Found Mediums
December 14, 2018 Inspirational Art
Our last look at using polymer and other materials this week will be with Debbie Crothers. She posted this lovely assemblage of elements this week on Facebook and I just had to share it.
Debbie is well known for her surface design work and posts tons of her experiments and beads but it can take a while for her to come around to putting the pieces together into finished jewelry. I understand inclination. The textures revealed and the blooming of colors that happens as you manipulate and add to the polymer on your worktable can be intoxicating. I know I just want to keep trying new things but at some point we gotta do something with the elements we’ve created.
So I’ve been excited to see this whole slew of finished work popping up on her social network feeds right now. But she isn’t just using polymer elements. This dynamic piece includes polymer spikes, recycled beads, and a recycled ring. Debbie is also a thrift store hound (something else we have in common!) which can be such a fabulous way to find additional bits and bobs to add to polymer jewelry and other assemblage work.
Take a closer look at Debbie’s recently assembled finished necklaces and earrings on her Facebook page and her website. And don’t forget to stop by her shop for some fun tutorials to keep you busy and entertained this winter.
(Right after I wrote this, I found that Debbie wrote her own post about her “Upcycling Jewelry” so for more on the subject, jump over to her blog here.)
New book! Polymer Art Projects—Coming October 20th
September 10, 2018 Inspirational Art, Polymer community news, The Polymer Arts magazine news
This week is going to be a series of announcements but I promise, they will all be very exciting, they will all be polymer, and they will all give you something you can look forward to as we move into fall and winter (or spring and summer if you’re down under.)
First up… I can finally announce and show off the cover of the first in an upcoming series of books, Polymer Art Projects. This series arose from your consistent request for more projects and a desire to support and promote our great artists, so, after many conversations, I came up with this cooperative book project. All contributing artists in the book will be part of a promotion and profit sharing team. That means they are highly motivated to provide you with some truly fantastic material on top of looking forward to sharing their love of polymer art.
For less than a couple of dollars each, you get 16 tutorials that will expand your abilities under the guidance of some of the polymer community’s best instructors. The skill level of these tutorials range from the experienced novice to the intermediate artisan, with tips and ideas for polymer crafters of all levels. The tutorials are very detailed, each showing off a variety of techniques, expert construction, and lists of ideas for variation so you can create your own unique pieces from what you learn.
The first in the series, Polymer Art Projects—Organic, includes tutorials by Donna Greenberg, Christi Friesen, Eva Haskova, Anke Humpert, Debbie Crothers, Kim Cavender, Stephanie Kilgast, Chris Kapono, Stacy Louise Smith, Nevenka Sabo, Adriana Allen, Dani Rapinett, Fabiola Ajates, Rebecca Thickbroom, Klavdija Kurent, and little ol’ me. Projects include a variety of jewelry as well as home decor, all inspired by mother nature.
Check out the cover for a sampling of what you can look forward to. The cover price for the print edition of this book will be $23.95 but for the next month, you can preorder for $16.75 – that’s 30% off the cover price. Or maybe you’d like a digital edition which will list for $15.95 – you can preorder the digital edition for just $11.95. These preorder prices are good through October 10th.
Don’t forget the last issue of The Polymer Arts comes out September 22. Preorder this last historic copy on The Polymer Arts website.
Finally Focused: The Fall Cover
August 17, 2018 Inspirational Art
Thank you all for your patience. The fall issue is coming together now and, as you can see, we have a lovely piece, a brooch by Helen Breil, to grace the cover.
The theme for the fall issue is “Center of Attention” which will include all types of focal, emphasis, and center point type conversations. Here are a few the articles you can look forward to seeing next month:
—The Focused Art of Helen Breil
—Six Different Fresh Faux Stone Technique tutorials
—Organic Sautori Necklace tutorial
—Designing Dynamic Focal Points
—Diversifying with Hair Adornments
—Becoming a Niche Artist
—Inspiringly Unexpected with Christi Friesen
—Creating for Yourself with Debbie Crothers
… and much more.
We hope you’re looking forward to this as much as we are! We should have the release date before the end of the month. It’ll be something to look forward to as we head into the fall (for down the southern hemisphere, spring) season!
We are setting up the website for pre-orders as I write this so if you click through to www.thepolymerarts.com and it is not there yet, it should be by Monday. I’ll remind yon on the Monday’s post. Have a wonderful and creative weekend!
The Inspiration of Children
June 27, 2018 Inspirational Art
Guest Blog Post by Debbie Crothers
When visiting the website of Perth-based porcelain artist Fleur Schell, my immediate reaction is to smile. Fleur’s work has such a whimsical, carefree style and makes me stop and take a breath. There is so much to explore and as I do so, I find myself getting lost in the detail.
Her restrained use of color is just beautiful and being the color junkie I am, I find this surprisingly refreshing and calming. It also helps us really “look” at each piece.
Her children, Harry and Heidi, are a huge inspiration and it appears that Fleur delights in creating whimsical worlds for them, almost like savoring their childhood and celebrating their innocence and differences. This particular artwork title sang to me: “She was beautifully out of place, like the moon during the day.”
Lose yourself in the story of Fleur and her amazing sculptures by visiting her website.
Debbie Crothers shares her love of polymer, color, and craft through her blog here, with tutorials available both free and for purchase here.
A Wave and a Tease
June 18, 2018 Inspirational Art
As of Thursday, I will be out of the country, gallivanting about with my family in Europe for a couple of weeks. Per doctor’s orders, I am trying to completely unplug so I will post something for you Wednesday and then, after that, you’ll have the pleasure of hearing from a number of other well-respected and accomplished artists as they share work by some favorite artists of theirs. It should be a nice, refreshing, change of pace for a couple of weeks, for you and I.
While I am gone, my assistant, Sydney, will be will be working away on our upcoming books we officially announced last week. Her first order of business will be working on the invitation list for the 2018 edition of Polymer Journeys, slated to come out in October. Consideration for inclusion in the book is by invitation only and although we have quite the list going already, we want to make sure we don’t miss anybody because you don’t have the right email or we’re simply not aware of what you’re doing. If you think your work should be included, see the details below.
Sydney will also be orchestrating the continued work on our first Polymer Art Projects tutorial collection – Organics. We’ll share the cover and set you up for pre-sale opportunities soon after I get back in mid-July. But, in the meantime, I’m going to be a terrible person and tease you by sharing a couple of pieces you will be able to make from the upcoming Projects book. Not to get you overly excited too early but I’m excited and dying to share some of this with you.
Here are variations on a pendant necklace that Debbie Crothers will teach you how to make in her tutorial in the book. She shares a number of her lovely surface treatments as well as a creative polymer clasp and other wonderful accents and touches. I asked Debbie to be part of this book because of her colorful, well-designed, but loose-feeling approach to surface design. She shows you how to complete a version of one of these but you’ll be able to easily take from the skills she teaches and create unique pieces of your own.
If you don’t follow Debbie and her blog, you can do so here. She often throws out little freebie tutorials as well as selling her fun and engaging video tutorials on her site here.
Polymer Journeys Invitations: If you were invited to participate in Polymer Journeys last time, you will be in the pool for the initial rounds to choose who gets invitations but please update us with your most recent email if it has changed since then. If you have not been previously invited but would like to be because your work represents some of the best that polymer has to offer and/or are contributing to the polymer community in unique or significantly supportive ways, you can request consideration for an invitation.
To be considered, fill out an invitation request here. Note that making a request does not guarantee an invitation as we are limited to 250 invitations and so we will narrow down the list in the first round before invitations are even sent out. Invitations go out mid-July. Submissions of work completed between 2016 and 2018 will be due in early September. If you have questions while I’m out, you can write Sydney at connect[at]thepolymerarts.com.
Exploring Points
October 18, 2017 Inspirational Art
Last week I had the very fortunate opportunity to spend a couple days chatting and exploring Los Angeles with Christi Friesen and one of my oldest polymer pals, Debbie Crothers. We definitely did more talking than anything else and one of the subjects that kept coming up was exploration. Exploration of a technique or of a design element in your work can reveal much about what you personally prefer to do in your work not just what the technique or element offers.
One great way to explore is to make a lot of elements using the same technique or the same design element. In this bold neckpiece by Hélène JeanClaude there are several variations on the dot. The dot as a colored accent, as repetition defining the structure of a visual pattern, and as negative space are joined together, linked by that same color of blue and the coppery brown. The curve of the shapes, as well as the colors and the dots themselves, create a cohesive whole of these three very different explorations of the way a dot can be used.
Hélène’s work often appears to be an exploration of a particular design element or perhaps she is simply not satisfied with an element being presented in just one way. Regardless, it presents a high level of sophistication and energy to her tribal-leaning aesthetic. You can explore the fruits of her explorations on her Flickr photostream and here on her blog.
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Emerging Explorer
September 6, 2017 Inspirational Art
Ah, some things never change. Debbie never does something just once. Instead, she does it over and over until she has extracted all the secrets and possibilities of a technique. Here is a post from March 3rd, 2012:
“My Aussie friend Debbie Crothers has been going flower crazy for the past month. This pic in particular is mesmerizing–blow it up so you can see the detail. And check out her Flickr page of pretties: http://www.flickr.com/…/…/72157629312332777/with/6874124869/”
Today Deb has technique after technique she has thoroughly explored and lucky us, she shares all over and most generously. She will be teaching in the US in October so if you can make the Clay Carnival in Las Vegas or will be in Denver in mid-October, you can enjoy her enthusiasm and joy in what she does in person. Her website will give you all the details as well as being the place to follow her and all her many adventures and experiments!
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A Journey of Exploration
December 12, 2016 Inspirational Art
As many of you are aware, our Winter 2016 issue, themed “On the Surface”, came out weekend before last. Despite some head-spinning challenges in our schedule, we still pulled off a an issue that readers are finding particularly inspiring. My apologies to those folks that lost entire mornings and afternoons as they read the issue cover to cover instead of getting work done or running intended errands. So glad you found it so worthwhile!
The success of this issue was in no small part due to the wonderful contributing artists who gave us so much to look at and so much to think about. Even so, our artists have a much broader range of talent than any single article can even begin to show so this week, we’ll look at what else these talented folks have been up to, starting with Debbie Crothers who gave us the article on Surprising Variety showcasing some unexpected materials to use in polymer surface design.
Debbie has been on a journey of exploration in polymer since we first met online some 8 years ago. She is always coming up with an amazingly wide range of techniques and textures. You are more likely to see her fun treated beads on her Facebook page than completed pieces but lately it’s been the other way around with some stunning results, such as this beauty using an image transfer and crackle technique to throw textural accents into the mix of smooth shapes. I have to admit that the sunset colors are what first grabbed me but then you spend some time looking over the detail and you kind of fall in love with the whole piece.
Debbie has also been a busy girl herself, showing off her brand new website this month. You can find the way to her thoughtful blog there as well as links to her classes, videos, and upcoming workshops. For a retrospective of her work, past and present, jump over to her Flickr photostream to see the interesting journey she’s been on.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Look back through whatever history of your work you have available to you. Where have you been with your work and where are you now? As we approach the new year, let this review help you shape ideas on where to go this coming year. Spend some time just making notes, a goal list or just sketching to help move you along on the next step of your journey.
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Outside Inspiration: Burning Up and Looking Through
January 22, 2016 Inspirational Art
These little unexpected beauties are brought to us by Debbie Crothers who just dropped them onto my Facebook page last week. These were created by Armenian fashion illustrator Edgar Artis who uses common objects and scenes to take some basic fashion concepts beyond the ordinary. The matches dress illustration is so simple, but between the heavily directional lines and the ‘hot’ implication of the material, it is a rather arresting image. The cut-outs, however, are simply a fantastic way to test out color and texture. Edgar was not the first to do this, so to give credit where credit is due, you’d want to also check out Shamekh Bluwi, an architect and fashion illustrator living in Jordan, who shows off the potential for women’s dresses with his very intricate cut-outs.
But besides these just being a fun bit of illustration to admire, I was thinking the cut-out-and-view-through process could be an excellent springboard or tool set to help you work out your own polymer designs. You can take sketches you have (or make copies of them) and cut out the essential mass of the design, then hold it up to various colors and textures. I just got my pack of Tracy Holmes’ Colour Cards today and placing a cut-out over selected solid-colored cards would be so much more telling than just holding them up to a sketch. Don’t you think?
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Trace a favorite form or shape, cut it out so you have a stencil, then take it on a walk with a camera of some kind. Hold it up to various colors, textures, patterns, etc. as you go. Take photos of what you find. Go home and put those photos up on a bigger screen and save or print out the ones you really like. Now … can you create artwork from what you found in that empty space in the stencil?
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Have you ever thought about how often polymer work is abstract? Many polymer artists who work in jewelry, wall art, and functional art do not work with recognizable imagery. Quite often polymer artists express themselves with little more than color, lines, forms, and textures. Technically, much of polymer art is decorative art due to so much of polymer craft being created in functional forms (decorative art being defined as functional as well as beautiful), but is there that great a difference between the intuitive arrangement of elements to create mood, impressions, and symbolic meaning in a piece of jewelry and that used in a painting on canvas? Well, no, there’s not, except in how we categorize it.
Unfortunately, that separate categorization, in my view, performs two disservices—it allows for a perceived difference in value (where art that is not functional, created just for art’s sake, is deemed more valuable) and creates a mystique around non-functional abstract art that makes us think we need to “understand” it, while nearly the same thing on a pendant can simply be admired. I find that sad. Why can’t just any piece of art be simply admired without looking for deeper meaning? Let’s look at just a few pieces that you can recognize as similar to familiar polymer work but is not, and use it as a back door to appreciating the inspiration that non-functional art can be for us “decorative” artists.
Abstracted Double-Takes
Take a look at the beautiful mixed media painting by Carol Nelson that opens this post. Can’t you see it as a lovely polymer pendant? Carol’s painting is cracked and textured and layered with metal foil. Is that not a familiar combination in polymer too? I think of the wonderfully crackled and painterly effects of Debbie Crothers’ work like this pendant below when rummaging through Carol’s portfolio.
If you are familiar with the polymer and metal jewelry of Susan Dyer, then this next painting might immediately bring to mind some of Susan’s well-known designs, of which there is one example below. The painting is Squares with Concentric Circles by Vassily Kandinsky.
These two pieces are so similar, you might think the jewelry was a direct translation of the painting but I would guess the designs came either quite independently or wholly unconsciously from the painting.
Much of polymer surface design is about abstract expression. We just immerse ourselves in the color, texture, marks, and mix of materials until we’ve manipulated it into a place that speaks to us. I know that is how I worked on abstract paintings when I had my short stint with those. I imagine that is not too different from what Christine Krainock was about when she created her painting Drifting Away, that you see below.
Now, doesn’t that remind you a bit of some lovely mokume created with translucent polymer and metal leaf, such as in this bracelet by Tatiana Parshikova? It’s a different material but has a similar feel, doesn’t it? That painting would make a lovely bracelet if the painter was so inclined to make her work decorative art.
So, why isn’t our jewelry highly revered abstract works of art? In some arenas it is in its own way but being functional or wearable will likely always be separate from what is often referred to as “fine art”. It really doesn’t matter though. What does matter is that what we often do in polymer can be derived from much larger work hung on walls in museums and galleries. Also, if you’ve been stumped by abstract art but can appreciate the wide breadth of polymer art, you can apply your appreciation of the decorative to an appreciation of abstract paintings–the colors, textures, lines, etc. are used in a similar manner and often with similar goals.
So if you have time this week, maybe you can go to a museum or traipse through some galleries and try to imagine the pieces you see translated into polymer. You might find some amazing inspiration and ideas in work you just hadn’t considered in that way before.
The next Virtual Art Box will be released at the end of the coming week and here’s a peek at the digital cover. Not only will we be exploring our passions, finding one’s unique artistic voice and, the wide world of mark making, I have a couple amazing discount offers for members as well. March is going to be a great month! Come join us if you haven’t already.
Shimmer and Shine
Also, if you haven’t seen the newsletter, I am presently taking submission ideas for tutorials for the next book, Shimmer & Shine Polymer Art Projects. You can get more details by going to this online version of the newsletter if you are interested in pitching an idea.
My apologies for any distracting typos this post. I’ve been a bit exhausted and my dyslexia, usually quite mild, is playing havoc with my proofreading skills. So, I’m off to just relax for a bit before I take up the reins on a busy first week of the month.
Have a beautiful first week of March!
Read MoreI don’t know if you have ever considered, or found important, the fact that most polymer art is a collection of elements constructed into a single piece. Yes, I know I am stating the obvious here but consider the fact that most polymer art is put together in such a way as to make the individual elements blend into a cohesiveness whole. Have you ever considered that maybe each element can be its own little piece of art, even if it’s to be a part of something bigger?
If you make the work about each individual elements and not the single composition they are part of, you should be able to give yourself more freedom in the creative process. The idea would be to just focus on the single component in front of you without regard for the other parts it may eventually be joined with. Since you don’t have to consider any other elements you should be able to just let your mind and hands go play. You could, in fact, just create tons of individual pieces and then pull together the ones that you find relate and from that create a finished piece. There would be no pressure to make things work together or fit. Does that sound intriguing?
Elemental Artists
There are a lot of artists that do this almost exclusively. When Debbie Crothers creates, a finished piece is usually the last thing on her mind. She is in love with seeing what the material will do and spends most of her time playing and exploring. Once her stock builds up, or just whenever the bug bites her, then she will create finished pieces of wearable art.
Recently she has also been incorporating her love of found objects as you can see in the image above. This is just a part of a very long necklace of Debbie’s. (The whole of which I’ve not seen her posted anywhere but will be featured in the upcoming Polymer Journeys 2019 book. Look for pre-sale announcements this coming week.) Each individual component definitely stands on its own here since each individual polymer and found object component is framed. But you can also see, if you look at her work on Facebook or on her website, that her pieces are almost always a variety show, one that features the results of her exploration and just having fun with the clay.
Another cool thing about this type of artwork is that the viewer will probably want to look at each and every individual component. Just the variety heightens the interest in these kinds of pieces which means the people viewing it will spend more time looking at it and more time appreciating your work. That can really help in terms of sales too because the more time someone spends looking at a piece the more likely they will be to want to buy it.
I think this kind of intrigue born of variety may be the primary draw when it comes to the jewelry of Olga Ledneva. This piece you see here is a bit more dense and has more potential movement than her newer work but I thought it was also a good example of how all these pieces, together, create a textural canvas since they are all kind of dangling on top of each other, and yet, as cohesive as it feels, you still want to look carefully at each piece in the assembly. Olga’s Facebook page and Flickr photostream are good places to look around for other assembled element ideas.
I know those two ladies make some pretty interesting and complex components but don’t think you have to go to that extent. The individual elements you create in this process can be as simple as punched out squares such as you might see in one of Laurie Mika’s mosaics. I am such a fan of this kind of free-form collage work, one that allows you to simply show off the characteristics you love about working with clay. You can assemble bits of your alcohol ink treated sheets, mokume gane, complex canes, impressed clay components, or hand sculpted forms. A mosaic or even a necklace of just simple shapes can let those treatments and colors shine, each on their own.
Of course, this approach isn’t just for polymer clay. This brilliant green assemblage necklace by an artist known only as Gebrufa is all fabric and fiber, although some components could as easily have been polymer. My guess would be that she gave herself just the restriction of a limited color palette but otherwise made all the individual pieces as whimsy led her. Should you want to know that you can have a cohesive finished piece when you are done freely creating components, this kind of approach would give you a path to that while still creating with relative freedom.
So, have I got you thinking about the individual elements of your pieces in a different way now?
Planning and meticulously designing pieces is essential in many circumstances but letting yourself just explore can also be an important part of your artistic growth as it helps to free up and expand your creativity. Letting yourself just play can be hard to do when you don’t have a lot of time and you want the time you do have to result in finished pieces. Knowing you can focus on making great little individual components which you can later put together into a fabulous necklace or wall piece might just be the thing that gives you the license to let go and doodle away with your clay.
THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:
- Want to CLAY OUT EAST or CLAY OUT WEST? Registration for both of this multi-instructor, 4 day workshop events are open now. Clay out East is in Atlantic City, New Jersey, June 12-15th and Clay out West will be held Sept 30 – Oct 3 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here is the link for the East event’s registration. I couldn’t scare up a link for the West event registration but you can email them at clayoutwest@aol.com to get the details.
- Did you catch the “Make Your Own Silkscreens” article in the Summer 2018 issue of The Polymer Arts? It was so much fun to make these and right now, the company that made it so fun and easy, EZScreenPrint if having a 15% off sale but it ends today! Go here, and use coupon code JAN15. No minimum purchase required.
- Did you know that Poly Clay Play has a Shopping Discount Club? If you go through a lot of supplies (or just tend to get overly excited around polymer clay and tools and want to buy everything you see) this discount club could help in big ways. PCP is one of my favorite shops, especially for pastes, powders, and alcohol ink. She gets them all! Go here to check out the club deal or just shop around.
Always glad to get your feedback!
Last week we did some history, this week was about how you approach your work. Did you like the subject and did it get you thinking? Or do you thoughts on other things you’d like for me to research and write about? Just let me know. Write me in the comments below this post (click here if you are reading this in an email).
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I was traveling this past week, otherwise I would have posted earlier about the passing of our iconic Elise Winters. I’m sure you have heard the news through other avenues that her battle with cancer ended on New Year’s day but I wanted to post a farewell here.
Although I did not know her well, we did talk and in our few conversations, I found we had some differing views but the details mattered little as we were on the same team, wanting to promote and raise the view of polymer to the level of a fine art wherever we could. My efforts have been tiny ripples to her tremendous waves, however. Elise is the reason we have polymer art in so many museums and, especially, holding its own at the esteemed Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin where polymer is one of the six categories of craft that the museum has placed its focus on. We have so much to thank her for.
Elise’s work is readily recognizable and has never been well replicated. Her combination of Skinner blends and crazed acrylic stripes were coaxed into some of the most unusual and unexpected shapes and forms. Although her ruffled and pillow forms were some of her most widely known pieces, I have always thought the piece you see here was one of her best. It’s a brooch from 2006 called Skinner Inner Brooch. This has a much more direct and grounded energy than her well-known ruffles and its inner reveal of a bull’s-eye cane gives it another dimension, bringing us to consider what is underneath, beyond the beautiful surface.
Movement and energy of this kind were paramount in her artwork and, as we have seen, also in her passion and drive to make polymer a recognized fine art material. I hope there are enough of us to amass a similarly zealous energy to continue the work for which she paved such an integral path for our craft. Thank you, Elise.
For a look back at this legendary artist, jewelry designer, and polymer art advocate you can visit her website here.
From Winter into Spring …
I would also like to put out a reminder that the first issue of The Polymer Studio is set to go to print at the end of this week. If you would like to get the first print copies straight from the printer, be sure to purchase your subscription or single issue pre-order by this Wednesday, January 9th, to get on the direct mail list we give to the printer. The issue will be released on January 19th in digital.
You can look forward to …
Tutorials
- Kitchen Sink Imprint Mokume by Julie Picarello
- Magical Phoenix Feather by Christi Friesen
- Martian Footprints Necklace by Anna Malnaya
- Swoop Pendant by Beatrice Picq
- More is More Fimo Bracelet by Jeannette Froese LeBlanc
- Mosaic Stained Glass Canes by Linda Leach
- Shimmering Scenery Pendant by Sage Bray
Tips
- Mix a Near and Far Color Palette with Tracy Holmes
- Mix it Up with Embossing Powders with Debbie Crothers
- Creative Studio Organization Ideas by our Staff
Inspiration
- Studio Tour: Small Spaces in Germany with Anke Humpert
- In-Depth Artist Profile: Julie Picarello
- Uncommon Clay Artist Profile: Travis Suda
… and much more!
Get your subscription here at www.ThePolymerStudio.com or www.TenthMuseArts.com.
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