Vase Gone Wild
October 9, 2013
Inspirational Art
Tendrils and squiggles on the surface of a piece are wonderful elements that add direction and energy, but it just seems to take it up a notch when the piece is actually made from such lines alone.
Emily Squires Levine creates most of her vessels with this open type of form, pinning together canes and lines of clay to create vases, bowls, and other decorative containers. This wonderful vase is aptly called “Tendril Vase.”
The tendrils look to be from a caned sheet, made from layers of clay folded over onto one another, rather than a roll or bar cane. These long sliced lines create the very structure of this sinuous vase. Does her approach get you thinking about open forms, or just what wide range of shapes a cane can actually take?
For more examples of this kind of structure with many different caned shapes, take a look at her website and blog.
What We See in Lines
October 8, 2013
Inspirational Art
We’ve all doodled at some point. There’s something addictive about putting an inactive pen or pencil to paper and drawing random lines, allowing them to be aimless and formless until perhaps we see something in our doodles and from it create an actual image or design. I’m sure you’ve done that same kind of thing in clay, whether you equated it to doodling or not. The random, seemingly aimless lines we draw or carve or lay out with a snake of clay are suggestions of things that already exist out there in the world. Like looking for shapes in the clouds, our minds will see an object or creature or other symbol in the clay, if you give them a little time.
I think this may have something to do with the fact that you can find similar lines in nature for almost any line you randomly come up with. However, nature’s lines are rarely aimless. The winding path of a stream or river, the marks of receded waves in the sand, or the undulating profile of a mountain range on the horizon are all lines that don’t have consistency or focal points, but are still very purposeful—they are the result of change and action and define some feature of nature. Seeing this, I think we want to find purpose in lines that look random and decide what they might define. That would be why you would look at these earrings by Lina Brusnika and see in the layer of undulating lines a landscape, maybe hills or a beach at sunset. Lina looks to live in Kamchatka, a peninsula in the far east of Russia. Her posted photos on LiveJournal of beaches and sunsets make me think she had these views on her mind when she created these.
We as humans want to see our world in every line; so consider how your lines, especially the ones you think of as abstract, might be viewed. Usually what you think you see in it will be how at least some others will see it. So if your aimless lines look like vines, you might continue with the plant theme by adding leaf-like flicks of clay for accents. Or if they are rather straight and precise, a very graphic look might be developed from those. If you want to work with a particular set of colors, what do they represent to you? If they remind you of a tropical beach, then simple, soft lines representative of an open beach, the ripple of waves on the ocean, and/or the waving fronds of palm trees might work well and will likely be recognized by the viewer of the work, since the colors and lines are both associated with such a scene.
So doodle away with pen or clay and see where the lines take you.
Wild Lines
October 7, 2013
Inspirational Art
I know I already did a week of curls and swirls a few months ago, but this week we will be enjoying some squiggles and tendrils which are a tad different. During Curl and Swirl week we saw some rather contained curling lines, usually with consistent repetition and a feeling of control over their direction. The lines often came to a tight circle at the end or center of the line, creating a strong focal point. This week is going to be all about the wild lines, the ones that go in different directions, wander off the edge, undulate across the space, and create a more open sense of movement.
This piece is what got me thinking about the effect of uncontrolled lines, how they create a different kind of beauty with maybe a little chaos in the mix. Lines like these make me think of dancing rather than flowing, and showcase a bit of wild abandon. This piece is a J.M. Syron and Bonnie Bishoff collaboration of walnut trim and polymer veneer. How I would love to see this in person.
What sense do you get from this piece?
Directional Dots
August 21, 2013
Inspirational Art
Let’s move away from images with tons of dots, and look at more sparsely used yet directional dots.
On this vessel by Kate Tracton, there are only a handful of dots, but they are the primary element used throughout the various sections of this piece, and they have a lot of interesting things going on.
The ones on the side are what catch you eye first. They are dominant because of the contrast of the dark dots against the light body of the pot, but also because they are lined up in a very particular way–dots going from smaller to larger up the side of the vessel create a feeling of movement. Our eyes will always want to follow well-defined lines; and with the change in size, our eyes will follow the line in one direction–either downward as we see the hierarchy of size as a kind of arrow, or up because we see the change in size as growth. Some people might find their eye going both up and down the lines. But because the dots are repeated on the lid in several variations, as soon as we break out from the lines of dots, we’ll look at the intricacy of the lid. This kind of composition will usually have us spending some time with a piece like this which, of course, would make it an enjoyable piece to view.
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This bit of drama in silver is not, of course, polymer, but just look at the textures and possibilities!
The drama comes from the swirling motion initiated by the ammonite shell but this artist team, Sergey Toritsyn and Svetlana Larina, selling under the shop Art-Dreams on Livemaster, have ramped up the energy with a variety of textures and lines that move off the central body of the work. The bezeled stones help to put the brakes on this just enough to keep it in the barely contained state but that just adds to the beauty and satisfying feeling of the movement in the piece. The shimmer of the ammonite interior also helps to anchor our eyes towards the center so that our eyes wander from the sparkle and shimmer to the swirling wire to the stones and back to center again.
The piece is a great example of well-composed movement in jewelry as well as being an intriguing piece to just visually investigate. From the lined-up granulation in the center to the bits of color under the wires near the base of where most of them start (enamel, I think), there is just a ton of detail to take in and admire.
This is the most complex piece of theirs that I found but they have plenty of other work to admire on their Livemaster page here.
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So here we are, a week before Christmas and I thought it best if I can share some things to put us in that holiday spirit. As for me, I think I’ve had enough of Santa Clauses, Christmas wreaths, snowmen and candy canes. Not that there’s anything wrong with those motifs but you’re seeing those everywhere right now. So I get to thinking about the season in a more noncommercial way and, perusing through my collection of art to share at a future time I found myself drawn to the silver pieces. There’s something about the stately near whiteness of silver that feel so appropriate for this time of year. Its quiet and yet bright manner are also seen everywhere in silver bells, silver ribbon, silver tinsel, and even outside our windows for those of us who get to admire a snowy night landscape. I don’t know if that wholly explains what I’m doing with silver this week but that’s going to be our theme.
This is a piece that started me thinking on it. It’s a recent necklace by Celine Charuau. I had been thinking stars like on the top of Christmas trees or the radiating ones often found in nativity scenes but this is what I ended up finding. It’s not a star but is a beautiful radiating piece full of texture and still presenting that quiet, stately feel. The lines in the urchin are followed by the lines of the silver pieces radiating from the center and, combining with the silver color, gives us a sense that it is heralding some moment or celebrating an occasion. It may seem like a stretch but it feels a little like Christmas to me.
Of course, Celine’s work is often quiet and stately, using pale or subdued colors and lots of silver. You can see more of her work on her Flickr photostream.
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I hope all my fellow US folks had a beautiful Thanksgiving with lots of family and maybe not too much food. How can you do all that shopping today if you’re still stuffed from the day before? No shopping for me today. I’m running off with the family to enjoy some downtime. I thought I’d leave you with these little beauties to contemplate.
These are by Cecilie Hveding, a metalsmith and enamel jewelry artist in Norway. She works in a number of different styles but this set really struck me as having a lot of parallels to the approaches often taken in polymer. Layering her materials, much as we often do in polymer, she has really showcased the color and luminescence of enamel on simple rectangular pendants. What works as a bail is a beautifully simple solution to keeping the clean lines and balanced shapes of the almost picture-frame-like compositions. The circles are not only functional, allowing a cord to be looped through for a simple pendant connection, but they also contrast with the dominance of straight lines, then allow an echo of that shape in the dangling bead at the end which works with the open circle as a kind of bookend set for the design.
So if you’re not out shopping or having to work today and want to discover a new artist, jump over to Cecilie’s website to look at the broad range of her work.
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Now that we’ve been talking about squiggles all week, are you seeing them everywhere? They are used in artwork of all kinds, commonly inspired by nature, often stylized or reined in to create a more cohesive composition. But they can also run rampant, gaining cohesiveness from the way they echo each other within the same piece.
Take a look at the various squiggles in this journal cover by Gabrielle Pollacco. Gabrielle is primarily a scrapbook artist but has also discovered the joys of combining polymer with pages. The bonsai tree in the center is a polymer clay wall and the rest is paint-applied wood stencils and various mixed-media elements attached over and under painted layers.
The frame-like squiggle piece around the bonsai tree looks to be derived from the stylized squiggle work seen in Art Nouveau. There is a less orderly but still contained series of lines going from squiggles into cracks amongst the rocks at the bottom. Then the vines with leaves throughout the background at the top gently pull the eye upward. There are also a handful of swirls—the buttoned-up cousin of the squiggle—with their terminal end a focal point as it rounds in on itself. All these lines, especially the squiggles, create a riot of energy. But with a strong focal point of the polymer tree in the center, it still feels grounded.
Scrapbooking is such a great marriage of so many materials. A skilled and creative scrapbooker, like Gabrielle, creates works of art that could so readily be framed and placed on a wall for all to adore. But making it part of something that is functional, that is held and touched and itself holds treasured images, makes the idea of putting it on the wall on almost sacrilegious. Even if, like me, you’re one of those people who doesn’t spend much time organizing or even just printing out their photos, it would be hard not to appreciate the creativity of these unique works.
You can take a look at more of Gabrielle’s wonderfully intricate scrapbook covers and pages on her BlogSpot website.
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Hello, all you fabulous people! It’s really good to be back. After over two weeks of being detached from this community, I’m really happy to plug back in. I’ve not had a lot of time to do research for this week’s additional two posts, so no theme this week. Just some quick peeks at what people have been up to.
I had hoped to meet up with one or two polymer people in Spain but it was hard to carve out time as I was only in Barcelona and was with 22 other family members. But I did stop to see what our Spanish folks have been up to and saw that Noelia Contreras Martín has been quite the busy girl lately. She hails from Ripollet, a town just outside Barcelona proper. Her work has enjoyed the spotlight in print this year.
This image is from her tutorial in Polymer Week, the new-ish magazine out of the Czech Republic which just released its spring issue in PDF. Noelia was also featured in Polymere & Co. earlier this year in an artistic interview article. It’s no surprise the attention she’s getting, with her clean lines and bright colors. If you’re unfamiliar with her work you can pick up one of these magazines or visit her Instagram or her Facebook page. And if you are, by chance, in Spain next month you might consider joining her at Polimeralia, a three-day workshop event in Valencia, Spain, August 3-7, 2018.
Also, these two magazines mentioned may be just the thing you’re looking for to fill in the gaps left by Polymer Café and From Polymer to Art. Polymer Week, available in English and Czech, offers project tutorials and interviews geared to inspire and inform hobbyists and newer clayers in our community. Polymere & Co. also features project tutorials and interviews but often includes articles discussing technique and some more advanced concepts. However, it is only in French at this time. I get my copies and then copy the text into Google translate for the articles I want to read so it takes a little more work, unless you speak French. It is, however, an inexpensively priced magazine at approximately $6 US/5€ for the digital back issues and $12 shipped to the US/10€ to Europe. Polymer Week is $10 for the digital PDF edition or you can purchase print copies for $18.50 in the US and, it looks like, about an 11.50€ in the EU.
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Imbuing your pieces with energetic color has a lot to do with contrast. The colors do not necessarily have to be bold and bright, although bright colors have an inherent energy of their own, but rather they need to be a mix of warm and cool, bright and muted, or any combination of color characteristics that make the colors vie for dominance, visually.
The colors in this brooch by Pavla Cepelikova have a fun combination of bright and muted as well as cool and warm colors. By themselves, they would give this piece a moderate amount of energy. Applying the colors in stripes adds to the intensity of energy as variation in color alternates up and down those striped strips.
Her use of lines also adds a tremendous amount of energy. Not unlike the way they use lines in animation to denote when something is moving, she has added energetic lines around the petals as if they are shaking on the surface of the brooch. The combination of energetic color and lines makes for a very lively piece.
This combination of line and color energy seems to be a recent exploration of Pavla’s. You can see what she’s done with it so far on her Flickr photostream and in her Etsy shop.
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Things are super busy over here at TPA headquarters polishing up a brand new website. So we thought would make it busier (and because we will need to hold off on doing sales promotions on the new site for little bit) by bringing you a 10% off Everything in Your Cart Sale! The sale is good through June 14. Use the promo code TPASITE on our website.
We also have initial announcements about new books and our upcoming new website! But instead of filling up your blog post here with details, I’ll leave you with a link to our newsletter here to get all the news.
I thought we could look at busy color this week but find examples that keep it contained, manageable, and a real pleasure to view. A broad and varied colored pattern can add a lot of interest and energetic detail to a piece without being overwhelming. You just need a few points of keeping it controlled.
This pendant is by Jana Lehmann, part of a newer series of hers involving lots of color, lines and folded clay. Her patterns are further enhanced by her many little details—dots and spots and patterned borders. It is visually energetic as well as making you want to reach out and touch its very tactile surface. But for all its busyness, it is well contained within its borders and thick pendant form.
Take a look at her many variations with necklaces, rings, and brooches found on her Facebook page and Flickr photostream.
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Here’s one last example for this week of these incredible illustrative image canes we are seeing these days. This one uses the more familiar and common imagery of flowers which so many cane makers are inspired by. However, the way Jayne Dwyer creates her flower here makes it look like a painting, with color variation and details that are not very common in polymer clay flower canes.
Jayne employees outlining, which we saw at work in Claire’s piece on Monday, but here it is quite a bit more dramatic with its black and white outlines. The soft gradation of color plays a contrast to the hard black-and-white delineation around the flower. It makes it really pop. She also created a painterly background for the flower within the cane itself. The streaks of color are varied but create radiating lines that give an energized, dimensional feel to the petals.
And then she has these spots of color that pop up within those gradations. It’s very detailed and interesting to look at closely and imagine all the decisions she made to come up with this image. I don’t suppose the decisions are much different than one would make when painting, but in polymer, each decision takes some serious confidence and dedication to the image since how it will look is not going to be wholly apparent until after reduction.
Take a close-up look for yourself at the image in this cane or go to a bigger image on Facebook. You can also see more of the work Jayne does on her website.
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A little business first …
On Sunday, we release the Summer 2018 issue of The Polymer Arts, themed “Everything in Its Place”. You can still subscribe or pre-order the digital edition and get it Sunday morning with everyone else, or subscribe or purchase to get a print edition and we will mail those out when we get our boxes mid-week. Active print subscribers and print pre-orders will get theirs sorted through the post office today and so those should start popping up in mailboxes next week. Mind you, they might need 2-3 weeks to get to you should you live on the US East or South coast or overseas.
Now to the artwork. I thought that today, we would move away from floral into a different kind of organic beauty. And a different medium. I figured, who doesn’t love a bit of iridescent lampwork?
These pieces were actually created about five years ago but Andriy Mykolenko still creates beautiful, long, twisted beads of glass along with other traditional and not-so-traditional lampwork forms. However, this was easily my favorite set that I could find. The gradation of color, the line of the dots, and the waving forms create so much motion and energy. And he arranged them beautifully for this photo, poised to suggest a strange but fascinating hollow flower or an alien sun.
I’ve had a renewed interest in lampwork beads of late, primarily because I think with the new Sculpey super clear liquid polymer, more exploration of faux lampwork bead forms is about due. As soon as I get this latest issue wrapped up I’m going to set aside some playtime for just that. And if faux lampwork doesn’t entice you, perhaps the shape of these beads will give you some ideas for really energetic new bead forms.
To see more of Andriy’s lampwork forms, check out his Etsy shop.
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