Plethora of Patterned Plates
June 15, 2016
Uncategorized
We have some incredibly beautiful work in the gallery sections this issue. We are very fortunate that we got Bonnie Bishoff and J.M. Syron to showcase their new work (and grace the cover) and are thrilled to have the latest work from Staci Smith to share with you, as well.
The surprise gem of our collection in the Summer issue of The Polymer Arts galleries, I think, is the beautifully patterned plates by Arieta Stavridou of Nicosia, Cyprus. We had an incidental conversation on Facebook about the Polymer Journeys book and in clicking through I found this photo of them. Not that applying canes to plates is new, but her pattern and color choices are just gorgeous. Placement, orientation, and pattern combinations are very intentional, intention being so important in art, especially in something like this. I loaded a large image of this plate collection so you can click on it and see the detail better.
I talk a bit more about intention in art in my editor’s letter in this issue, as well. And, of course, we have many more of Arieta’s plates to admire along with her fun teapots in the Summer issue’s gallery pages. You can also see more of her work on her Facebook pages.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create or design a piece with very intentional repeated but varied patterns. This can be several different canes, hand tooled marks, or repeated motifs. You could even do a combination of these. Combine the elements used for the pattern based on some specific concept. Any concept will do as long as it has a very intentional connection, such as analogous colors, the flowers in your garden, symbols of ancient Greece, or images that remind you of your beach vacation.
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Polymer Idols
April 18, 2016
Uncategorized
As you may have seen on Friday’s post or through another avenue, we recognized 6 particularly talented artists in a featured section of the Polymer Journeys 2016 retrospective book. I thought we’d take a day to look at each of them this week and next, see what they are up to and maybe where they are going.
Georg Dinkel was the first of the group in the book. His work just continuously amazes and entertains. His work is beautiful and fun and, at the same time, it makes a serious statement about the questionable idolization of technology and manufacturing the brands. I happen to have a bit of an insider’s view on a new project he will be unveiling at Eurosynergy, although I cannot share details. But suffice it to say, it’s quite the undertaking in both detail, size, and complexity of movement.
The reason we are so in the know is because Georg is also the artist we are profiling for the next issue of The Polymer Arts. We have an in-depth interview on his process and how he came into polymer from an unlikely side door in his photography career. His story is as fascinating as his work, so you won’t want to miss the next issue if you’re a fan. You can go to the website to get a subscription or just keep your eyes on this blog and we’ll let you know when individual pre-sales are available.
I love this photo with Georg next to his TV Shrine. It helps to see the scale of his work. This piece in particular has so much detail and to imagine he did all but the support structure and electronics in polymer is pretty mind-boggling. There is so much more to see when the doors of the piece are open, too. Go to this page on his website to see more detailed shots of this piece (see if you can make out the TV celebrities in the pictures that look like saints and holy men on the inside of the door). And, if you have the time, just wander through his site and watch his videos. There is so much to take in!
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Have you ever tried to make a statement with your work? What is on your mind these days? Design or create a new piece that addresses an issue close to you. You don’t need to be literal. It can be very, very subtle, represented by related colors in your work or by creating a related image or form. Let the idea marinate for the day if you can before getting down to designing it.
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Recognizing Inspiration
April 15, 2016
Inspirational Art
I have a little something different for you this morning and I will get to this amazing piece you see here at the end. This announcement will go out on a few channels between yesterday and today so I hope not too many of you get hit over the head with this but … with the Polymer Journeys book coming out next week, we wanted to publicly announce our board’s picks for artists whose work and contribution to polymer art during the years 2014-2015 were particularly significant and inspirational and so were highlighted in the featured sections of the book.
We are certainly not saying our opinions are the end-all and be-all on this subject, but our consideration came from our own vast experience and education as well as gauging the impact and response we have seen in the polymer and craft communities. Although the creation of this book was in no way a contest, we did feel that making specific note of these artists and their work will further help us understand the direction and history of the medium in years to come. Here are our two featured categories:
Best Polymer Art of 2014-2015–these are artists and art that pushed the boundaries of what can be created with polymer. All these artists have been recognized for their masterful skills as well as the messages and vision found in their work.
Recognizing Generosity–We also wanted to recognize the generosity of the artists and the resulting programs that have become such a big part of the community. To that end, we included these amazing people as well as stories on how they have helped others.
So what is this unusual piece I have to show you here? It is a special and rather personal project created by the amazing Wendy Moore, who you see was recognized in the book under the section highlighting our charitable artists. Wendy is a primary force in the success of the Samunnat Nepal project. Bringing polymer clay to the women there gave them a joyful and colorful way to create financial independence when they so desperately needed it. She continues to return to teach and helped the project grow.
Wendy feels like Nepal is as much home to her as her native Australia. This robe of Wendy’s was actually part of processing a farewell to a part of Australia that she had to move away from. I won’t say much more on that, though, so those of you who are waiting on the book can read her short but poignant story.
If you have not pre-ordered your book but would like to, we have extended the 20% off sale until the 20th due to the delay with our printing that put the release of the book off until April 21st. Jump over to the Polymer Journeys website to take advantage of the early discount.
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Lines that Lead to Contrast
April 13, 2016
Inspirational Art
Lines are largely directional elements. We see a line and our eyes run along its path to see where it will go or where it has been. Combining lines that go in various directions will have us glancing over and back, jumping from one to the other as we try to follow them all. Our busy eyes are what make us feel that the lines are energetic. Energy can be good if that is what you are after, but unless you want to leave the viewer feeling ungrounded, you might want to have a place the eye can rest.
In this set of earrings by Lela Todua, you get that moment of rest in the strip of textured clay down the center. You also get this kind of mirror image of the criss-cross lines on one side being mimicked by the lines of changing color in the mokume gane surface on the other. Although not really the same kind of lines, the type of patterning and direction of lines are close enough that our minds see a likeness. It helps ground the two otherwise contrasting halves in a subtle relationship alongside their physical kinship being the same mirrored shapes connected to the same long central bar. The result is that our eye jumps from side to side, with a quiet moment we can take in between on that dividing bar. The dividing bar is actually a line as well, but she adds these simple dots at the end that keep our eye from sliding off and so our glance returns to trying to take in the broader surfaces. It gives us a sense of a full and complex composition in a small amount of space.
Lines and contrast seem to be the staple of Lela’s work as you can see by what she has to offer in her well stocked Etsy shop.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Find various styles of lines in everyday or natural items and find two that you see any kind of relationship between. Use these as inspiration for creating contrasting textures for a new piece. Alternately, create multiple textures with lines in a preferred set of materials and techniques, ones that develop random patterns (mokume, marbling, scratches, splashes of paint or ink, etc.), then find patches of texture that work together because of a suggested relationship your eye finds. Create a piece from them.
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A Relationship of Lines
April 11, 2016
Uncategorized
I have had this in my collection to share for a few weeks, but I hadn’t been able to figure out who the artist was until today. The image came from a Facebook post … that’s all I knew. Now, I am excited to introduce a new artist! Well, an artist that is new to me, I suppose. I haven’t learned a whole lot about her or her artistic story and history just yet.
I was intrigued by the mix of surface textures and the energy of the various lines used. The surface is both impressed with a controlled and deliberate pattern, probably hand tooled, then a central bit of random cracking, then a predictable pattern of swirling copper. They are all highly energetic lines, each doing their own thing independent of the others but nested the way they are and all in a muted orange of some sort, they work together.
The use of line and its energy as well as warm muted colors are even carried into the stringing and connectors of this piece. It makes for a lot of interest and movement but with a very cohesive feel.
After searching and searching, using Google image searches and looking through Facebook for artists with the initials MB, I finally got a hit and the mystery was solved. This necklace was created by Martina Burianova. You can find her on Facebook or check out her work on her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create a surface texture with at least three different types of lines in it. Create cohesiveness by choosing another element or two (color, material, texture, etc) they all have in common. You can make three separate elements, each with different line qualities, then work on arranging them so they have a visual relationship that creates a balanced design, or just dive in working on one surface with line qualities intermixed.
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Traveling Color
April 8, 2016
Inspirational Art
I have one more day of running about before I can get back to business as usual. I love road trips primarily for the wide variety of things you see along the way. This trip was particularly colorful as spring starts to show itself and the wispy clouds in the sky turn sunrises and sunsets all shades of pink, peach, and violet. Then there was rain yesterday, drenching the red rocks around the new green foliage in the central California mountains. These are the kinds of things that really get you excited about playing with color.
But since I can’t go play, let’s enjoy the color play of Claudia Stern, a bit of a jet-setting person herself. Claudia is a native of Peru who studied jewelry design in Italy and now lives in Sweden. She works in textiles but commonly uses polymer to create floral additions or centerpieces for her work. She creates gorgeous and intricate purses as well as jewelry. While I finish the last leg of my traveling today, enjoy this colorful neck piece and go take a look at her colorful work on her Facebook page and her quieter metal work on her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Take particular note of the color you see throughout the day. What colors are you drawn to? Choose 2-3 colors or a combination you see and use it as the basis and inspiration for a new piece.
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On the Way There …
April 6, 2016
Inspirational Art
I’m going to be a bit brief the next few days as I will be on the road with not a lot of opportunity to research online, but I’ve found some new pretties to share and ponder while I zip about the western states.
This popped up on Kathleen Dustin‘s Facebook page the other day. Although her signature translucent layers and that integrated wire work she’s done a bit of the last few years is present, this feels very different. The conglomeration of elements looks like it could be pure stream-of-consciousness, something a bit more difficult to do with polymer than with, say, writing, but it has that spontaneous feel. It’s very different for Kathleen. I love discovering the first of a new series for an artist. Really makes you wonder where they are going to go with it.
And speaking of going … back to the last of the packing with me. I’m actually looking forward to the long hours on the road where I can’t do much of anything but think. The only problem with that is these are the times I usually come up with the best design ideas. And I can’t even sketch! Still, quiet time is really good for the creative brain. Hope you get some down time, as well!
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: See if you can get yourself some down time today. It could be while commuting to or from work, while in a doctor’s waiting room, in a long bank line, or just sitting quietly at home. Try to let your mind go and let forms and colors float through your mind. What shapes or color palettes have intrigued you lately? Don’t think too hard about them and see what comes to mind. Go to your studio or get out a sketch book and work up a design based solely on what you saw in your mind.
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A Glimmer of Hope. And Jewelry Furniture.
April 4, 2016
Inspirational Art
Last month was a very long month. So much was going on only now can I see the light at the end of the tunnel, a glimmer of hope, a spark of optimism that all of our special projects will be wrapping up. So in honor of those glimmers and lights, how about a few slightly blingy things this week?
We’ll start with some new Donna Greenberg earrings. Seeing a new piece of hers always brightens my day. And I do love those cool jewel tone shimmers. These are not overly complicated but I am very much for simplicity right now. The shiny side kind of hangs out there like a beacon of some kind.
But I also wanted to share this because look … she made her own stand, or jewelry show furniture, as she calls it. How fun and fabulous is that?
See what else Donna has been up to on her Facebook page, where I found these, and her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create your own style of displays for your work, something completely different from what Donna made. Displays can be artistic, but be careful with heavy patterns and colors brighter than your work. You want your work to stand out, not your stands. Search online for DIY display ideas to help you out. These kinds of projects are prefect for dipping into your scrap bin. You can paint or powder mud colored clay displays to bring them back to life.
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The Past Comes to My Door
April 1, 2016
Inspirational Art
Some days, I just can’t believe how insanely lucky I am to be doing what I do. A few days ago I was blessed with these gifts from Germany. These are not just any gifts. If you read the Muse’s Corner article by Anke Humpert in the Winter 2015 issue of The Polymer Arts, or read the blog post about Sigrid Smolka last November, then you know some of this story.
Anke brought to our attention what must be the very first book of polymer techniques, written in 1974, and I was ever so thrilled that we were able to share Sigrid’s story. But now, I get to actually hold the book in my hands. I am so thrilled and have been just bursting with the implications of what I have so I just had to share.
Sigrid contacted me a couple of months ago and said she wanted to send me her book and a few other things. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I thanked her profusely and patiently waited. Poor Sigrid has been having intermittent health issues so she was not able to get them off right away and eventually employed her friend Theresa to pack the intended items up for me.
Well, not only did she send the polymer book but also her book on air dry clay techniques and three of her polymer pieces from her years creating in the medium. And … she also sent prints and cards with her more recent computer paintings. Note the print on the left has a March 2016 date. Even with her ups and downs these days, she is still creating and sharing her art. I am amazed by this woman.
Since it seems too selfish to keep these to myself, I will be bringing the book and her polymer pieces with me to Eurosynergy in Bordeaux to share. I assume many people in the community are like me and would be thrilled to see pieces of our past in person. That is also why I sent Ellen Prophater and Sue Sutherland at Creative Journeys Sigrid’s contact information, so hopefully her work can be included in their amazing retrospective collection. It just wouldn’t seem complete without this earliest pioneer included.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Can you recall a piece or an artist from when you started in your present medium that greatly influenced your work? Can you recall what it was about their work that inspired you so greatly? Take that inspiring element or your sense of the artist’s work and design or create a piece that pays homage or utilizes what you got from them without copying anything they did.
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A quick note on the Polymer Journey 2016 book … we’ve been able to extend the introductory sale through Friday, so if you haven’t reserved your copy or were waiting for payday, this is your chance! Go to the website today before the price goes up this weekend.
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here are timeless techniques as well as timeless art. This easy but impressive looking technique, painting with mica powders on molded clay, was posted by Lilin in 2008. This particular construction harkens back to the art deco style with the enameled look of the butterfly wings against the stylized faces. It gives them an antique air. Lilin credits Donna Kato as her inspiration although she doesn’t say if that was from a book or class. But she gives her own brief instructions and tips, enough for you to get some ideas and run with a new design of your own.
The instructions for these are on this blog post. Lilin hasn’t posted since 2009 and I couldn’t find any reference to her moving her work to somewhere else. I am always curious how an artist progresses. It’s both encouraging and fascinating to see people improve their skills and to see what directions they chose. So I am curious. If anyone knows what Lilin is up to now, let me know and I’ll post an update here.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Find a new way to apply an old technique. Look through your older project books, back issues of magazines, or your favorite tutorial sites and find something you haven’t done in a while or never tried and use it with your present forms and color palettes. What do you do differently today that you didn’t when the tutorial was published or when you first used it? It’s interesting to see how your approach has shifted.
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Read MoreOkay … a couple little notes first …
Thank you to all of you who jumped in and pre-ordered a Polymer Journeys book. It was very heartening to see how many people are interested in this kind of book and I so hope you all enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together. If you wanted to get in on the discounted pricing that we have through the 30th, just head over to the Polymer Journeys website.
For those of you who get this by email, you may have noticed a change in the look of your emails the last time or two. We moved to a new, more stable email service for you. You now have “like” buttons, so you can share it on 252 different social networks and online sharing services (Never knew there were so many!). Not all of them will transfer the image, if that is what you want to share, but you can click the post’s title in the email and it will take you to the post where you can share the URL address instead. If you have any questions or comments about the new format, just reply to the email and let us know!
This book has raised a number of discussions about looking at work retrospectively. I wanted to create Polymer Journeys as a series as a way to document what has been going on in polymer art as well as give us a more concrete way to understand where it’s going. The internet has endlessly muddled our sense of what is happening today because if something was posted anywhere at any point since the internet went public, it could pop up on someone’s screen for the first time, and it will seem like something new.
This mosaic is an example of something that came up while I was doing some research online that I had never seen before this past week. I thought it a beautiful example of how polymer can be used as a material for a traditional art form, giving the artist a bit more latitude and ease in creating the tiles for a traditional mosaic application. However, Geena Bregar, the creator of the mosaic, posted this some 13 years ago. I had never seen it and would have been at a loss as to guess its age if it weren’t for the dating of the blog post.
Of course, the question is, does it matter if we know when something was made? In many ways, no, it doesn’t. The strongest art continues to inspire, draw admiration, or causes someone to stop and ponder years, decades, or centuries after its creation. But I think the history of an art form, an artist, or even a piece of art itself has stories that we can learn quite a bit from or at least find wonder in them. I’ve been talking about how polymer has really reached out and touched so many other forms of art and is being used in conjunction with so many materials, but pieces like this are a good reminder that this influence and creative use of polymer is nothing new.
I think, really, polymer always been that kind of material. It’s just hard to get a good perspective on when and how this reach and influence occurred. If the Polymer Journeys books do well, perhaps we’ll be able to have a clear and educational perspective alongside a great collection of beautiful work to inspire us for years to come.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Look back at your oldest pieces in whatever medium you first created original works. Do you see new and inspiring elements even now? Take an element–a form, the way you used line, a technique, or color palette and combine it with your advanced knowledge and skill in a new design.
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Read More
We set aside our usual art discussions today to announce the first big book project for TPA and the associated book publishing arm, Tenth Muse Publications–Polymer Journeys 2016 is just about ready for you! The release is set for April 14th.
This retrospective and peek-behind-the-scenes book is in its last phase of preparation for printing! Now that we have a publication date, we are offering you very anxious and enthusiastic folks a steep discount and a bonus to thank you for your patience and to give you the opportunity to get your copy straight off the press and into the mail!
We have an exclusive pre-sale price for just this one week. If you purchase the book on our website by March 30th, you get 30% off the cover price of $22.95! That’s all of $15.95 plus shipping.
It is also available in a digital format, which will be $12.95, but this week you can reserve your copy for just $9.95.
But wait … there’s more! (I’ve always wanted to say that!) I also worked out a way to reward our most enthusiastic supporters … be one of the first 250 people to pre-order a print copy and get a companion digital copy for FREE! Just put both a print and digital copy into your cart, then use this code to discount the digital copy: 1st250. (You’ll know others beat you to it if you get a note saying the discount is no longer valid.)
Want more info on what this book is? Go to the website here. In the meantime, enjoy the gorgeous cover art by Kathleen Dustin (top) and Jon Stuart Anderson (bottom).
We’ll be here if you have any questions for us. Otherwise, have a beautiful Spring and Easter weekend!
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