A Touch of Color
May 11, 2013
Inspirational Art
I wanted to take a moment as we wind up this colorful week, to point out a simple fact about color–how you use color is just as important as what colors you choose. I feel this needs to be emphasized because with all the colorful work we’ve been looking at this week you might think you need to get more colorful or bolder. But the use of color is about how it affects the impact of your piece so you can use a lot or just a little and still have a highly impactful piece.
I think Betsy Baker fully realizes the value of color and balancing it for impact. Here is a series of pendants with barely any color visible, yet the color that is there is very dynamic visually because it is not competing with any other colors and is starkly contrasted against white.
These pendants are both calm but bold at the same time. It’s very powerful, really. So, you see it isn’t about how colorful your piece is but what you are trying to convey and how you can use color to help you make a statement or design a piece to come off just the way you intend.
Guest Post: Radiate!
May 9, 2013
Inspirational Art
My dear and darling friends Tracy Holmes and Dan Cormier are helping out a tired and worn out publisher this week by guest posting for me today. I wanted to write up something about their color projects for our color theme this week but Tracy graciously took the writing upon herself and Dan put together the fun image of the cubed color project they conducted for Synergy 3 (they are such incredible idea people!) So go ahead and ‘radiate’ with them …
When I invited artists to participate in a project that combined the diversity of polymer clay with the almost uncountable possible configurations of a Rubik’s Cube, I gave them a few guidelines. While each artist was welcome and encouraged to showcase their own skillset and sing in their own creative voice, this was, primarily, a project about colour. “Please,” I suggested, “Keep each of your six sides within a clearly identifiable Pentaradial Palette.”
A what?
Through this project, and through my workshop and seminars at the recent Synergy3 Conference in Atlanta in March, I introduced a new approach to colour that I’ve being playing around with; a new way to explore and understand it, in theory and practice. In my world, a ‘Pentaradial Palette’ is a group of colours that radiate from a single, central place to create a cohesive collection of related hues. Basically, it’s taking a standard ‘Colour Wheel’ colour and, rather than chasing it around in circles as one of six, moving it into the middle to become a single ‘Hub’ for the other five. Whether you start with RYB or CMY (that’s another discussion), for this discussion, can we all agree that Green is a Secondary colour? Good. So, here’s what my PC3 artists got as their ‘Pentaradial Palette’ grid guide for the Green side:
With the right recipe (concept + clay + courage), mixing custom colours is easier than you think. But having said that, if you’re not quite ready to go DIY with the CMY, there are plenty of prêt à porter spokes already on the pre-packaged polymer clay colour wheel. Starting as recommended, with the purest and simplest of Hubs, here’s what nine of my PC3 artists did with their Greens:
As a polymer clay artist and teacher, I think it’s best to work towards work that features a personal palette, rather than one that relies on colors that are right out of the package. And, as my color-courageous Cubists discovered, it’s amazing how quickly adding just a little of ‘this’ to a package of ‘that’ will shift the starting hue away from something everyone recognizes, to something that is so much more ‘palettably personal.’
So, whether you’re going Green, mellowing Yellow, seeing Red, feeling Blue, shifting Cyan or mixin’ it up with Magenta, stop spinning your wheels. Grab a color, start there … and radiate!
Follow Tracy & Dan’s color adventure on their Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/TheCuttingEdgePolymerClay
Covering the Original Artistic Voice
April 30, 2013
Inspirational Art
Since there seems to be a lot of conversation about originality lately, I thought we’d focus on that idea for a bit this week (which is a great excuse to just bring the most stunning work I can find to post for you!) Finding your own original voice versus copying or following trends has been a point of discussion since Synergy 3 with the widely shared talk, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly in the Age of the Internet given by Harriete Berman, to comments and links here, to other articles and posts making the rounds like this one regarding copying posted by Ronna Sarvas Weltman on her Facebook page over the weekend. Originality is a very hard thing to teach. But awareness of what it is may be the first step in finding your own original artistic voice.
Covering objects with cane slices is in no way an original idea. But if someone did it for the first time today and for weeks after other people started doing it, would they be copying this innovative artist? Not necessarily. It is not the process or the skill that makes a piece unoriginal but the ability for a person to make what they see or learn their own personal expression (see Sunday’s post for the more in depth philosophical discussion on this). There are techniques, concepts and approaches to making art with your material of choice. Learned well, they become a skill. This will not make one an artist. It is what you do with it, how you make it your own, let it express what you see and care about. So … how can covering with cane slices be wholly original?
This frog is a Jon Anderson piece (see the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts for a gallery of his work and bio based on the only interview he has ever given.) It is completely covered with cane slices. However, every slice has been placed with purpose and as a way to express what Jon wants to portray about this creature and the colors and patterns he has been inspired by throughout his life.
Jon chooses the patterns on his slices, the colors and the way he lays them out to emphasize the form of the frog as well to embody his sense of what is beautiful. He also embeds symbols such as the moth on the frog’s head that give you reason to pause and wonder what else this is about besides the frog. There are a few other artists that use the same patterned approach to covering forms with cane slices but I have never seen any of their pieces that could be mistaken for Jon Anderson’s. His approach is a reflection of himself, the individual, the original person that his life and experience has formed.
Who would you consider the most original artist that works in the forms, techniques and/or approaches that you do? (And it’s okay if you think it’s you. It may very well be!)
While Waiting for your Pardo Translucent Clay …
April 24, 2013
Inspirational Art
It’s funny how many comments and emails I got on Monday when I mentioned that I had untouched blocks of Pardo translucent clay in my studio. There is such a demand and yet so little available. I have had email conversations with a contact at Viva Decor but I never got a straight answer as to why its in such short supply or when we might expect to see it more readily available. So what’s a frustrated artist to do? As far as actually getting your hands on some, your best bet in the US seems to be getting on PolyClayPlay.com’s waiting list. (Is it any easier getting it in Europe by chance?)
In the meantime, I say go play with our other options. Pardo may be the clearest (so we’ve heard) but only in the clays themselves. The absolute clearest polymer you can work with is Fimo Decorating Gel. Although it can also be tough to locate in some places, it’s not impossible to get a hold of. (See our post last year regarding Fimo Gel and a false rumor; I listed places to find it.) You may not consider Fimo Gel to be a primary polymer to create forms with but with a little outside-the-box thinking, you’ll find you certainly can work with it as something other than an addition to the surface of clay.
Kathrin Neumaier has been playing extensively with both Pardo Translucent Art Clay and Fimo Gel, sometimes interchangeably. Here is a piece in Pardo Tranlucent clay (and what a fun piece!):
And here are basically the same forms but created in Fimo Gel:
So, yes, you can form pieces from liquid polymer and get a translucene as good if not better than with the elusive Pardo. And just think … there’s no conditioning!
The easiest way I found to work with liquid polymer as a form is to start out making sheets of cured lpc. You simply drizzle then lightly brush out the liquid polymer on a clean and very smooth, flat surface and bake it like that. A piece of tempered glass or polished sheet metal is an ideal surface. If you don’t have either, you can use a sheet of window glass (you can buy small panes at hardware stores or take the glass out of a picture frame) but you should put untempered glass into a cold oven and wait until it’s completely cooled before taking it out–rapid temperature changes can cause the glass to crack. (And tape up the raw glass edges with masking tape–let’s not cut ourselves!)
If the liquid polymer comes out of the oven still a little milky in spots wave a heat gun over it, keeping the heat a couple inches (50mm) away until it goes clear. (If you baked it on untempered glass, take it off the glass first.) Then you can cut whatever forms you want from that sheet. You can even add more liquid polymer to build it up or add color.
I would say about half the work I did in the first couple years I worked with polymer was created with lpc forms made this way and not just with Fimo Gel. After practicing for a bit, I could get any lpc to got completely clear. It just takes a little patience but its wonderful fun.
Kathrin has made all kinds of forms from liquid polymer including hollow beads and one piece collar necklaces. If you have the translucent bug, you need to take some time to browse through her Flickr pages for some inspiring ideas on what you might try while waiting for your Pardo.
Clearly Accidental Composition
April 23, 2013
Inspirational Art
Translucent layering is a wonderful way to add depth to a bead or, in the case of this piece below, a little polymer painting.
Roberta Warshaw isn’t too happy with this polymer painting but I think she has accidentally ended up with a better design than she might have if she had been able to fully control the process.
Her process here includes marker ‘painting’ on the clay, layers of translucent polymer lamella (a technique using very thin translucent layers embedded with metal leaf as developed by Kathleen Dustin) and a little carving of the clay. She professes to have laid a layer of lamella the wrong direction thus losing the “golden glow”. She doesn’t say where this mistake is and I can’t see it or maybe the photograph doesn’t show it. Regardless, any misdirected layer is not affecting the end result in any negative way. And what is wrong with a glow-less layer? A little contrast between glow and no-glow could add dimension … an expanse of matte color among the glittering lamella sea. Sounds a bit dramatic but, hey, it’s true–uninterrupted shine will often have less impact than shine interrupted and contrasted with a little dull or subdued mixed in.
Her other disappointment was stated to be in her carving skills. The leaf stem on the left is wider than she intended. However, stop and imagine if the stem was as slim as the rest (see the photoshop version below). Do you see how it changes the balance and the movement in the piece? In the one above, the heavier leaf on the left pulls the balance towards the outside and the stems going from a barely there slimness on the right to a heavy, robust leaf on the left suggests growth (which is often what we sense in a graduated scale of size … from small like a sapling to large like a full grown tree.) Between the pull to the side and the sense of growth, there is a feeling of movement, something more dynamic than the pretty but comparatively static feel of what I think she was after.
I can’t disagree with her on wanting more control with her carving. Even though I like the composition better the way it ended up, you can kind of tell the larger leaf was not intended, that the carving of it may have been worked over a couple times or was done with a heavy hand unlike the other two. Often, a large part of the beauty we perceive in a piece of art is the sense that the work done was wholly intentional and under the artist’s control. You can have good composition, excellent color choices and an intriguing form but if it is created without skill, it is very difficult to enjoy the other aspects. Do you agree?
Building Uniquely on a Form
April 18, 2013
Inspirational Art
I considered moving on to rings today but since we covered that subject so thoroughly in The Polymer Arts Winter 2012 issue (and so many of you are subscribers), I thought we ought to move on to another kind of construction consideration … home decor! This most commonly involves covering objects–vases, bottles, boxes, switchplates, clock faces, etc. Our inclination is to cover the object, keeping within the boundaries and following the shape of the form we’re covering. But why? We work with a material that can create a myriad of visual effects and be built into almost any form we can imagine. Why would we let a pre-formed object dictate so much of what we do with it?
Ariane Freisleben doesn’t actually say she covered an object in the piece below but it certainly looks like it and it beautifully demonstrates the idea of moving beyond a standard shape.
This was created using techniques Ariane learned in a Jeffery Lloyd Dever workshop (but no pods here!) which could have been executed by layering the clay flat on a standard bottle shape. Instead she plays with the edges building them outwards and twisting them away and beyond from the expectation of straight vertical lines that would have stopped before the neck of the vase. The result is a much more dynamic object with curves in the form that reflect the playful lines decorating the surface of the clay.
If you missed the switchplate we showcased a week ago, that is also another example of breaking out of the boundaries of an object. If you cover objects, have you ever pushed beyond the boundaries of the form and shape?
If you haven’t played with covering objects or would like to learn more including some suggestions for some more unusual objects to cover, don’t miss the covered objects article in the upcoming Summer issue of The Polymer Arts due out second half of May.
The Challenge of Changing Earrings
April 16, 2013
Inspirational Art
Alright, more construction chatter. I thought I’d go for the hardest form to talk about … earrings. Mind you the construction of earrings themselves are not usually challenging but that’s the point. What else can you do with them but create a bead of some kind and attach an ear wire or a post? Finding something different to share … THAT turned out to be quite a challenge.
So let’s think about this. What about the earring form is different from all other adornment? Well, two things come to mind … for one, they are usually made in pairs and secondly, they are the only standard type of body adornment that doesn’t go ‘around’ a body part. We have two ears so we think we need two earrings because of the symmetry inherent in the pair of ears that they will adorn. So that is the first area we can push … the symmetry. I’ve seen quite a bit of this kind of thing–a pair of earrings that are related in form and color but are not alike. Have you ever tried that?
That is not so much about construction as about the type of design you choose. The second unique characteristic is the fact that earrings hang off the ear in some manner, so they have the potential for movement as well as being seen from nearly all sides. Can we push the construction to exploit these characteristics? (Because it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t ask you to consider pushing an idea!)
With earrings you have all this open space below an ear to work with and when the wearer moves, the earring can move through all this space. So why not exploit the possibility of movement? This might require a few more connections, maybe a row of beads or multiple dangles. There will need to be some consideration of how they will hang from the post or ear wire if there are multiple parts. But this could be fun.
So this is what I found for you. Talk about movement! Here we have the polymer not only able to swing in the space below the ear but this eclectic jewelry artist, Sunitha Lal, makes more space within the polymer, space from which additional pieces can swing and move as well provide areas of attachment to hang additional beads.
The chandelier style of earring here is not that unique, certainly not in metal work. But in polymer, creating space as part of the design is not utilized quite as often. I imagine much of that has to do with consideration for strength but also it may simply be out of habit, some kind of standard that we’ve established whereby we expect to make solid pieces to dangle from our ears.
If you have any unusual earring constructions, I’d love to see them. Perhaps we can share a few at the end of the week. Just write me directly at sbray@thepolymerarts.com.
And if you want to expand your repertoire of ear wires and findings, don’t miss our next issue in which we have a whole article on that very subject. Subscribe or renew at www.thepolymerarts.com to ensure you don’t miss out!
Engineering Art–A Necklace of Change
April 15, 2013
Inspirational Art
One of the more challenging aspects of jewelry art can be the engineering. Even if you are making a simple pendant, there is at least a moment or two where you should stop and consider how it is going to hang, what kind of bail or attachment it will have and how long the chain or cord should be. That is the engineering of its function as adornment. When getting into more complex necklace designs you might have to consider points at which it needs to ‘hinge’, the balance so the center stays at center, how the parts or beads will fit together, how it will sit around the neck or on the shoulders, etc., etc., etc.
There are some standard necklace designs you can always stick with, like a straight-forward string of beads or a large focal piece strung with a symmetrical arrangement of companion beads on either side. Keeping the engineering simple is often the best route. But have you tried challenging yourself with unconventional designs? Asymmetrical arrangements, unconventional hanging points and/or bails, pieces that must fit precisely together, etc.? How about a piece that can change at the whim of the wearer? Now that is a challenge.
And it’s a challenge that Cristina Almeida took up several years ago with the construction of this piece, the Infinity Necklace.
Click on the image to open a larger window so you can better see the different ways the necklace can be worn.
In Cristina’s words, ” The Infinity Necklace is all about construction … you can actually change the whole construction of it, add and reduce components, make it shorter or longer and it all connects with body piercing [jewelry]. The whole piece is made using polymer clay … Kato clay for the rigid parts, Sculpey Bake&Bend clay for the flexible parts.” Besides the unique ways the necklace can be hung, it has some very intriguing beads within those intriguing bands. Beautiful and ingenious.
This really does take engineering a necklace to a whole other level. But a necklace isn’t the only thing that takes a little engineering. I thought I might spend a little time this week on that idea. I had quite a lot of fun last week with the Swirls and Curls themed posts and thought I’d try a theme again. What do you all think about posting according to themes for the week or at least part of the week? I thought I’d try it for the next few weeks and see what comes of it. Let me know if you’re enjoying them!
By the way, did you know … subscriptions and purchases of The Polymer Arts magazine are what make this blog possible? As you might have noticed, it is not plastered with ads. We may have to expand the advertising a to help with increasing costs but I’d like to keep it to a minimum, so if you enjoy this blog and aren’t already a subscriber, do consider supporting it with a subscription or issue purchases. And you’ll get even more in-depth and inspiring information in The Polymer Arts magazine. Its a win-win-win for us all!
Circles and Dots and Things that Go Round
April 13, 2013
Inspirational Art
I know I bombarded you with swirls and curls this week but while we are on the subject, I thought we could look at another element that also really draws our attention. The circle.
Circles are a prominent element in all kinds of artwork because they are one of the most powerful basic shapes we know. It is the shape of some of the most important elements in our world such as the sun, the earth, the moon, eyes, and human faces. Circles are a signal to focus in on a particular spot; we don’t usually put a square or triangle around something we want to make note of … we draw a circle. It’s also a very pleasing shape … balanced, continuous, and soft. So if you use it in artwork, a circle, more so than probably any other element you have in a piece, will draw the eye.
So what if you use a lot of circles? And dots which are designators like pins on a map? Well, I think you can get a lot of attention. Just look at these pieces by Beatriz Rubio. Circles and dots and spots … you can’t help but check them out, can you?
So what have we learned this week, kids? Things that go round can certainly draw our attention. That’s enough for now. It’s the weekend. Time to go out and play!
Would you call yourself a selfish person? I doubt very many of us would think that way about ourselves. Yet, as artists, we often find ourselves “stealing” time away from others or other things to do what we love, reveling in it when we have it. Is that selfish? I mean, it is more about us than anyone else, isn’t it?
Yes, it is about us, and that is as it should be. In the requested comments for last week’s giveaway (scroll down to see the winner and this week’s giveaway), participants mentioned some version of the “me time” aspect of getting to sit down and create more than anything else. I mean, I know we create because it is something we enjoy, regardless of what anyone else thinks, but I just love that so many people acknowledged and celebrated it. We should!
I strongly believe that everyone should have something of their own, something they can turn to in order to express themselves or at least put something out into the world that would not have existed without their desire to create it. The art we create gives us purpose, exercises a uniquely human part of our brains, and helps us to love ourselves. Not to mention that we deserve the joy we get from it!
But, by definition, that is selfish—doing something because it’s what we want. I wish our society would get over the idea that doing something for ourselves is bad. I think not doing things for yourself is self-negligence. Why is that not a commonly understood thing?
This also highlights the bigger, contradictory world that we inhabit. We live in such strange societies where selflessness and humility are expected or requested, and yet we are also pushed to strive for excellence in what we do. How do we reach excellence without focusing on ourselves? And then there is this silliness where we are not supposed to acknowledge when the work we do is good or that we’re proud of it. If we do, others may think we’re being arrogant or grandiose.
So, do we strive to be great and then pretend that we’re mediocre? We talk about contrast being good in art, but this is so not the right kind of contrast!
I’ve long found the dichotomy of these contradictory but societally prescribed behaviors beyond aggravating as well as having the potential to be debilitating. I think that is why it made me so happy to see so many people acknowledging their creative hours as me-time, self-care, and a time of wonderfully selfish joy. Keep it up, I say!
Now, let’s talk about the good kind of contrast in art.
Design Refresh
Let’s look at the beautiful brooch by Lyne Tilt that opened this post. What do you notice first about this? There’s a lot going on in this little space, isn’t there? What are the three things that jump out at you as far as design elements?
I’m going to say color, shape, and texture. Did you come up with the same three? There is also a lot going on with marks and size. So, any combination of those would be spot on.
How about design principles? What do you think is the number one principal used in this design? Sure, we could refer to scale and proportion considering all the different sizes of the layers, or we could talk about focal point or even just key in on the centered composition. But the one thing this has in spades is contrast.
Obviously, there is color contrast in all the major color characteristics—she has a vibrant trio of warm colors contrasting the cool of the blue and cyan; color values range from the dark blue and deep red to the moderate orange to the light yellow and pale polished silver; and, if you check your CMY color wheels, you’ll see that the color of the bottom layer is a blue-cyan whose complementary AND split complementaries are the yellow, orange, and red that you see in the upper layers.
But doesn’t a color palette have to have at least one common characteristic between all the colors? Well, ideally, yes, and this does. Here it’s saturation. These are not muted colors. The orange may be slightly tinted (has some white in it) but not enough to feel it’s gone off base from the saturated characteristic that ties them all together.
Now, look at the contrast in the textures. The top and bottom layers might have the same texture, but the rest are vastly different. There are even different materials—metal and clay. But they work together pretty well, don’t they? Why?
The textures work together in part because they are all drastically different—the wide variety is part of the charm of this piece. But, like color, they need something to tie them together.
Did you notice that the textures are applied to the entire layer from one edge to another? Thier differences are connected because the application on each layer is the same. That does seem to be enough to allow them to exist in the same piece and not have it feel completely chaotic.
The shapes, on the other hand, are not completely different but they are not the same either, right? They are all some version of a hand cut circle, but some of them are definitely more oval. I think pulling back on the amount of contrast between the shapes also helps to rein in the potential chaos all this dramatic contrast and color and texture could fall into. The centered composition also adds a bit of calm to the piece.
Let’s take this week to consider the design principle of contrast. Would your pieces benefit from more contrast, or do you need to rein some of that in? Remember, it all depends on your intention. There are no wrong levels of contrast, at least not in art.
Last Week’s Giveaway
Drum roll please…
This last week’s randomly chosen winner is Eloise B! I’ve spoken to her and her clay is already on the way. Congrats Eloise!
This Week’s Giveaway
Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s giveaway through comments on the post. As mentioned above, it really made me happy to see all the fantastic, positive and self-caring observations. I also hope it gave you a moment to focus on and appreciate what you love so much about creating.
So, let’s do this again.
The Goodies:
- This week I have a selection of Sculpey clays in 2 new Soufflé colors, 3 new Premo colors, and 2 big 8 oz. blocks of clay stash basics—Sculpey III in Pearl and Silver. That’s 26 ounces of fresh clay along with a three-piece set of Sculpey silkscreens.
- Or if outside the US, I have a $25 Tenth Muse certificate, since it would be such a gamble to ship clay outside the US.
How to Win:
- Put a comment in the blog comments* (below), telling me what type of contrast you enjoy creating most in your own work, or the type of contrast you wish you used more of. And, yes, if you want to share pictures, you can do so by including a link. Just don’t put more than one link in or it may spam filter the comment.
- Note: It can take some time for the comment to appear if you’ve not commented before since, due to annoying spamming, I have to approve it .
- Giveaway winners will be chosen by random—it will NOT be based on your answers. I do hope you’ll give it some thought anyway. The answers could be helpful to you as well as interesting for the rest of us.
- And let’s say you can only win once this month so we can spread the love around.
- Get your comments posted by Wednesday March 17th at midnight Pacific time to get in for the raffle.
- I’ll announce the winner here on the blog next weekend!
I’ll put together yet another pack of goodies for a giveaway in next weekend’s post, so stay tuned here!
You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like…
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We are going to be dropping in on some big names this week and next to see what they are up to and what they have to inspire us with.
First up: Bonnie Bishoff. Her focus on jewelry these last couple years has been a journey through a variety of styles as she moves from working primarily in veneers on furniture with her partner J.M. Syron to smaller and more intimate work. But regardless of the style, her quietly strong and confident sense of color and pattern mark each piece like a signature. These lovely earrings are paired almost solely by color scheme although they do work within a limited set of variations in composition, visual texture and shapes. Each variation relays a slightly different mood, adjusted through the level of contrast in value and hue. The subtlety of this communication is what really brings home how masterful her color work is.
You can see what I mean by looking at the body of her work. You can do so by jumping onto her Instagram page and the website she shares with J.M. Syron.
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Happy Monday, fellow polymer enthusiasts. I’m not sure how this week is going to turn out as I have not had time to put together a full-fledged theme so we’re gonna go with “things that caught my eye” for now.
I’m sure you can understand why this piece by Marion Le Coq aka Fancy Puppet, might have caught my eye. They are fun and refreshing pieces, wonderfully finished and composed. She connects all her elements with repetition of motifs, colors, or other things. For example, the leaf off the apple is reflected in the leaf addition on the back and hanging leaves. The carrot’s colors are reflected in its layered pieces behind it, and its crisscross of lines reflect the crisscross of the plaid.
I’m guessing the plaids and dots are silkscreen but the secret is probably available on her YouTube page where she has dozens of tutorials and review items. She’s also quite busy elsewhere online. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, Canal blog, and Etsy.
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I recently realized that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the lowly squiggle. But who doesn’t like a well-done squiggle? I guess it’s hard to take it seriously with such a silly-sounding name but the sound of the word itself describes it so well.
I myself am very fond of squiggles and apply them throughout my work, primarily as accents, but some people take the squiggle to wonderfully elevated levels as the central theme of their piece.
This pin by Petra Nemravová is an excellent example of the squiggle stealing the show. The organization of these wonderfully unruly squiggles brings a regular rhythm to their organic movement. It reins in the rambling energy that this kind of squiggle contains. The bright array of colors, which could also get out of hand, is held in check by a regular graduation from one color to the next, helping to create an energetic but contained feeling.
Petra is such an advocate of bright colors and cheerful compositions. Enjoy a stroll through her colorful world on her Flickr photostream. She is also the genius mind behind the wonderful selections found in the online polymer shop Nemravka, serving the European polymer and craft communities and beyond.
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I decided this week I would like to talk about work that speaks to me. Well, I don’t mean that I want to talk about me so much as use pieces that do speak to me as examples of what it means when a piece of artwork elicits a response from the viewer.
For various reasons, I ended up thinking and talking a lot about how we define art this past week. I have long felt that art should be defined as work that is made with expression and intention, with a goal of eliciting an intellectual or emotional response. Yes, I know a lot of people will say that it is the individual who should determine what art is to them but I would like to suggest that such a statement is not quite the right phrase. Each of us can determine what is good art or what is bad art—to that I absolutely agree. But shouldn’t a label such as “art” have a more specific definition than just whatever someone thinks is art, or just something that is made by hand, as the definition would seem to be nowadays?
I am guilty of this broad use as well so I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just a big proponent of using language to effectively communicate and I think it would be great if the English language had a well-defined use of the word “art” that allowed us to talk about work born of self-expression versus craftwork or artisan work created from skilled hands.
My definition also brings up the question of what does it mean to elicit a response? It is not as confined a concept as it might sound like so I thought I’d try to define that a little this week.
For a piece of work to elicit a response all it has to do is make the viewer stop and feel something, or stop and think. It could be something as simple as making them smile or as complex as questioning societal norms. It can be positive such as emitting a sense of peacefulness or negative such as work with a high shock value geared to make you appalled or angry. If the piece is made with intention, part of that intention will, consciously or unconsciously, be to communicate with the viewer, and if the artist is communicating then they are attempting to elicit a response. Good art accomplishes this. Bad art is too distracting in its failings to communicate or illicit anything of value.
This piece here feels like a very personal piece for Shannon Tabor who commented on her Instagram post of this that “I’m back to my roots in design with ‘Compass’. My Back To Basics study is over and I’m anxious to get all these design ideas out of my head and onto my clay!”
I can feel her excitement for this new work in the composition and surface treatment of this necklace. There is a buzzing kind of energy from the scratches and the asymmetrical placement of elements but there’s also a reservedness in the basic geometric shapes and the subdued and shaded palette. I found that I was drawn to the contrast between that reserved feeling and that feeling of excitement. It reminds me of that point in time right before things really take off in some exciting new venture, which I love, and so that must be what made me stop and spend time with this piece.
So, you see, Shannon may have been working on something specific to what she wanted to explore but the intention in her skilled design choices allowed me to connect with her emotion, or at least my sense of what her emotion must’ve been. That’s eliciting a response. And to me, that’s what makes it art.
See what else Shannon is up to by following her on Instagram or hopping over to her website.
Read MoreHappy Monday to you all. Business first… preorders for the fall issue of The Polymer Arts is available online now. We don’t have a precise publication date but looks like mid-September. I’ll let you know here on the blog, in our newsletter, and on the website when we know. Again, thank you for your patience with me while I work on healing my overworked joints.
Okay, one more piece of wall art, this time by the inventive Angela Barenholtz. I know it seems like we’ve been talking about wall art for a couple weeks but this will probably be the last for a bit. I picked this one for a couple reasons having little to do with wall art.
For one, it’s a really fun piece with its variety in color, visual texture, and even the long shapes that make up this “polymer quilt.” Creating with a large variety of primary elements makes for energy-infused and eye-catching work. But, the trick is that everything still needs to work together and have some kind of relationship. In this case, the relationship is in the consistency of the type of pieces inserted into this quilt—long and evenly cut strips of visual texture arranged in a square composition. With this much consistency, you can go nuts with the variety of color, texture, and pattern.
Each one of these could actually sit on its own—like it could be a pendant or brooch if small enough, or even a pair of earrings. Giving yourself a canvas of a certain size and shape releases you from having to be overly concerned about the bounds of individual elements and construction of the work, particularly if you’re creating jewelry, and you get to play with what you place on that canvas. I imagine a lot of you might find that attractive, being we are so in love with our surface treatments, canes, and textures. How many times have you fallen in love with just the sheet of clay you were working on before it became anything? Creating a simple surface to work with can allow you to present those fantastic results in a fun and easy manner.
Angela is all about surface design and variety. You can see that by looking at her Flickr photostream. She also generously shares her techniques in her published tutorials which you can find on Etsy.
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Guest Blog Post by Teresa Pandora Salgado
Van Gogh admitted to the world, “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” Me too, Vincent.
One of the most infuriatingly fabulous things I cannot do is make cane like Jon Stuart Anderson. Jon creates canes in a cunning palette that leans in close and whispers, “Go ahead…take your time…look at me.” And I surely do. And the world does too.
I love the way Jon cruises nimbly past the pedestrian cane crossing. He jaywalks that trodden path without ever touching the ground. Obvious contrast? He doesn’t need it, no matter how much the cane is reduced. Nor does he require new colors. Jon keeps it fresh with precision, composition, and balance. Neat trick.
Jon Anderson is known for his millefiori animals: elephants, turtles, bulls, and birds. You’ll notice the creatures have a flesh and blood sense about them, a beating heart beneath their rich robes. So you look and you look and then, just when you think you know him, Jon takes you to another fork in the road. To the left, skulls, vessels, lights. And to the right, guitars. Ohhh, the guitars.
So, go ahead. Look. Be inspired. Aspire.
See Jon’s work at his website here.
Teresa Pandora Salgado is a polymer clay artist, designer & instructor from Los Angeles, California. She has made 87 YouTube tutorials which have garnered over 2 million hits from viewers in 151 countries. In addition to teaching live workshops on millefiori complex caning across the U.S., Teresa helms the online store, Tiny Pandora Crafting Boutique, which featuresMilll her specialized tools and kits.
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In perusing #the100dayproject on Instagram these past couple weeks, I’ve noticed that veneers are quite the thing to be experimenting with right now. Whether you call polymer sheets you work with surface design, surface treatments, or polymer veneers, it does feel like the clay surface is having a renaissance of exploration.
One of the first of these explorations that I’ve noticed in recent weeks was this piece by Lindly Haunani, which she posted on Facebook. Of course, the queen of color is going to have a showstopper based on her color choices alone, but the subtle texture and the composition of the layout of the veneers, for all the energy of the color and lines, has such a satisfying sense of calm and rightness. There is that obvious sense of intention and deftness of skill that brings refinement to such unquestionably masterful work, even in a piece the artist claims is exploration.
Explore more of Lindly’s work on her website and Facebook page.
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Another great contribution to the Spring issue was in our artists’ gallery. All of our artists are unique in their approach but it is Isabelle, known online as Bellou, whose designs are really standing out.
Isabelle creates bold, contemporary adornments that are polished to a glass-like shine. Her work often has a centered focal point but the balance of the components are set in asymmetric arrangements or are all shaped differently with different treatments. However, in all the disparity there is a common element that brings it together.
This is one of the pieces she sent us that we couldn’t work into the gallery pages. On the one side, there are wide, solid pieces, dense with texture, but on the other side, the space is opened with a series of cut-out shapes that have the same mica shift texture as the other side. The rest of the center piece brings in a grounding energy to the movement of lines and shapes that play across the necklace.
To see more of Bellou’s work, take a look at her shop pages here.
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