The question is, what do I challenge myself with first when I can get back to creating my own artwork on a regular basis?

Whether or not you are at a similar crossroads or want to change up what you’ve been creating, I encourage you to consider the question of how you could challenge yourself as we go through some work that is very much unlike what I have done in the past. I am hoping that, going through some of my own possibilities, this might start those wheels turning for you. What, if any, pieces here feel like they are in the same vein as your present work and which of these approaches have you’ve never imagined yourself doing but might consider?

Not Sage

I, like the vast majority of polymer artists, work primarily from organic inspiration. (See my post from last month about man-made inspiration for contrast.) A lot of my work is also rooted in story, particularly speculative stories dealing with the human struggle in both usual and unusual circumstances. It’s emotional, and personal and not at all neat and tidy. So, this means that certain styles of work almost never cross my mind as options. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try it.

Highly graphic work is one of the things that I’ve never done. I have no aversion to it and, in fact, really enjoy beautifully crafted and highly graphic artwork. I have even drawn particular elements as inspiration for aspects of my work, both in polymer and in graphic design, from the likes of Mondrian, Mucha, and even graphic novels. But I have never designed any highly graphic art work.

If I did aim for a more graphical approach, it might be something like Jana Lehmann’s colorful and fun pieces, with clean lines but still plenty of blended color and subtle color variation to make the colors glow and give it the calm energy I gravitate towards. I could see trying to create cleaner lines and using purer color and standard shapes although I think the organic would find its way in at some point.

 

Aren’t those flowerpot pins just adorable? That brings up another thing I don’t do much of. I don’t do cute. Which is strange because I love cute! Although I am kind of picky and maybe a bit odd about the cute that I enjoy. So, if I were to try to create something cute, it would probably be cute with a dark edge to it. Maybe something like these Bitty Bitey Ones by Darcy of North Carolina. Just look at these faces! The big black bead eyes help but it takes some serious sculptural instincts to get such great expressions. The cuteness factor is through the roof! Could I work on my skills long enough to create something even half as cute? Would I want to? Won’t know unless I try, right?

 

There is one thing though – I just couldn’t create such pieces in pink. Now, I have made some pink polymer jewelry in years past, mostly because of requests, and it did sell well but it didn’t do anything for me. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But the important thing was that I tried and found out I just didn’t want to. That period did get me a touch more comfortable with the color so when it turns up incidentally in a blend or interference powder, I don’t just set it aside. The thing is, it’s not just pink that I steer away from. I don’t, in general, work in bright colors. But I’ve really been thinking that more saturated colors are something I should push myself into trying out.

Maybe I could do something like Jana’s super saturated color schemes above or, go completely over the rails and aim to mix-and-match a little bit of everything in one piece like Susan Dyer so expertly does. Talk about graphic! Her use of solid colors and highly contrasting patterns could be sniped from Bauhaus prints. Her compositions often teeter on the edge of chaos but the confining silver bezels and the consistency of her unmuddled approach to color and pattern creates cohesiveness.

 

One of the reasons Susan’s work appeals to me is because it’s not actually that big – the pendant above is all of 1.75” by 1.5”. I also tend to design jewelry that works as an accent or embellishment for the wearer rather than it outshining a person. But I know a lot of polymer artists prefer large pieces as one can really show off the surface design and techniques that way. And, honestly, I would love to do some really large jewelry but since I generally wouldn’t wear anything really large, it’s hard for me to envision what a wearer of this kind of work would want, and I think that makes me hesitate to the point that I have not tried.

I have been trying to work up the courage to go big by taking a close look at the work of big and bold artists like Kathleen Nowak Tucci. I love her work because it’s not only unabashedly large but it’s also, in part or almost wholly, created from recycled materials, such as the Saul Bellow award winning piece of hers you see at the opening of this post. And talk about going big … her work has also appeared on several big TV shows including the multiple times her work adorned the immensely talented Lily Tomlin on the show Grace and Frankie. You can see both Kathleen’s Leaf Necklace and Pistil Bracelet on Lily here.

 

What’s on Your List?

There are a number of other things I could try to push my work outside my comfort zone but these are presently on the top of my list.  So, now that you’ve seen the top of my list, what do you think you would you be willing to try out that you would not normally do?

Keep in mind, this self-challenge is not designed to change your style but to just put yourself, and hard, to see what you come up with. There is the potential for as yet unimaginable discoveries about yourself and where you want to take your work. It can be a way to inject some fresh new energy into your studio time and, since there is no end goal such as even showing the work to anyone or selling it, these explorations can give you the freedom to just push yourself in unselfconscious directions.

Are you one of the ones that have been doing this already this year? If so, maybe you’d like to share what you’ve tried to do and how you like the experience. You can insert a comment at the end of the post to let me know. Maybe when things slow down over here in the chaos it is my home at the moment, we can devise a midyear challenge for us all to work on. What do you think?

 

A Bit of Business … Last Chance to Subscribe and Get Issue #2 Directly from the Printer

If you haven’t subscribed or renewed your subscription to The Polymer Studio, you will want to do so by end of day Monday as we send off the mailing list to the printer to Tuesday morning. Be one of the first to get the new issue in your hot little hands by subscribing or pre-ordering your single issue now.

Your subscriptions and purchases support what I do here so if you like the blog, help me keep it going while also continuing your artistic education with our highly informative, entertaining, and rather pretty publications.

 

Back to the Chaos

Ok, gang, I have to get back to wrapping up the next magazine issue while navigating my discombobulated house. The chaos is in a holding pattern while we wait for the city to get the plans back to us. There is a ton of construction still going on due to the fires in November so things are a tad busy over there. But at least we figured out how to NOT have the refrigerator in the studio although it is just outside my door, just looming over me. So my present challenge is not to open that thing every time I have to squeeze by it!

As for you, my darling readers, I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a fabulous week to look forward to.

Mixing and Mingling, New Cover, & 33% off Back issues

We have a bit of business to do first today but it’s exciting business! I wanted to share with you the next cover of The Polymer Studio, coming late April.

We are thrilled to include projects from Cynthia Tinapple, our featured and interviewed artist for this issue, as well as Christi Friesen, Kathy Koontz, Elena Mori, the Mitchell sisters, Deb Hart, and Wendy Moore. Also, tips, tricks, and other bits of wisdom from Debbie Crothers, Ginger Davis Allman, and little old me. And you won’t want to miss the tour of Christine Dumont’s studio, complete with a conversation about her space and process, which I think you’ll find very intriguing.

All this and more, just a month away! Support our projects, this blog, and the betterment of your own polymer journey, of course, or just because you’d like to look at all the pretty things tucked into those pages, by subscribing to The Polymer Studio here.

(Be sure to scroll down to the last section for the 33% off sale stuff.)

A Fine Mix-up

So, did you get a chance to look through the winning entries for the IPCA awards? Here’s the link again if you didn’t see them. The winning entries are just beautiful and maybe even a bit surprising. If you saw it, did you notice any trends or changes in trends and what was presented? I thought it was interesting that there were a lot of mixed-media pieces where polymer clay might have been the focus, but other materials played large roles in important design aspects and visual impact of the work.

One of the reasons I find this so interesting is that the idea of expanding into other materials seems to be a regular conversation myself and many other people are having. I couldn’t say exactly what that means but I do believe that polymer, with its unparalleled flexibility for combining with other materials, has kind of come of age where our exploration of what it can do is being placed on the back burner in order to focus on artistic expression. I look at these mixed-media pieces in the awards and other pieces I find during my research and general perusing online, and it seems that we are seeing more instances where polymer centric artists decide what they want to make and then determine the best materials for the work rather than push to see if polymer can be used for most, if not all, of the components of a piece. Or perhaps I am just hoping this is the case because I would love to see more folks focused on personal expression will rather than letting our obsessive, but understandable, infatuation with the material determine our creative parameters.

Of course, for most of us who work in polymer now, this colorful, durable, and chameleon material will remain our primary love and, regardless of other options, we will often still try to do as much as we can with polymer, if just to see if we can push it a little bit farther. But, opening oneself up to the possibilities of combining it with other materials in major ways will allow us, and even the viewer, to focus more on the design and expression and less on the material itself, which will let the artist’s expression, vision, creativity, and aesthetic really shine. I find this very exciting!

So, this week, let’s look at some of the mixed-media pieces where other materials play a primary role alongside polymer. This could be very helpful for you if you have felt like you’re in a rut or are too often hitting technical or design walls in your work. Trying out a different material may just be the thing to inject you with new enthusiasm and, possibly, send you down a new path with your artwork.

Mixed Directions

Let’s first look at some of the winners of the IPCA awards and in many ways that other materials have been mixed in.

This first piece is both a mixed-media and a mixed artist piece. Ellen Prophater or worked with Sherry Mozer, a glass artist, led to the use of the black glass piece with its shades of green within reflected in the mokume polymer it sits upon. It is set in a silver bezel and accented with Swarovski crystals. Both the mokume and the glass show off a subtle transparency, drawing the connection between the two along with the green cast colors. It’s a nice reminder that collaboration can also push us in new directions making new discoveries in our work and even ourselves and our friendships.

 

Donna Greenberg just killed it as the professional mixed-media category. This wall piece is called Wedgewood Wave but the word that keeps coming to mind for me is swoon. Not just because I feel like swooning, it’s just so gorgeous, but that’s also the word that comes to mind from that fabulous flow of energy through those waves, back into the pool of blue. Those waves are paper, but the application of color and shape are similar to the polymer pieces so the different materials feel cohesive. This is definitely one of those cases where another medium was the better choice. Trying to create those waves in polymer would’ve been just silly, even though it could be done. The paper gives a lighter feel to the overall piece as well as a light and easy flow to the visual movement. She also used Ultralight polymer alongside the Arches cold press paper, acrylic gouache paints, watercolor pencils, and Apoxie paste, each material fulfilling its purpose in a way that another material would not have been as successful with.

 

With the issue of the environment heavy in many of our minds, we are seeing a lot of exploration into found or recycled or upcycled items. Sarah Machtey offered up this steam punk pouch necklace with removable magnifying glass for the mixed media category of the awards with a bit of all of that. The front and back of this small pouch is from a soda can turned inside out – you can still see the printing of the soda can on the inside – but she embossed the can with decorative lines and used mica powder infused liquid polymer in the recesses to make them stand out. The band across the top is upcycled copper from a renovation project while the side leaves and earrings are polymer clay. Not sure if the magnifying glass was bought or found but it certainly could have been reused from something else.

The pouch is 7” (18 cm) in height from the top edge to the bottom of the magnifying glass, so it’s no small bit of tin on there. Of course, she could have used polymer to create the metal sections but it would’ve been a bulkier piece. The tin keeps the weight down as well as adding some structural strength that would only have been accomplished with a much thicker wall of polymer.

 

Keep in mind, when we are talking mixed-media it doesn’t necessarily have to be another art material. For instance, I combined poetry with photos of polymer in a challenge last year that I was posting on my personal Instagram page. Other people mix it up by installing the work in unusual places so that the what is placed on becomes part of the artwork such as fairy doors installed on walls or in tree trunks or tiles installed into a kitchen backsplash. Rachel Gourley takes it just a touch further, installing her little collections so that they recede into the landscape. She scatters her polymer elements out and about in natural settings, looking much like organic growths but unexpected in their color, shape, and placement.

 

Putting Together Your Own Mixer

This week, I didn’t pull any tutorials for you to try because it would have to be a mad, a long list of other materials to give you any real idea of your options. Instead, I might suggest that you keep your eye open for what other polymer artists are doing with other materials. Perhaps one of the above ideas piqued your interest already. If so, research that other material and find ways to acquire or hone your skill in that medium. Just put “polymer clay and [fill in the blank with the material you’re curious about]” into the search bar on Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, or Google images and see what pops up. Add the word “tutorial” to see what offerings there are online. I’m sure there will be plenty of inspiration.

You can also grab your Spring 2015 – Diversity issue of The Polymer Arts or the Convergence themed issue from Spring of 2016, both of which have a ton of ideas around using other materials with polymer. You can see the table of contents for all back issues of The Polymer Arts on this page to check out what these issues have to offer. Then, if you don’t have the issues, you can order them on the website.

In fact, let’s have a sale!

Why don’t you grab a few back issues and take a full 33% off 3 or more! Good on digital or print, I’ll keep this up until next Sunday so grab them this week. Use promo code TPA33 at checkout.

And … I’m Off!

I would normally have some community news and deals for you to look into at this point, but I did not get to that. This week has been a struggle. I am being kept busy by a house that has decided to just fall apart all of a sudden. My creative energies have been used up relocating kitchen activities to the garage, the porch, and even my studio because of plumbing issues while getting tons of exercise running large circles around the house because the garage door won’t open, washing my clothes in the bathroom sink because the laundry machine won’t drain, and constantly shuffling ice packs from freezer to fridge because the fridge is on and off and its replacement is weeks away from getting here. All this happening two weeks before we start some (apparently!) much-needed kitchen remodeling. I’m not making this up.  But talk about mixing it up!

So, I’m going to get back to my at-home glamping while trying to get the next issue wrapped up for you. But tune in next week for more polymer pretties and inspiration, and, hopefully, less house drama from Sage’s corner! In the meantime, if you work with another medium, please share it below. Or tell us the most unusual medium you’ve combined with polymer! I’d love to get a feel for what you all are working on besides polymer. Leave links to the work as well if available! (If you get this by email, click on the post title to get to the post page and scroll down to comments.) I’m excited to see what you all have to share!

All It’s Cracked Up To Be

March 17, 2019

What is it about weathered and worn surfaces that so many people find attractive these days? Mind you, I am very much one of them. I have a whole line of work called “Beautiful Decay” that explores the beauty I find in the deterioration of durable materials. But the one related effect that seems to be everywhere these days is crackling. Who doesn’t love a good crackle! From shabby chic furniture to crazed ceramics to crackle glass decor, the look of a deteriorating surface seems to have wide-ranging appeal.

Knowing that, it’s not really a surprise that crackle is so popular as a polymer technique. A great many of us are already texture fiends and, if you love texture then you are going to try crackle- so there’s one of the reasons for its popularity in polymer. But we also know that there is a market for work with crackled surfaces since it pops up in so many areas related to decoration and adornment, making it a safe bet if you sell your work.

There is no one right or best way to create a crackled surface in polymer. You may not have realized it, but there are literally dozens of ways to create crackle. It can be created with a crackle paint medium, partially cured layers of polymer (like I show you in my Controlled Crackle technique which you can find in your Fall 2011 edition of The Polymer Arts), dried paint (or glaze or gilders’ paste or floor wax) on raw clay, metal leaf on raw clay, leaching, alcohol treatments, or by creating a faux texture with impressed materials. And I know I am still missing a few in that list!

So, let’s enjoy some crackle work today and wrap up with a few tutorials on different crackle techniques that you can try out.

 

Let’s Get Cracking

One of my personal favorite “cracklers” is Staci Louise Smith. She uses a number of different techniques to achieve a wide range of cracked texture. In the necklace below, her crackle is not subtle. It is not evenly spread across her beads either but rather, it is rough and tumble and scattered in energetic horizontal lines. Her soft coloring calms the chaos of the crackle which is also balanced out by the many other purposeful accents and lines from the wire.

Staci can also do subtle as evidenced by the opening piece, a Balance Bowl from her tutorial in the Polymer Art Projects – Organic book. (You can get the book on our website if you want to make one of these stunning bowls.)

Check out this blog post where she shares how she makes the necklace here along with sketches and her thoughts on the process.

 

A subtle crackle can often take a bit more patience but what a lovely effect it can have. It may not even be obvious at first that the beads on this necklace below by Ursa Polak have a crackle surface, but the weathered feel comes across immediately. Take a close look to see all the fine-lined cracks that add to the depth and variation of the surface.

 

Kroma Crackle is a lovely gel medium that itself dries and cracks without having to stretch the clay and yet remains flexible so that you can manipulate the clay without the cracked material popping off. Once you worked with it for a bit you can control the size of the crackle pretty well. You can add small amounts of acrylic paint or mica powders to give yourself a wide variety of color options. You can also apply paints, inks, dyes and other colorants on it after its dry.

These earrings are by Els van Haasen uses Kroma Crackle on polymer. You can see how regular a crackle you can get with this medium. But it can definitely be quite varied once you come to understand how to use it.

 

You almost forget that the technique that was most commonly used by the highly esteemed Elise Winters, who we lost just this year, was also a crackle technique. Her work was very controlled, as was crackle but that was probably the most recognizable part about her signature style. I can only imagine the work she put into gaining such control over her crackle, but it just shows what can be done when we invest a bit of patience into our work. (I erroneously put in that this was metal leaf when I first posted but, no, it’s paint, which also takes such skilled control, having to ensure that the paint is evenly applied to get such fine crackle.)

 

This is actually a piece of mine from some years back. It includes alcohol treated raw clay, controlled cracking of partially cured clay, and metal leaf colored with alcohol ink. The alcohol treatment is a way of drying out the surface of raw clay to get a very fine crazing. It’s a bit of a tricky technique but it sure worked here. That helped create the uneven surface of the partially cured polymer under the metal leaf, giving it a burning ember look.

 

Let’s Crack You Up

Ready to try some various cracking techniques? Here are a few freebies to get you going:

If you want to try the straightforward Paint Crackle Techniques:

  • Grab a craft acrylic (the cheap acrylics work better than artist tube acrylics which tend to stretch rather than crack) or tempera paint and a well-conditioned sheet of polymer rolled on the thickest setting of your pasta machine.
  • Brush a moderate (not heavy) layer of the paint onto the polymer. Wait for it to completely dry.
  • Then roll it through the pasta machine set at two settings down from the thickness you created the sheet on. You can stop here or, for wider, more varied crackle, turn the sheet 90°, adjust the pasta machine down another one or two settings and run it through again.
  • You should have a nice crackle now but if your paint is stretching rather than cracking, rolling another sheet of polymer and lay the crackle sheet on top and then start rolling it through the pasta machine again. Eventually, the paint will crack but sometimes you need a really thick layer of polymer to start in order to stretch it far enough. Tempera paint won’t stretch and cracks very nicely if you have that on hand or fancy a run to your local craft store. You could also get some crackle medium while you’re out and follow the instructions to crackle paint directly on your raw polymer clay.

You can find some examples of the use of different paints on this post by Jan Geisen.

For more tutorials online:

  • One of the things I didn’t show you in the samples above was how to use impression material to create a faux crackle effect. I use crumpled aluminum foil for this and then use the antiquing approach of rubbing acrylic paint into the cracks after its cured and wiping it off. But Katie Oskin has an interesting material to share in this online tutorial, as well as showing the effect of painting it before she impresses it.
  • In this video tutorial, Sandy Huntress shows you how to crackle very thin sheets of partially cured polymer clay.
  • Crackling can be done on round surfaces too! Here’s an online tutorial using metal leaf on bicone beads to create crackle. Keep in mind you could do the same thing by painting the beads and then rolling them around to get it crack.

Do you know of other great crackle tutorials or want to point out another crackling technique I didn’t mention? Drop a comment below (if you’re on this post’s page online) or click on the title of this post to go to the post’s page and share the info with us all. It would be much appreciated!

 

Bits of News

 

Okay… Off with me. Working on the next issue of The Polymer Studio. Get your subscription or catch up if you didn’t get the first issue by just jumping over to the website now.

Know that your purchases and subscriptions help me pay the bills so I can justify the time I put into sharing all the good stuff on this blog. Help me help you as we collectively feed our addiction to polymer!

Have a wonderful and creative week! –Sage

 

Giving Voice to Vision

February 16, 2020
Posted in ,

Alev Gozonar, Herd Psychology I, 2019

Do you consider yourself one of those people who like to talk about their art, or do you want never to talk about it, like it might lose some of it’s magic if you try to explain it?

I think a lot of artists feel a little of both. We love what we do so much that we want to share it with anyone who has the slightest interest, but at the same time, we don’t want to over analyze it for fear of diminishing the personal and often mysterious process that is the creation of art work.

You don’t have to be over analytical about your art in order to verbalize what you do but you should consider how putting your thoughts about your process and what drives you to create into writing can help both yourself and those who view your work.

Let’s look at a few artists and their words to see how authentic and intelligent discussions of one’s work can illuminate and grow our appreciation for the art and its creator.

 

From the Mouth of Artists

For some artists, their intention is wound up intensely in the stories they would like to tell. Christine Damm is an artist who believes so strongly in the power of storytelling, that she named her business “Stories They Tell”. In her own words:

Stories They Tell is the name I call my company, because I am a storyteller. For me, life is a process, a journey, a transformation, an unfolding. And as our lives tell a story, so does our art. We – and it– are shaped by what we’ve done, who we’ve met, what we’ve learned, what we’ve struggled with or succeeded at. Life is an intersection with other souls, other lives, other ways of seeing, other ways of living. Art expresses that in a wonderful and ever-changing, topsy-turvy marvel of creation and discovery.

This paragraph from her website is an honest expression of how she sees the world and how that viewpoint lives with her and her day to day creative work. You can tell that it is a heartfelt view and description of herself, right? She’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but she is saying it in her own words, and it gives us an understanding of what is important to her and what drives her creative process.

 

Alev Gozonar is a very conceptual artist. She clings to, and explores, words, stories, and specific ideologies as she creates. In the piece below I found on Instagram, she tags her images with just a handful of descriptors, primarily #concrete and #brutalism, referring to an architectural style in the mid-20th century that was characterized by monolithic, blocky, concrete elements. She contrasts the concrete shapes with delicate floral petals in this piece, but in other pieces in this line, the polymer petals are spattered or covered in concrete rather than just existing alongside the harsh building material, so there’s both an interesting juxtaposition and an immersion of the delicate in the hard and harsh. (You can find those other pieces on her Instagram page.) Now read how she sees her work. Her statements about reveal even more layers to her approach. In her words:

The dominant theme in my works is the composition of a whole via the repetition of parts.  This can be seen as an extension of my textiles education and has become a cornerstone of my identity as an artist. If I make an attempt to describe the general framework of my artwork, I would say that the most important starting points for me are the emotional losses and gains I have experienced in various phases of my life, my observations about life, my personal experiences and the way all of these things reflect on daily life, behavior and emotional states. 

Now what do you think when you look at this piece, or at the piece that opens this blog? Does it change how you see them?

 

Debra Adelson is a jewelry artist working in a “centuries old Bohemian cold work glass technique. Cold working does not use heat but, rather, water to keep the glass cool while manipulating it using abrasives such as sandblasting, grinding, drilling, and cutting.”

Look at her pieces below. If you did not know what her process was, you might take but a very quick glance at her work but you would not have had a lot to ponder. However, you now know something of her process and so probably have an increased appreciation and so, you’ll linger longer to identify how her process forms the work.


She has a very specific design process as well and often photographs her work to show the original inspiration which further informs us about the piece. For instance, it will be hard to look at the amber colored brooch and not see the water worn slot canyon walls, now that we have seen the photograph – the image is forever connected in our minds to that brooch, even if we see it without the image.

So, yes, images can help but, still, Debra gives us further insight into her process and thoughts with this selection of words from her online bio:

I am inspired by the natural world and our relationship to it. My pieces pay homage to changing forces that shape our landscape—both natural and manmade. I seek to create harmony in my work and find balance between our need to shape our environment while preserving and respecting the natural world. Each series begins with a distinct inspiration or concept. I base the initial piece on an image, a moment in nature and experiment to come up with my ‘visual language’ that tells a story for the series.

Her work is really amazing so do stop and click through to look at the colorful and very interestingly carved glass “gems” on her Instagram page or website.

 

Obviously, this is just a small taste of what people post to talk about their art. I might suggest that, as you zip around online and run into various artists that you admire or work that inspires you, go to their websites and read the ‘About’ page or their artist statements. The more of these you read and the more aware you become of how statements inform the artwork, the easier it will be for you to form a statement, a bio, or other text about you and your work that is authentic and truly brings across what it is you would like people to see in what you do.

 

Me and My Projects

I can’t tell you how energized and excited I am these days! For one, the Virtual Art Box which was released a bit over a week ago, has been so enthusiastically received (for which I am so relieved as I wondered how people would like it) and, secondly, because I’m getting to write tons about the things I am most passionate about! I get up in the morning and write like a mad woman. It just comes pouring out. I have to actually stop myself so I can make room for some guest artists and writers. When was the last time you were so excited about something that you could hardly think of anything else? It’s a great feeling!

It truly helps my enthusiasm to have such glowing comments sent to me (“This changed my life, already!”, “This was just what I needed. I thought I was burned out on creating but that wasn’t it …”, “I feel like I’m taking a college course!”) but I was a bit overwhelmed and emotional at moments. I am trying, in everything I do with my publications and projects, to affect other people’s lives in a positive and nurturing way but, unlike when teaching in person, in this business, you don’t get a clear idea of what people are doing with what they learn. But with the Creative Pursuits (a challenge and form in the Virtual Art Box that lets readers connect with me on their focus and goals) and the social media pages, not to mention the kind emails and messages I’ve been getting, I’m hearing exactly what your fellow polymer enthusiasts are up to and what they want. It’s fascinating and creates such energy for me and, I think, it will do so for the active VAB members. It’s so exciting!

If you aren’t getting the VAB, you can join in today by buying the one month February box, no subscription required, and then you can  check out what we are doing. You can get a subscription right now too although that won’t start you until March. Whatever you do, I just hope you have a chance to get in on this energy.

 

 

Lindly Needs a Little Love

If you have not already heard, one of our very dear community leaders and pioneers, Lindly Haunani, had a horrific accident a bit over a week ago. She has multiple broken bones, including bones in her dominant hand, and although she is sure to recover, it is going to be a very long and difficult road. Of course, this community jumped in to help her out in a huge way, but she will need your continued love and support for quite a while.

Take a look at her Go Fund Me page and send Lindly a little love this Valentine’s weekend if you can.

Additional fundraising avenues are being worked on as well. I will keep you updated on those and her well-being as I get news.

 

Shimmer and Shine … and Get Published.
Deadline for submission of ideas is March 15th

Scheduling this for Fall 2020, the Polymer Arts Projects – Shimmer and Shine book will, like the PAP – Organic’s book, feature numerous in-depth tutorials by some of our community’s most accomplished artists.

If you feel you are one of these folks that have something fantastic to offer readers for this theme, I am now open for submission ideas. Here are the basic guidelines:

  • As the theme is Shimmer and Shine, the project should be shiny, glitzy, sparkly, or blingy but also artistic, well-designed, and skillfully conceived.
  • The tutorial should work for readers in the experienced novice to moderately advanced range. This will not be for absolute beginners.
  • The tools and materials, or workable alternatives, should be obtainable by the majority of our worldwide readership.
  • The project should have a specific technique or look that can be reproduced in different forms and styles with examples of possible variations shown.
  • Artists submitting should be experienced at photographing their process and writing detailed tutorials.

This special publication offers payment and profit sharing for our contributing artists. Keep an eye on these newsletters for your submission opportunity next month. Check out the Polymer Arts Projects – Organics  book for further examples of the kind of tutorials we will be looking for.

At this time submit just the summary of your idea–just a few sentences–and links or small attachments to images of the technique and/or pieces of the kind your proposed tutorial would include. Send them to sage(a)tenthmusearts.com. My response will be sent after the March 15th deadline.

I look forward to your ideas!

Well, my dear readers, I do hope you’ve had a loving weekend. I’m off to spend the rest of it with my sun and stars. I hope you have an exciting and creative week!

Read More

The Story Within

July 14, 2019
Posted in

What is it about faux damaged and worn surfaces that we like so much? I mean, it’s everywhere – crackle, antiquing, weathering, patina, torn edges, scratching, distressing – these are all widely used surface techniques in art and in all kinds of decor. But have you ever asked yourself why we are drawn to things that are breaking down and degrading?

Let me say right out the gate, I absolutely adore this kind of surface treatment so don’t stop reading because you think I’m going to try to dissuade anyone from using it. But I do think it’s interesting that artists of all kinds are interested in it and wondered if you ever considered why people, in general, are so attracted to it.

I’ll give you the answer in one simple word – story. Things that are worn, show signs of use, and show the passage of time, have a story, history, a connection leading into the past lives and worlds of other people and places, or are a connection to our own past. Human beings love story. Civilizations of all kinds, and through all time, have told stories or sung songs to keep a culture, event, or person alive in the community or society. Communities everywhere collect evidence of the past – both their own and of others – and engage in the exchange of stories through nearly everything that we do and attend to including banter and gossip, entertainment, all our print and spoken communication sources , and all kinds of visual forms including, and maybe most especially, art. So, it’s no wonder artists love to recreate that innate sense of story by creating the look of aging, wear, breakage and weathering.

Now, you may think you simply like the look and any attraction you have to aged looks has nothing to do with the potential history something might have had or the stories that you could make up, consciously or unconsciously. The thing is, whether it is faux or real aging, we will always associate the look of something worn and weathered with the past and the past means history and history is, well, hi-story. It’s never just what we see that draws us. It’s what we associate with it, what our experiences tell us and our emotions evoke.

If these looks were just about the visuals, more people would be drawing inspiration from gory and grimy imagery alongside the pretty, intriguing, and more benign sources. (There are definitely people who draw texture from gore and grime but they’re not usually doing it to create something with a comfortable, aesthetic beauty.) So yes, the worn and weathered textures are beautiful, but it is psychologically attractive because it represents the passage of time and it’s interaction with the world and us.

Understanding that it is story and not just the beauty of these aged and distressed textures can take your work and designs into a more complex and rich realm because, instead of just thinking “This is a pretty texture, I want to make something with it,” you can start asking yourself, “What is the story behind this texture and why do I want to put it on this piece?” Or conversely, “Why do I want to make that texture into a piece of art?”

This is not to say that you have to write up an actual story or history for the piece that you’re making. I think just being aware that what you’re putting forth does represent a history will help guide you in your choices. After all, the viewer of your work isn’t necessarily going to know what story you associate with it but they will insert their own story, or an emotion associated with a story that the textures elicit, and the whole of the design should support the idea of its history or use.

Let’s look at some work with some of our favorite worn and weathered textures, and not just polymer either – I think we need to branch out a bit, especially in this subject matter, to see just how ubiquitous this type of texture is in art.

 

All a Story is Cracked Up to Be

Let’s start with an example from an artist who is obviously all about the story in her artwork. Christine Damm’s website and shop name is, after all, “Stories They Tell”. All her work looks weathered or worn, maybe a bit beaten and dinged, but she’s coaxed a persevering beauty out of these rough, color strewn treatments with consistent intention. This piece of Christine’s includes parts of an old vintage hand beater whose actual history of use, neglect, and, now, adoration, is echoed in the polymer clay and combined in a tribal-esque design.

This piece was actually the opening beauty shot for Christine’s article, “Found Fusion: Designing with Polymer & Found Objects”, in the Spring 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts. It’s a fantastic article that will really get you thinking about how enriching found objects can be when added to your work. We still have copies of that issue in print on our website here and you can read more about Christine’s and her process on her website here.

 

Nadezhda Plotnikova’s “Sunny necklace”, below, is aptly named. Although the surface of the focal beads is quite crackled and the other beads have a rough, weathered look, the necklace is anything but worn out looking. The bright and light colors convey that “sunny” emotion while the surface treatments give it a relaxed and comfortable feel. It’s that same kind of feeling you get from your favorite well-worn comfy jeans (and don’t those jeans have stories!), only with a bit more pizzazz. It seems like the individual beads here would have the stories, though, and the necklace would be a recent gathering of them. Like maybe it could be a collection of old sun-bleached coral washed up on a distant island combined with wave-worn, fantastical rocks, all found and brought together by some seafaring adventurer. Or something like that. What story do you come up with when looking at this?

 

Like Nadezhda’s above, Tamara of Block Party Press has chosen a light theme for a necklace of visually distressed beads. Her’s however, comes in the form of stylized daisies but the color and treatment is on the dark and heavy side, with its worn-out whites over a dark brown base. It’s a kind of a subdued approach to what we have above, being much less dramatic. I also feel like it’s the kind of thing you might have found in the back of your mother’s jewelry drawer, forgotten and dusty, and just exuding nostalgia. It absolutely begs for a story to be wound around it. It’s the kind of piece that I think would feel instantly a part of your personal history even when new.

 

Some artwork does not just imply story but is actually created from a story. Our featured artist in the #3 issue of The Polymer Studio is an avid researcher and history lover from Brazil quite inspired by interpreting story. Beatriz Cominatto created the pieces you see in the opening of this post and the one below as part of a series inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people. She researched the history of Brazil’s Marajo Island and the archaeological finds there extensively before starting the series and then developed this into quite the elaborate art installation, complete with simulated archaeological work. These pieces imply story even when you even to those uninformed about Beatriz’s inspiration, due to the consistently applied signs of age and the tribal design.

You can see and read more about this Beatriz’s work, in the next issue as she is our featured interview. She has had the most amazing artistic journey! She’s had a lot of hurdles to jump being so isolated, primarily language-wise, in Brazil, from the rest of the polymer community and yet she grew polymer as an art form there almost single-handedly, even helping to develop Brazil’s own line of polymer clay. You gotta read this article! You can also find out more about her Marajoara series on her feature page in Polymer Journeys 2019.

 

When I think about cracked and torn pieces in art jewelry, I always think about the metalsmiths. There’s something about taking a jeweler’s saw and developing cracked layers, revealing the jewels or textured surfaces beneath. Both the metalsmiths and admiring collectors seem to be quite drawn to it as the treatment is not at all uncommon. Lexi Erickson’s penchant for this kind of treatment is often paired with pitted and worn metal as in this pendant below.

It almost feels like Lexi’s piece was torn from some old piece of machinery which could lead you to wonder where and what that machine was and maybe what the machine’s purpose was and whether its maker ever imagined it would become a piece of jewelry. No, I’m not saying that’s what she did but that’s the kind of story, or at least e a sense of story, this type of work can invoke, all because of the thoroughness in her treatment of that one layer.

 

And what about this amazing conglomeration of worn, cracked, scratched and yet intensely beautiful surface treatments on this ceramic vessel below? Lesley McInally’s work is often reminiscent of an old doorframe much in need of painting or the corner of a crumbling old house where the plaster and frame have started to show. And that red dot … so simple and yet it adds so much energy and drama. I don’t think it’s supposed to be blood, but it could represent something of that sort. It really depends on where your mind wants to go with the possible stories buried here.

 

Creating Your Own Story

So, I want to give you a little, fun challenge today. Go take a look at some of your more elaborate pieces or, if you don’t have anything of your making at hand, look up some of your favorite pieces by other artists. What is the story, for you, in each piece that you look at? Tell yourself as much or as little of the story as comes to you in the first minute or less. Do this with at least 3 pieces, maybe 5. You may discover, during this process, a story in a piece that was only unconsciously there, but once you ask yourself about its possible history, it may become quite obvious. How exciting is that? Or do all of your pieces already come with a fully realized story?

Some artists do work that way, creating full-fledged stories for all their work, although I think it’s more predominant with people who create figures, animals, or creatures of some sort. I learned to do this with my art jewelry, mostly because, when I was selling, I made sure each piece had a title because that really helps to get potential customers thinking about its story and since they write the story, they tend to find a connection to the work, making it much more likely that they would buy the piece. I have a whole article about naming your pieces and the advantages of this in the Fall 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts if you want to read more about that.

 

My Own Story

First of all, I want to thank all of you who wrote me little personal notes about my physical well-being. You’re also sweet! Mind you, it’s nothing serious but chronic tendinitis does make it very hard to work, I have to say. But I have my workarounds. And for those who wrote me about the earthquakes… I grew up with them and although they are scary in the moment, us native Californians just take it in stride. There were no major injuries from these quakes as it was centered in a fairly unpopulated area and deep in the earth. We were rolling around quite a bit here but nothing even fell over, which was a miracle considering the state of our house.

As for this house renovation, we are supposedly really close to being done but it still looks like a wreck and everything is covered in a layer of white dust from all the plastering. It feels like it’s going to be months after they finish before the house is back to normal, just because of all the house cleaning we get to look forward to and all the organizing. It’s going to be like moving into a new place! Well, it is mostly a new place now, actually. Which is cool! But a lot of work.

The good news is that we do have nearly one whole bathroom done, which is really nice, to say the least. We’re doing the painting on it to save us some bucks while the crew works on the kitchen and tiling the other bathroom. I’m training the family on painting and other home improvement stuff. It’s become quite the family project which is pretty nice. We get to spend paint-spattered time with the teen before she goes off to college in a couple of months!

 

As for work here at Tenth Muse headquarters, I’m still working on polishing the next issue of The Polymer Studio which is going slower than I’d like because of the tendinitis but I’m going to keep at it. I hope to have the actual publication date next week so stay tuned!

I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a little time to go and find some of the stories in your work–you’ll love doing that! I promise. Have a great week!

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High On Art

June 23, 2019
Posted in

Just flew in from Australia yesterday so I’m a bit jetlagged still but I wrote up some thoughts on the plane and pulled some pretties to demonstrate some more ideas on passion in your art, so here goes.

If you are reading this, chances are, you are passionate about art, either creating it or supporting its creation. Can we take just a few spare seconds to admire and be amazed by that passion of yours? I’d suggest that you stop at this moment and really let the emotion of that passion of yours come to the forefront, letting it blossom in the memory of what drives you to create or be supportive of creativity. Can you feel it? Close your eyes if you don’t feel it yet and just give it a few seconds to come to the surface so I can pose a few questions while that emotion is coursing through you.

Got it now? Okay. So, tell me … what color is your passion? Close your eyes if you need to and see what color blooms in your mind.

Then ask, does your passion have a temperature? Is it cool and constant or warm and rolling? Or something else entirely?

What does it act like? Is it like a soft, persistent wind, or a crashing ocean or something in between?

It doesn’t matter what metaphors you come up with for the feeling, you just want something concrete to hold onto. With those sensations and images in mind now, ask yourself, is that feeling there when you sit down to create? Does that passion spill out onto your worktable and direct your work? Does it drive you to come up with ideas or search out and soak up great art and other inspiring sights and sounds?

With all these metaphors and answers in your mind, I want to ask the core question that just couldn’t be put forth until you were in the right mindset:

Do you like what you create and why you create?

That might sound like a strange question because who would continue to create art while not liking it? Well, many of us do. That’s been at the heart of several conversations I’ve had recently, all related to trying to make a living from creative endeavors. That need to pay one’s bills is not the kind of drive that we really want to direct our work if fulfilling our passion is at all a goal of ours.

The fact is, letting out your passion and letting it guide you feel risky because you are putting a bit of yourself out there into the world in that process. Or a lot of yourself sometimes. It’s scary, isn’t it, putting your latest work out, wondering what people will think, whether it will sell or whether the receiver will like it? But it’s thrilling too, especially when people respond to it, when they connect to your work and to you. It’s a serious high.

You deserve to get that high on art. Don’t you think?

 

High on Creativity

I bet you can spy those artists who do get that high on a regular basis, people who let their passion run wild and lead their work. Here are just a few of my personal favorites but start thinking of your own as I go through them.

One of the first people that comes to mind is Ellen Jewett. She has worked in polymer, epoxy, and paper clay, using no tools but her hands and a brush, and makes only what she wants to make. Here is but one of her mind-blowing sculptures.

Her work is born of a unique and driving passion. In her own words:

At first glance my work explores the more modern prosaic concept of nature: a source of serene nostalgia but this is balanced with the more visceral experience of ‘wildness’ as remarkably alien and indifferent.  Upon closer inspection of each ‘creature’ the viewer may discover a frieze on which themes as familiar as domestication and as abrasive as domination fall into sharp relief.   These qualities are not only present in the final work but are fleshed out in the process of building. Each sculpture is constructed using an additive technique, layered from inside to out by an accumulation of innumerable tiny components.  Many of these components are microcosmic representations of plants, animals and objects.  Some are beautiful, some are grotesque and some are fantastical.  The singularity of each sculpture is the sum total of its small narrative structures.

I encourage you to take the time to read her full artist statement. You may be surprised by her approach and amazed by her insights into her own work and purpose.

 

I have found that many of insanely passionate artists are also similarly intense thinkers. Some of these passionate thinkers take their love of art a step further by sharing their passion through education as a way to spark and inspire the creativity of others. Christine Dumont is just such an artist, giving polymer and mixed media artists a place to push themselves and grow through her website Viola and its related projects.

Her own work comes about as a result of intense exploration. She does not create to sell, and I think this gives her a freedom that an artist dependent on their work for their income may find harder, although not at all impossible, to achieve.

Christine will actually be in Switzerland teaching this mix of polymer and metal September 14-15, 2019. If you are interested in joining the class, you can message her directly through her website.

 

As demonstrated by Christine’s passion for teaching, a creative passion doesn’t have to manifest itself purely in your art. Teaching, which takes a particular passion of its own, is just one alternate avenue to steer one’s creative passions. Giving back to others is another way. We had a whole section of community recognition for polymer artists who give back in our first edition Polymer Journey in 2016. We have so many giving and generous people in this community! One of those beautiful people is Wendy Moore who I had the unparalleled pleasure of staying with this past week in Canberra, Australia.

Her creative passion was intertwined with a passion to give back to others when she founded the Friends of Samunnat alongside Nepalese lawyer Kopila Basnet, to help support and give independence to women who were victims of violence. Wendy’s passion and empathy for others is seen directly in her art as well, including this piece I photographed at her home but which you can also find in the Polymer Journeys 2019 edition. It is a representation of her “confusion and angst relating to issues about how we move forward in relationships with Australia’s indigenous people.”

Wendy’s passion has not gone unnoticed outside the polymer community either. It was recently announced that she has been awarded the 2019 Order of Australia medal by the Australian Governor-General for her contribution to the international community of Nepal! This is one of a set of awards and appointments the Australian government uses as a principal way of recognizing outstanding citizens. Join me in a big congratulations to (a probably very embarrassed and blushing) Wendy Moore. Read more about the award along with her interview in this article here.

And you can also look forward to reading in depth about Wendy, her journey, her work, and her life in issue #4 of The Polymer Studio later this year, so keep up those subscriptions!

Here are a few pics from my time with Wendy. I’ll get more photos of the trip up on Facebook where you are welcome to follow me.

 

Wendy and I contemplating the insanity of this immense tapestry which recreated a much smaller painting in every nuance. At the Australian Parliament house’s Great Hall.

 

Forest labyrinth built by some passionate creative person in the bush just beyond Wendy’s house. Wendy and I are walking it with my step-daughter and Wendy’s granddaughter.

 

Photos by Brett Varon

There are so, so many other artists I could point out as examples of deeply passionate people who let that passion drive the work they do, both in and outside the studio. But this is all I have in me to write just now. Right now, I am very passionate about sleep!

However, I would encourage you to continue this search for passion in your daily perusals of artwork online. I would challenge you to keep an eye out for work in which the artist’s passion is intensely obvious and try to imagine the emotion and drive that they must have to create the wonderful work they share with us.

If you aren’t feeling a glimmer of what you think these dynamos must have, perhaps it’s time to assess what you are doing and why. Perhaps you need to infuse your work with new inspiration and materials (as suggested in last week’s post) or maybe you would be more fulfilled spending some of your time teaching (which might include writing articles for publications like The Polymer Studio. Check out our guidelines.) or maybe you need to step back and ensure you are creating in a fulfilling and meaningful way for you, not just for your customers. If your work is infused with your passion, you’ll sell it and you’ll get noticed. Just note how highly passionate art grabs your attention!

Okay, off for more sleep so I can hit the ground running on Monday as I aim to get Issue #3 off to the printer in early July. It’s shaping up to be a really gorgeous issue but I’m still having my challenges here as the house is still in various stages of construction (the worst of it being there are no working sinks except the one in the garage) but the bones of the kitchen are in so that is awesome! Now I can start working on the back-splash I designed. Well, maybe after this next issue if off to the printer.

In the meantime, have a wonderful, inspired, and passionate week!

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Simply Stunning

May 19, 2019
Posted in , ,

Tanya Mayorova

Given the choice, would you create a necklace that was easy and quick to make and was still stunning, or would you explore an unknown technique with an unknown outcome that might take hours or days? For some of you, the answer may be complicated because you like to explore and you don’t even question how long it will take or whether you will be successful because you just want to see what material can do. I get that. That’s pretty much how I approach what I do. Not that I wouldn’t mind some of my explorations being quick and easy and more often successful than not. Being challenged and failing, though, are absolutely necessary parts of creating art but that doesn’t mean that everything we make should be frustrating and difficult.

I think, by default, we all gravitate toward the easy option when given a clear-cut choice. Easy means less frustration, less room for error, and less time involved but it can also be considered a bad choice. And I’m not just talking about the creative process. For instance, you might grab a paper plate instead of one that you have to wash, or you toss your groceries in a plastic bag provided by the store rather than bringing in your own reusable one. Those examples highlight the reason for our environmental issues right now, our desire for ease and convenience being at the root of our environmental tragedies. So, yes, taking the easy route can sometimes have a negative effect that that’s not always true. There is nothing wrong with choosing the easiest route to drive home or having yoga pants and a T-shirt as your default attire when not at work. And some very easy things are actually better. Fruit and a boiled egg for breakfast is a lot easier than making pancakes and bacon and is better for you too. And when creating your polymer components, simple techniques and forms are often not only an efficient way to create and express yourself but they allow you to concentrate on composition, contrast, form, and other design elements rather than getting you wrapped up in technique.

With social media and our online access to so much artwork, I think our minds are saturated with certain ideas about what we should be creating and, because of that, we may have a hard time finding our own voice or we may have an unconscious sense of how pieces should look or be put together rather than finding a look of our own. Or we are romanced by gorgeous, complex pieces so we try to make our work more complex as well without knowing if simple elements may be very thing we need to do or say what we want.

Part of the problem comes from the idea that simple and easy means boring. But it certainly doesn’t have to be. To illustrate this, I’d like to look at beads today. In polymer jewelry, the bead is the most basic element you work with. The idea of a bead encompasses all types of forms though, from the simple round bead to complex sculpted and layered mixed-media elements. But let’s explore the more classic idea of a bead, as a single element that is repeated in some fashion in a piece of adornment and let’s see how you might create easy beads that are anything but basic and boring.

A little note … Some of you long time polymer enthusiasts out there may recognize a few of these pieces as several were widely circulated back when but, even if you’ve seen these before, look at them with new eyes and see if some familiar techniques but unused techniques aren’t worth a revisit now. You’ll approach them differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago, and you never know what serendipitous discovery might be unearthed.

 

Beads Beyond the Basic

Round beads are, of course, the most common bead form and are a classic that are always great for showing off canes, color, and surface design. Still, round beads can get pretty complicated, one, because it can be difficult to make them perfectly round, and secondly, because to keep them from being boring often leads us to add complexity in the color scheme or how the surface is treated. But what if you took your round bead and just worked on the form? Go ahead … grab some clay, make a rough round bead, and then start messing with the form. Pinch it, press it, pull it, or roll it into a variation on a round bead or cure and carve it.

Genevieve Williamson started out with a round bead to create these side textured chunky disks. Just look at the variation here plus I bet you can think up a few other ways to quickly and easily change them up with different clays, inclusions, or texturing of the sides.

Tube beads can be a tad tricky, primarily when it comes to creating the hole for stringing them. An extruder with a core adapter makes the job much easier but you can also create easy, attractive, and unique tube beads from any surface treated clay sheet simply by wrapping a strip around a tube of your choosing. Here’s a whole selection by Tonya Mayorova who went really wide with her bead openings. As you can see, all kind of surface treatments adapt well to these wide tube beads, from mosaics like you see on the bottom of the stack, to carved, impressed, mokume gane, and seed bead wrapped. The beads here are all similar in width but she uses the same approach with skinnier varieties such as in the necklace that opens this post.

 

Tanya doesn’t have a tutorial posted for this, but I can help you with that:

  1. Pick a favorite surface treatment to create a sheet of clay with and then wrap the sheet around anything that can go in the oven. I keep a few pieces of aluminum and copper tubing for just such projects. Make sure the pieces are straight and have unobstructed lengths so beads can slide off after curing.
  2. Wrap the clay around the tube until the clay sheet overlaps then cut down through the length of the overlapping clay and then remove the excess clay.
  3. Carefully blend the seam where the ends meet.
  4. If the clay sheet has a smooth and even surface, you can lay it on the worksurface and, using a tissue blade, let it roll crosswise under the blade ‘s edge to cut each individual bead cut. Then just cure the stack as is.
  5. Alternately, you can cure just after you blend the seam then cut the beads off it with a craft knife or slide it off the rod and use a jeweler’s saw to cut your beads.
  6. You can string your tubes on multiple strands of stringing materials such as cording or leather thongs, a selection of various colored embroidery thread, colored Tigers tail, ribbon, etc.

Tanya has even more variations of this idea ready for your perusal on her Flickr photostream here. She also recently agreed to create a feature tutorial for Issue #3 of The Polymer Studio so be sure to subscribe or keep up your subscription to the magazine to get that beautiful project.

 

The beads below also require just a sheet of treated clay. These are similar to a popular paper bead technique you may have seen as well. They start with a sheet cut into narrow, long triangles that are then rolled up, starting with the wide end so that each overlap leaves part of the surface of the lower layer visible. It works with any sheet of polymer, treated or untreated, textured or not.

I love how Margit Bohmer keeps the triangles, created from a mokume gane sheet, really narrow so that the beads are nearly as big in diameter as they are wide. There is still plenty of surface showing but they blend into each other because the narrow bead doesn’t angle away as much at the point where they touch. As you likely already know, the longer the bead, the more space you’ll see between the bottom edges of the bead ends. These rolled up beads are also angled on their ends which can make them sit askew but the shallower the angle (like on these narrower beads) the more neatly they line up.

Margit has created the longer beads as well so you can compare them here or just look through her Flickr photostream to see what you like better. And if you want a full polymer tutorial on these types of beads, check out Emma Ralph’s classic tutorial here.

 

Another, maybe even easier, way to use sheeted clay for beads is to just roll up flat sections of clay without overlapping, in a loose, freeform way. This works really nicely with an organic treatment or texture. Just look at how lovely these wrapped textured beads are. They are simply flat sections of polymer impressed on a handmade texture plate and curled up on an angle.

These are created by Rebekah Payne who generously posted a tutorial here on how to make them.

 

A similar concept can be employed with snakes of clay. Just roll out or extrude lengths of solid, marbled, mica shift (see this post from earlier this month) or striped polymer and then wrap the strands up on a skewer, long thin knitting needle, or other thin rod and cure. You’ll end up with coiled beads like these created by Emma Todd, below..

 

You can also roll the beads, after wrapping them up, back and forth under an acrylic block or other small tile to level the strands, creating a smooth bead surface. Don’t use the rod to roll the bead as it will act like a rolling pin on the inside of it and widen the stringing hole. Unless you want that. You can also take them off the rod and gently press their length between thumb and forefinger to compress the coils a bit more and make flat ended cylindrical beads.

 

The interior of clay beads have a lot of hidden potential too, and they can so easily and quickly be revealed by just cutting them open. Here is my all-time favorite example of creating stunning beads by cutting the form. These fabulous beads are by Desiree McCrorey. Click the image to see her tutorial for this. Be sure to check out the beads she makes from the cut scraps at the end too!

Not only can you create simple yet complex looking beads by cutting stacks, you can use this technique with old canes as well. See Desiree’s tutorial for the same beads using canes here. And look around the site for other great tutorials. These are all older tutorials, but timeless techniques.

 

Beads Away!

The examples above are all easy to make, don’t take much time, and allow for your own take on composition, contrast, texturing, etc. So, I would like to suggest that you pick a couple you like and see if you can sneak in sometime today or this coming week to try them out to see which, if any, simple but expressive beads suit you.

There are also some publications you might want to check out if you are on a bead making bender or feel you will be after all this.

  • My favorite polymer bead book is Carol Blackburn’s Making Polymer Clay Beads. There are beads for all levels of clayers and lots of jumping off points for those who like to explore.
  • Although these get a bit more complex, the beads in Grant Diffendaffer’s book, Polymer Clay Beads are just stunning and there are so many tips in this book.
  • If you really just want to try some new surface treatments or get other ideas for changing up your own bead ideas, Marie Segal’s, The Polymer Clay Artist’s Guide, is such a thorough exploration of techniques. It’s my go to book for creative brainstorming on polymer treatments.
  • Of course, there are tons of ideas in The Polymer Studio and, especially for the more exploratory folks, in the back issues of The Polymer Arts. Grab a few of these in print or digital and let serendipity lead you into new creative territory. By the way, about 65% of The Polymer Arts issues are still available in print but quite a few are about to sell out completely so if you like your material in print, snatch them up while I still have them.
  • For further inspiration in the form of eye-candy, pick up your copy of Polymer Journeys 2016 and/or 2019. Both are just brimming with ideas of all kinds. If you need a copy, get them on the website here.

 

Holes

Our foreman, standing guard at the pit to our main drain line in our front yard … there’s another guy down there!

For those of you mildly entertained by the situation here at Tenth Muse central, all I have to report is, well, holes. I counted 8 points of egress big enough for the entry of adventurous birds or, in 2 cases, an adventurous racoon, thanks to the workers punching through our walls for new plumbing and a new electrical panel. Its kind of unnerving to stand in the middle of one’s house and see so many wide-open entries into the space.

There are also some deep holes! The nearly 3 foot deep hole in the master bath is big enough for a couple suitcases of cash (like I have enough cash even in single dollar bills to fill a couple suitcases, not after all this work!) but the 7 foot deep one in the front yard is ready for hiding bodies. Or maybe just my entire stash of failed art projects. That craziness has us now investigating xeriscaping and ground cover plants because between the trench and the well at the end of it (and all the dug up soil covering the area around it), that grass ain’t coming back. It didn’t grow well there anyways. So now we are plant shopping. I never much liked shopping before (unless if was for art materials!) but, man, am I getting burned out on that particular activity. The shopping part, not the plants. I’ve been enjoying my plants, with all the spring flowers in bloom. The garden has been my escape from all the chaos and noise!

However, in all this, I have managed to clear up the studio table and started working on new stuff! It’s amazing what can happen when you don’t have distracting chores like housecleaning (although I miss having a house to clean!) Keep an eye on my personal Instagram page for new pieces and, hopefully, new poetry to accompany it. Find me @thesagearts

 

Now off to enjoy a rare cool and rainy Sunday. I hope you have a beautiful Sunday to relax in and a great week ahead!

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A Dramatic Shift

April 28, 2019
Posted in

Pier Voulkos boxes

Of all the fabulous polymer clay techniques, which would you say is the most dramatic? There are certainly a lot of them that can be bright and colorful, shiny and sparkling, dramatic and graphic, but could you pick out just one that you think has the most impact when first seen?

I have to say, the one technique that really pops for me is mica shift. It can be colorful, shimmery, and quite dramatic, and has the added effect of looking three-dimensional when it is not. And who doesn’t love a visual illusion?

Mica shift has waned in popularity of late. I’m not sure why because it is just such a gorgeous technique. But when I started researching the idea of making mica shift the theme this week, I found myself on really old posts and pages, looking at work that was created 10, 20 or 30 years ago. That made me all the more determined to bring this technique’s wonderful effects back into the limelight here.

For those unfamiliar with the technique or how it works, here is a little history and explanation for you.

The effect itself is a result of manipulating the mica in metallic clays into orderly layers that you can then manipulate in a controlled manner. This can be done because mica, a shiny, silvery, layered mineral, forms tiny flakes when ground up. The flat side of these flakes are reflective, but the sides are not (like a mirror.) So, if mica is flat side up, it reflects light, but a stack of mica seen from the side is just dark.

You control the mica in your clay by conditioning it in a pasta machine, folding the sheeted clay in half and running it through over and over. The pasta machine rollers, squeezing the clay down, also nudges the flakes to lay flat. Eventually, all the flat faces of all those tiny flakes are facing up in the sheet, causing it to be reflective and shiny.

So then imagine what happens to all those perfectly flat flakes if you press something into them? The flakes get tilted, showing their dark sides (gosh, sounds like some people I’ve known!) That’s where the control comes in. You decide where to distort that perfectly flat sea of face up flakes with a texture sheet, a blade, or hand tools, and where there is distortion, there will be dark outlines of tilted mica. Those outlines are there under the surface too, as the flakes, like tiny dominoes, knock each other over under the invading lines of a texture sheet or a hand tool.

You can also just play with the difference between the shiny surface and the dark sides by stacking mica sheets and cutting it up, rolling sheets into a cane, or twisting or folding a narrow stack, just to name a few approaches. In these cases, the sides of the original layers stay dark and the surface stays shiny, so you have dramatic contrast.

Mica shift in polymer has been called by other names over the years. One of the original innovators of this technique, Pier Voulkos, (those are her boxes opening this post) called it her “invisible caning”. Later, Karen Lewis referred to Pier’s technique as chatoyant, a French term meaning to shine like a cat’s eye, which is used in gemology to describe the bright reflected bands of light caused by aligned inclusions in a stone. That’s certainly fitting for polymer mica shift too.

Let’s take a look at some truly dramatic and lovely examples of this technique.

Shifty Ideas

Around the same time period that Pier was experimenting with her invisible canes, Mike Buesseler was playing with mica clay sheets and “ingots”, stacking then cutting, twisting, texturing and curling up sections of these sheets and ingots to create beads and surface design.

Here is a beautiful necklace using a very simple technique of twisting a square strand of stacked mica sheets.

I would explain more about Mike but, instead, I’m going to let him explain for himself in what is, to this day, the best video class that I have ever viewed. No joke. I’d rather you stop reading this post and watch that video, if it’s all you have time for today. The video is well over an hour-long and it is twenty years old but, no matter how long you’ve been working with polymer or how much you think you know about mica shift, it is well worth your while. It also has an interesting little story about how it came to be a free master class for all. Check it out on YouTube here.

 

Grant Diffendaffer has long been my polymer clay hero. His mica shift and designs are breathtaking. Although he worked with techniques derived from all the early developed mica shift techniques, his most impressive are his impression pieces. This type of mica shift, sometimes called “ghost shift”, is created by impressing a texture into a sheet of well-conditioned mica clay and then the raised layer of clay is shaved off with a very sharp tissue blade making a smooth surface but leaving the illusion of dimension. Grant created his own texture sheets and then applied them to mica clay Skinner blends. His choice of blended colors surrounded by textured black makes for some very dramatic pieces.

 

Some of the most dramatic and graphic mica shift you’ll see to this day comes from the studio of Dan Cormier. A lot of his effects come from cutting and puncturing straight down through the clay. When using a blade, the clay shifts only in the cuts where the blade separates the clay causing just a hairline distortion and thus, very thin dark lines. Puncturing shifts more clay as the tool pushes clay aside to get through. The advantage of these distortions, however, is that the design is present and consistent all the way through the stack.

 

Here’s another take on mica shift from my own table. These gauge earrings might seem a bit more shimmery than a lot of mica shift as I add plain mica powder (bought from handmade cosmetic suppliers) and translucent clay to my metallic polymer clay to bring up the shimmer a notch. These are created from Skinner blend sheets that were stacked, twisted, and rolled smooth before curling them up. They also receive a lot of denim buffing. My mica shift effect is actually the same basic technique that Mike used for the necklace you see above but I twisted it tighter and rolled it smooth with an acrylic plate.

 

Just so you know, 3 of the artist’s mentioned here no longer work in polymer clay which is why you aren’t getting the abundance of information and links I can usually offer. Pier, Mike and Grant are all multi-disciplinary creatives who moved on to another creative form—Pier returned to dancing, Mike to music and Grant has stayed in crafts but has been exploring a variety of materials and forms. Regardless, we can sure be grateful for their time with us!

 

Curious Shift

If this little discussion of mica shift has you anxious to get to the studio table and try it out, I heartily encourage you to do so. In fact, I would like to challenge you all to create a little (or a lot) of mica shift this week. I’m going to do the same, creating some new designs with ideas I came up with after researching this post. I’ll share what I’ve done next week and post them to my personal Instagram page.

Do you think you can you get in one mica shift project before the end of the week? Try it and then please send me a photo or link you would be willing to share online, and I’ll see what I can share at the end of next week’s post. You could also just post to Instagram and tag with #polymerartschallenge or message me on Facebook at The Polymer Studio page or write back if you’re getting this by email.

If you have some great mica shift pieces to add to the discussion, leave a comment at the end of the post for us to check out.

And with that, I have to run. Its been a crazy week. There were some problems with production  and getting Issue #2 of The Polymer Studio wrapped up (the release for the new issue will be in a couple of days, April 30th, so keep an eye out for it in your inbox, if you have a digital edition coming, and your mailbox in the weeks to come. Or subscribe or order the issue on our website!) and then we’ve been having problems with the city getting our plans through so we can move forward with the renovations here at the house (many people are still rebuilding from the huge fires we had in November, so they are busy beavers at the planning offices) but, finally, the demolition begins tomorrow and there is still a last few things to prepare. Good news though … we put the refrigerator on the porch instead of in my studio! Yay! We moved the liquor cabinet in here instead. MUCH better idea. I think. Or will it be weird that I can pour a glass of port without leaving my chair here? Well, we shall see.

Until next Sunday my dear readers … have a wonderful week!

 

 

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Splitting the Difference

April 21, 2019
Posted in

Happy Easter or Chag Sameach or simply happy Sunday to you! I wasn’t sure I was going to get this one out between holidays and family and wrapping up the latest issue of The Polymer Studio (there has been a slight delay with the printer so we still have time to get you on the list for the first shipment from the printer if you subscribe or pre-order before Monday night  … go here to get yours) and picking out shower and floor tile (yes, there is a tad more drama at Tenth Muse headquarters, a.k.a. home, which I will expound upon at the end for those of you find it humorous to see what craziness I’m steeped in.)

So, have you ever been in the middle of a busy, stressful, crazy, chaotic day and then all of a sudden you just are coming up with new art projects from out of nowhere? Well, yesterday I was in this ginormous tile shop, putting white tiles against dark tiles and smooth stone surfaces next to busy mosaics trying to see what works and, of course, being so design focused, when it didn’t work I would ask myself why, and when it did, I asked myself why as well. (My mind is like a three-year-old… Why this? Why that? Why…?) This led to considering how I pair up surfaces in my own artwork. The fact is, I don’t do a ton of it, but I do really like it.

I think this also came to mind because I had the pleasure of online chatting with Kimberly Arden, a potential contributor for a future issue, and she showed me some of her pendants and earrings which are often a split canvas – one side is busy with canes or extruder veneers and one side is a lightly textured black with a flower or other form laid on it in using just a few canes, like the one you see opening this post. So, I’m there comparing tiles and thinking about her pendants which got me thinking about how often we pair up surfaces in art and next thing you know, I’m writing you this post with all this in mind. That’s how these themes happen!

So, let’s just ponder the idea of having two different surfaces next to each other on the same canvas or form. How is this done to in a way that still creates a cohesive piece and what are the different ways this can be applied?

 

Splitting the Canvas

Two or more different surfaces on the same canvas or form is a great method for creating contrast but like any other element, two surfaces that are not alike do have to have some kind of connection to make them work together in a piece. Yes, that connection is there physically when the surfaces are within the same framework in or attached to a singular object, but that is not usually enough. The best way to ensure a connection is to have at least one design element that is the same or very similar.

For instance, both sides could be the same color but very different textures. Olga Bulat does this in this necklace. Making it monochromatic keeps us focused on that texture and that difference which creates the energy in the piece.

 

Now, Olga could have had two different colors in the above piece but the colors themselves would have had to have some commonality. For example, both sides could be pastel, or both might be similarly bright. They could even be next to each other or completely opposite each other on the color wheel (because complete opposites also connect in our mind as being related but in an opposing fashion, if that makes sense. Think how much green and red there is at Christmas time. It works, color wise, right?)

Below is an example of using different colors but with the same texture so that there is commonality in the texture, but at the same time, the colors are also completely opposite (a dark, rich, warm brown versus a light, colorless, cool gray). These opposites are paired in our mind the way good and evil, young and old, and night and day are paired conceptually.

This is the genius of Meisha Barbee who also puts the canvas split on the horizontal (notice how many of the examples I show you today are split vertically – vertical has a lot of energy but it doesn’t mean that vertical is right for every piece.) Just changing the color however does not give the work a ton of energy so she adds a band of multicolored spots. I added a few more examples below the first pendant so you can see the various ways she pairs up the competing sides of the canvas. She uses large bands to separate when the surface pattern is subtle but goes for a simple slim line on the one with a bottom half already busy and full of extruded canes slices.

 

And speaking of changing up directions, you can also change up the point at which they meet. It doesn’t have to be a straight line or a simple curve Here is a simple design, actually done in terra-cotta, offered by a website called Tradenimbo. The zigzag line splits up the two sides with enough energy to carry the simple graphic look. Note how the pendant is the stronger design between it and the earrings, with the dots being a place of focus and rest for the eye as it jumps back and forth between the two sides.

 

Juxtaposing two different surface designs doesn’t mean it needs to be on the same canvas facing the viewer in the same direction. It could be on something three-dimensional so that the viewer has to walk around to compare. Or take it a step further and have a different surface on the front and back or get really ingenious and make it a curved surface so you can see both sides at the same time as Arden Bardol does with these whimsical earrings of hers.

 

You can also contrast different surfaces by creating one surface on the outside and another on the inside. Martina Buriánová did that here with two surfaces contrasted in pattern and treatment, yet with similar or highly contrasting colors which make a strong connection between them.

 

 

Splitting up is Not Hard to Do

If you find these contrasting surfaces interesting, click on any of the above artist names to see additional pieces for further inspiration. Then get to work trying your own!

Here is a simple series of steps you can try right now … A Cane Split Canvas:

  1. Choose a cane (or a few canes that go together) and pick a base clay in a complementary color.
  2. Roll a thick sheet of the solid color and apply canes to just one section, trimming or lining them up to create a boundary between a cane side and a solid clay color side.
  3. Burnish the canes into the clay sheet so the surface is smooth.
  4. Then, texturize a similar sized section next to the canes. You can use something as simple as sandpaper or add lots of tiny dots with a hand tool or stripes or lines or whatever you like, but I think you will find it more successful if the texture is very different from the canes. So, for instance, if you applied a series of flower canes with dots in the center, don’t texturize with dots but rather create something quite unlike anything in the flowers, such as a lot of orderly vertical lines or go for the randomness of a filter sponge texture. The cool thing about applying texture here is that if you don’t like it you can burnish it away and try something else.
  5. Once you have a texture that you like, use a cookie cutter, first as a frame to find the section to cut that includes the two sides– it doesn’t have to be half canes and half texture. In fact, 1/3 to 2/3 will probably look nicer in many cases. Move your cookie cutter around to see what you like.
  6. Once you find the section you like, cover it with plastic wrap and cut with your cutter.
  7. Your new split canvas form can be used as the beginning of a more complex piece or punch a hole at the top and you have a pendant or the first of a pair of earrings.

Now, if you want to splice together two different sheets of clay onto the same piece, you might want to check out this tutorial by Samantha Burroughs.

You may also want to take a look at the first issue of The Polymer Studio for the great tutorial by Julie Picarello who has a beautifully simple way to splice together a mokume gane slice and simple textured clay.

Got any great split canvases of your own? Share it with us by leaving a comment or a link at the end of the post!

 

Now for the Great Tile Adventure

Story time! For those entertained by the little dramas of my little life.

So, as you might have read in previous posts, we have been forced to do a kitchen renovation earlier than planned, in part because of a drain that collapsed under the slab on the kitchen side. The bad news came when the plumbers came out to plan the job and determined that the drain in the master bath was about to go as well so in addition to the kitchen, we have to tear out the shower in the bathroom. Oh, joy!

Actually, we were kind of happy about this because we really dislike that shower. It’s like a tiny tile covered phone booth, which is great for singing in but, not big enough for even a tiny mobile recording studio to make that worthwhile, it’s otherwise rather claustrophobic feeling. This is not to say that the news and the added cost to the budget didn’t give me a few more gray hairs, but I won’t be sad to see that go.

So, after spending two hours in a tile shop yesterday, mostly searching for just the right basic white but still subtly veined tile (veins in a cool, not a warm gray on a cool but not bright white – we are both artists so the color conversations have been quite intense) to go with our more dramatic accent choices and coming home and putting every tile sample we bought up against the wall, and not finding any to be quite right, I went into my studio for something and there in my stack of tiles on my studio table was the exact pattern of tile we were looking for. And I’ve been curing clay on it for the last six years! Now we just have to see if we can find eight full boxes of it somewhere!

Here I am giving my better half the not so great news that our ideal tile came from my studio stash and I don’t remember where I got it. But at least we know what we like!

I’m also, by the way, designing and making our kitchen backsplash which will, of course, have polymer in it somehow. So that should be exciting. Especially the part where I have to figure out how to carve out the time to do actually make that happen. But I will!

So, with my head full of tile images, I say goodbye to you for now. Have a wonderful rest of your holiday weekend and a great coming week.

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A Big, Bold Challenge

April 14, 2019
Posted in

Kathleen Nowak Tucci, Secret Garden Necklace

Have you considered challenging yourself creatively with something you’ve never done before, or at least not for a long time? I have a lot of creative friends who are doing just that right now and, as I work towards having free time again after an exceedingly busy couple of years, I am too considering what to start in on. My mind, probably like yours, never stops churning up ideas so the designs in my head and in my sketchbook have progressed into a variety of new possibilities. The question is, what do I challenge myself with first when I can get back to creating my own artwork on a regular basis?

Whether or not you are at a similar crossroads or want to change up what you’ve been creating, I encourage you to consider the question of how you could challenge yourself as we go through some work that is very much unlike what I have done in the past. I am hoping that, going through some of my own possibilities, this might start those wheels turning for you. What, if any, pieces here feel like they are in the same vein as your present work and which of these approaches have you’ve never imagined yourself doing but might consider?

Not Sage

I, like the vast majority of polymer artists, work primarily from organic inspiration. (See my post from last month about man-made inspiration for contrast.) A lot of my work is also rooted in story, particularly speculative stories dealing with the human struggle in both usual and unusual circumstances. It’s emotional, and personal and not at all neat and tidy. So, this means that certain styles of work almost never cross my mind as options. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try it.

Highly graphic work is one of the things that I’ve never done. I have no aversion to it and, in fact, really enjoy beautifully crafted and highly graphic artwork. I have even drawn particular elements as inspiration for aspects of my work, both in polymer and in graphic design, from the likes of Mondrian, Mucha, and even graphic novels. But I have never designed any highly graphic art work.

If I did aim for a more graphical approach, it might be something like Jana Lehmann’s colorful and fun pieces, with clean lines but still plenty of blended color and subtle color variation to make the colors glow and give it the calm energy I gravitate towards. I could see trying to create cleaner lines and using purer color and standard shapes although I think the organic would find its way in at some point.

 

Aren’t those flowerpot pins just adorable? That brings up another thing I don’t do much of. I don’t do cute. Which is strange because I love cute! Although I am kind of picky and maybe a bit odd about the cute that I enjoy. So, if I were to try to create something cute, it would probably be cute with a dark edge to it. Maybe something like these Bitty Bitey Ones by Darcy of North Carolina. Just look at these faces! The big black bead eyes help but it takes some serious sculptural instincts to get such great expressions. The cuteness factor is through the roof! Could I work on my skills long enough to create something even half as cute? Would I want to? Won’t know unless I try, right?

 

There is one thing though – I just couldn’t create such pieces in pink. Now, I have made some pink polymer jewelry in years past, mostly because of requests, and it did sell well but it didn’t do anything for me. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But the important thing was that I tried and found out I just didn’t want to. That period did get me a touch more comfortable with the color so when it turns up incidentally in a blend or interference powder, I don’t just set it aside. The thing is, it’s not just pink that I steer away from. I don’t, in general, work in bright colors. But I’ve really been thinking that more saturated colors are something I should push myself into trying out.

Maybe I could do something like Jana’s super saturated color schemes above or, go completely over the rails and aim to mix-and-match a little bit of everything in one piece like Susan Dyer so expertly does. Talk about graphic! Her use of solid colors and highly contrasting patterns could be sniped from Bauhaus prints. Her compositions often teeter on the edge of chaos but the confining silver bezels and the consistency of her unmuddled approach to color and pattern creates cohesiveness.

 

One of the reasons Susan’s work appeals to me is because it’s not actually that big – the pendant above is all of 1.75” by 1.5”. I also tend to design jewelry that works as an accent or embellishment for the wearer rather than it outshining a person. But I know a lot of polymer artists prefer large pieces as one can really show off the surface design and techniques that way. And, honestly, I would love to do some really large jewelry but since I generally wouldn’t wear anything really large, it’s hard for me to envision what a wearer of this kind of work would want, and I think that makes me hesitate to the point that I have not tried.

I have been trying to work up the courage to go big by taking a close look at the work of big and bold artists like Kathleen Nowak Tucci. I love her work because it’s not only unabashedly large but it’s also, in part or almost wholly, created from recycled materials, such as the Saul Bellow award winning piece of hers you see at the opening of this post. And talk about going big … her work has also appeared on several big TV shows including the multiple times her work adorned the immensely talented Lily Tomlin on the show Grace and Frankie. You can see both Kathleen’s Leaf Necklace and Pistil Bracelet on Lily here.

 

What’s on Your List?

There are a number of other things I could try to push my work outside my comfort zone but these are presently on the top of my list.  So, now that you’ve seen the top of my list, what do you think you would you be willing to try out that you would not normally do?

Keep in mind, this self-challenge is not designed to change your style but to just put yourself, and hard, to see what you come up with. There is the potential for as yet unimaginable discoveries about yourself and where you want to take your work. It can be a way to inject some fresh new energy into your studio time and, since there is no end goal such as even showing the work to anyone or selling it, these explorations can give you the freedom to just push yourself in unselfconscious directions.

Are you one of the ones that have been doing this already this year? If so, maybe you’d like to share what you’ve tried to do and how you like the experience. You can insert a comment at the end of the post to let me know. Maybe when things slow down over here in the chaos it is my home at the moment, we can devise a midyear challenge for us all to work on. What do you think?

 

A Bit of Business … Last Chance to Subscribe and Get Issue #2 Directly from the Printer

If you haven’t subscribed or renewed your subscription to The Polymer Studio, you will want to do so by end of day Monday as we send off the mailing list to the printer to Tuesday morning. Be one of the first to get the new issue in your hot little hands by subscribing or pre-ordering your single issue now.

Your subscriptions and purchases support what I do here so if you like the blog, help me keep it going while also continuing your artistic education with our highly informative, entertaining, and rather pretty publications.

 

Back to the Chaos

Ok, gang, I have to get back to wrapping up the next magazine issue while navigating my discombobulated house. The chaos is in a holding pattern while we wait for the city to get the plans back to us. There is a ton of construction still going on due to the fires in November so things are a tad busy over there. But at least we figured out how to NOT have the refrigerator in the studio although it is just outside my door, just looming over me. So my present challenge is not to open that thing every time I have to squeeze by it!

As for you, my darling readers, I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a fabulous week to look forward to.

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Mixing and Mingling, New Cover, & 33% off Back issues

March 24, 2019
Posted in , ,

We have a bit of business to do first today but it’s exciting business! I wanted to share with you the next cover of The Polymer Studio, coming late April.

We are thrilled to include projects from Cynthia Tinapple, our featured and interviewed artist for this issue, as well as Christi Friesen, Kathy Koontz, Elena Mori, the Mitchell sisters, Deb Hart, and Wendy Moore. Also, tips, tricks, and other bits of wisdom from Debbie Crothers, Ginger Davis Allman, and little old me. And you won’t want to miss the tour of Christine Dumont’s studio, complete with a conversation about her space and process, which I think you’ll find very intriguing.

All this and more, just a month away! Support our projects, this blog, and the betterment of your own polymer journey, of course, or just because you’d like to look at all the pretty things tucked into those pages, by subscribing to The Polymer Studio here.

(Be sure to scroll down to the last section for the 33% off sale stuff.)

A Fine Mix-up

So, did you get a chance to look through the winning entries for the IPCA awards? Here’s the link again if you didn’t see them. The winning entries are just beautiful and maybe even a bit surprising. If you saw it, did you notice any trends or changes in trends and what was presented? I thought it was interesting that there were a lot of mixed-media pieces where polymer clay might have been the focus, but other materials played large roles in important design aspects and visual impact of the work.

One of the reasons I find this so interesting is that the idea of expanding into other materials seems to be a regular conversation myself and many other people are having. I couldn’t say exactly what that means but I do believe that polymer, with its unparalleled flexibility for combining with other materials, has kind of come of age where our exploration of what it can do is being placed on the back burner in order to focus on artistic expression. I look at these mixed-media pieces in the awards and other pieces I find during my research and general perusing online, and it seems that we are seeing more instances where polymer centric artists decide what they want to make and then determine the best materials for the work rather than push to see if polymer can be used for most, if not all, of the components of a piece. Or perhaps I am just hoping this is the case because I would love to see more folks focused on personal expression will rather than letting our obsessive, but understandable, infatuation with the material determine our creative parameters.

Of course, for most of us who work in polymer now, this colorful, durable, and chameleon material will remain our primary love and, regardless of other options, we will often still try to do as much as we can with polymer, if just to see if we can push it a little bit farther. But, opening oneself up to the possibilities of combining it with other materials in major ways will allow us, and even the viewer, to focus more on the design and expression and less on the material itself, which will let the artist’s expression, vision, creativity, and aesthetic really shine. I find this very exciting!

So, this week, let’s look at some of the mixed-media pieces where other materials play a primary role alongside polymer. This could be very helpful for you if you have felt like you’re in a rut or are too often hitting technical or design walls in your work. Trying out a different material may just be the thing to inject you with new enthusiasm and, possibly, send you down a new path with your artwork.

Mixed Directions

Let’s first look at some of the winners of the IPCA awards and in many ways that other materials have been mixed in.

This first piece is both a mixed-media and a mixed artist piece. Ellen Prophater or worked with Sherry Mozer, a glass artist, led to the use of the black glass piece with its shades of green within reflected in the mokume polymer it sits upon. It is set in a silver bezel and accented with Swarovski crystals. Both the mokume and the glass show off a subtle transparency, drawing the connection between the two along with the green cast colors. It’s a nice reminder that collaboration can also push us in new directions making new discoveries in our work and even ourselves and our friendships.

 

Donna Greenberg just killed it as the professional mixed-media category. This wall piece is called Wedgewood Wave but the word that keeps coming to mind for me is swoon. Not just because I feel like swooning, it’s just so gorgeous, but that’s also the word that comes to mind from that fabulous flow of energy through those waves, back into the pool of blue. Those waves are paper, but the application of color and shape are similar to the polymer pieces so the different materials feel cohesive. This is definitely one of those cases where another medium was the better choice. Trying to create those waves in polymer would’ve been just silly, even though it could be done. The paper gives a lighter feel to the overall piece as well as a light and easy flow to the visual movement. She also used Ultralight polymer alongside the Arches cold press paper, acrylic gouache paints, watercolor pencils, and Apoxie paste, each material fulfilling its purpose in a way that another material would not have been as successful with.

 

With the issue of the environment heavy in many of our minds, we are seeing a lot of exploration into found or recycled or upcycled items. Sarah Machtey offered up this steam punk pouch necklace with removable magnifying glass for the mixed media category of the awards with a bit of all of that. The front and back of this small pouch is from a soda can turned inside out – you can still see the printing of the soda can on the inside – but she embossed the can with decorative lines and used mica powder infused liquid polymer in the recesses to make them stand out. The band across the top is upcycled copper from a renovation project while the side leaves and earrings are polymer clay. Not sure if the magnifying glass was bought or found but it certainly could have been reused from something else.

The pouch is 7” (18 cm) in height from the top edge to the bottom of the magnifying glass, so it’s no small bit of tin on there. Of course, she could have used polymer to create the metal sections but it would’ve been a bulkier piece. The tin keeps the weight down as well as adding some structural strength that would only have been accomplished with a much thicker wall of polymer.

 

Keep in mind, when we are talking mixed-media it doesn’t necessarily have to be another art material. For instance, I combined poetry with photos of polymer in a challenge last year that I was posting on my personal Instagram page. Other people mix it up by installing the work in unusual places so that the what is placed on becomes part of the artwork such as fairy doors installed on walls or in tree trunks or tiles installed into a kitchen backsplash. Rachel Gourley takes it just a touch further, installing her little collections so that they recede into the landscape. She scatters her polymer elements out and about in natural settings, looking much like organic growths but unexpected in their color, shape, and placement.

 

Putting Together Your Own Mixer

This week, I didn’t pull any tutorials for you to try because it would have to be a mad, a long list of other materials to give you any real idea of your options. Instead, I might suggest that you keep your eye open for what other polymer artists are doing with other materials. Perhaps one of the above ideas piqued your interest already. If so, research that other material and find ways to acquire or hone your skill in that medium. Just put “polymer clay and [fill in the blank with the material you’re curious about]” into the search bar on Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, or Google images and see what pops up. Add the word “tutorial” to see what offerings there are online. I’m sure there will be plenty of inspiration.

You can also grab your Spring 2015 – Diversity issue of The Polymer Arts or the Convergence themed issue from Spring of 2016, both of which have a ton of ideas around using other materials with polymer. You can see the table of contents for all back issues of The Polymer Arts on this page to check out what these issues have to offer. Then, if you don’t have the issues, you can order them on the website.

In fact, let’s have a sale!

Why don’t you grab a few back issues and take a full 33% off 3 or more! Good on digital or print, I’ll keep this up until next Sunday so grab them this week. Use promo code TPA33 at checkout.

And … I’m Off!

I would normally have some community news and deals for you to look into at this point, but I did not get to that. This week has been a struggle. I am being kept busy by a house that has decided to just fall apart all of a sudden. My creative energies have been used up relocating kitchen activities to the garage, the porch, and even my studio because of plumbing issues while getting tons of exercise running large circles around the house because the garage door won’t open, washing my clothes in the bathroom sink because the laundry machine won’t drain, and constantly shuffling ice packs from freezer to fridge because the fridge is on and off and its replacement is weeks away from getting here. All this happening two weeks before we start some (apparently!) much-needed kitchen remodeling. I’m not making this up.  But talk about mixing it up!

So, I’m going to get back to my at-home glamping while trying to get the next issue wrapped up for you. But tune in next week for more polymer pretties and inspiration, and, hopefully, less house drama from Sage’s corner! In the meantime, if you work with another medium, please share it below. Or tell us the most unusual medium you’ve combined with polymer! I’d love to get a feel for what you all are working on besides polymer. Leave links to the work as well if available! (If you get this by email, click on the post title to get to the post page and scroll down to comments.) I’m excited to see what you all have to share!

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All It’s Cracked Up To Be

March 17, 2019
Posted in

What is it about weathered and worn surfaces that so many people find attractive these days? Mind you, I am very much one of them. I have a whole line of work called “Beautiful Decay” that explores the beauty I find in the deterioration of durable materials. But the one related effect that seems to be everywhere these days is crackling. Who doesn’t love a good crackle! From shabby chic furniture to crazed ceramics to crackle glass decor, the look of a deteriorating surface seems to have wide-ranging appeal.

Knowing that, it’s not really a surprise that crackle is so popular as a polymer technique. A great many of us are already texture fiends and, if you love texture then you are going to try crackle- so there’s one of the reasons for its popularity in polymer. But we also know that there is a market for work with crackled surfaces since it pops up in so many areas related to decoration and adornment, making it a safe bet if you sell your work.

There is no one right or best way to create a crackled surface in polymer. You may not have realized it, but there are literally dozens of ways to create crackle. It can be created with a crackle paint medium, partially cured layers of polymer (like I show you in my Controlled Crackle technique which you can find in your Fall 2011 edition of The Polymer Arts), dried paint (or glaze or gilders’ paste or floor wax) on raw clay, metal leaf on raw clay, leaching, alcohol treatments, or by creating a faux texture with impressed materials. And I know I am still missing a few in that list!

So, let’s enjoy some crackle work today and wrap up with a few tutorials on different crackle techniques that you can try out.

 

Let’s Get Cracking

One of my personal favorite “cracklers” is Staci Louise Smith. She uses a number of different techniques to achieve a wide range of cracked texture. In the necklace below, her crackle is not subtle. It is not evenly spread across her beads either but rather, it is rough and tumble and scattered in energetic horizontal lines. Her soft coloring calms the chaos of the crackle which is also balanced out by the many other purposeful accents and lines from the wire.

Staci can also do subtle as evidenced by the opening piece, a Balance Bowl from her tutorial in the Polymer Art Projects – Organic book. (You can get the book on our website if you want to make one of these stunning bowls.)

Check out this blog post where she shares how she makes the necklace here along with sketches and her thoughts on the process.

 

A subtle crackle can often take a bit more patience but what a lovely effect it can have. It may not even be obvious at first that the beads on this necklace below by Ursa Polak have a crackle surface, but the weathered feel comes across immediately. Take a close look to see all the fine-lined cracks that add to the depth and variation of the surface.

 

Kroma Crackle is a lovely gel medium that itself dries and cracks without having to stretch the clay and yet remains flexible so that you can manipulate the clay without the cracked material popping off. Once you worked with it for a bit you can control the size of the crackle pretty well. You can add small amounts of acrylic paint or mica powders to give yourself a wide variety of color options. You can also apply paints, inks, dyes and other colorants on it after its dry.

These earrings are by Els van Haasen uses Kroma Crackle on polymer. You can see how regular a crackle you can get with this medium. But it can definitely be quite varied once you come to understand how to use it.

 

You almost forget that the technique that was most commonly used by the highly esteemed Elise Winters, who we lost just this year, was also a crackle technique. Her work was very controlled, as was crackle but that was probably the most recognizable part about her signature style. I can only imagine the work she put into gaining such control over her crackle, but it just shows what can be done when we invest a bit of patience into our work. (I erroneously put in that this was metal leaf when I first posted but, no, it’s paint, which also takes such skilled control, having to ensure that the paint is evenly applied to get such fine crackle.)

 

This is actually a piece of mine from some years back. It includes alcohol treated raw clay, controlled cracking of partially cured clay, and metal leaf colored with alcohol ink. The alcohol treatment is a way of drying out the surface of raw clay to get a very fine crazing. It’s a bit of a tricky technique but it sure worked here. That helped create the uneven surface of the partially cured polymer under the metal leaf, giving it a burning ember look.

 

Let’s Crack You Up

Ready to try some various cracking techniques? Here are a few freebies to get you going:

If you want to try the straightforward Paint Crackle Techniques:

  • Grab a craft acrylic (the cheap acrylics work better than artist tube acrylics which tend to stretch rather than crack) or tempera paint and a well-conditioned sheet of polymer rolled on the thickest setting of your pasta machine.
  • Brush a moderate (not heavy) layer of the paint onto the polymer. Wait for it to completely dry.
  • Then roll it through the pasta machine set at two settings down from the thickness you created the sheet on. You can stop here or, for wider, more varied crackle, turn the sheet 90°, adjust the pasta machine down another one or two settings and run it through again.
  • You should have a nice crackle now but if your paint is stretching rather than cracking, rolling another sheet of polymer and lay the crackle sheet on top and then start rolling it through the pasta machine again. Eventually, the paint will crack but sometimes you need a really thick layer of polymer to start in order to stretch it far enough. Tempera paint won’t stretch and cracks very nicely if you have that on hand or fancy a run to your local craft store. You could also get some crackle medium while you’re out and follow the instructions to crackle paint directly on your raw polymer clay.

You can find some examples of the use of different paints on this post by Jan Geisen.

For more tutorials online:

  • One of the things I didn’t show you in the samples above was how to use impression material to create a faux crackle effect. I use crumpled aluminum foil for this and then use the antiquing approach of rubbing acrylic paint into the cracks after its cured and wiping it off. But Katie Oskin has an interesting material to share in this online tutorial, as well as showing the effect of painting it before she impresses it.
  • In this video tutorial, Sandy Huntress shows you how to crackle very thin sheets of partially cured polymer clay.
  • Crackling can be done on round surfaces too! Here’s an online tutorial using metal leaf on bicone beads to create crackle. Keep in mind you could do the same thing by painting the beads and then rolling them around to get it crack.

Do you know of other great crackle tutorials or want to point out another crackling technique I didn’t mention? Drop a comment below (if you’re on this post’s page online) or click on the title of this post to go to the post’s page and share the info with us all. It would be much appreciated!

 

Bits of News

 

Okay… Off with me. Working on the next issue of The Polymer Studio. Get your subscription or catch up if you didn’t get the first issue by just jumping over to the website now.

Know that your purchases and subscriptions help me pay the bills so I can justify the time I put into sharing all the good stuff on this blog. Help me help you as we collectively feed our addiction to polymer!

Have a wonderful and creative week! –Sage

 

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