Embellished Hearts
December 28, 2018 Inspirational Art
Now that I am safely ensconced at my sister’s house in Colorado I’ve been catching up on some social media, seeing what other people have been up to this week. I ran across Ron Lehocky’s Facebook page and although I was quite taken by his fabulous “ribbon wrapped” Christmas hearts but I found I most wanted to share these beaded bezel versions of Ron’s hearts created by expert beader Marcia Antle from Atlanta, Georgia, that Ron posted last month.
This is such an excellent pairing of mediums—not that polymer cabochons and beaded bezels are a new thing—but Ron’s hearts are already a collaborative endeavor as he takes scrap canes and surface-treated clay sent to him by other artists to create the majority of his hearts. Then to have a skilled bead artist continue the collaboration with this type of bezel work gives these pendants an unusual richness in their story and creative cooperation. They have a feel-good quality that just fits the season
As you consider your goals and projects for the coming year, perhaps this type of thing will get you thinking about collaboration or mixing mediums. I have a feeling 2019 will be the year of leaps and bounds in mixing or crossing mediums with polymer clay. I know so many people with plans of that sort. It makes you very excited to see what 2019 has to bring.
Don’t forget to jump over to Ron Lehocky’s Facebook page to see the posts of these hearts and his other holiday centric pieces, if you’re not too tired of Christmas motifs and scroll down to November 28th to see more of Marcia’s beaded hearts.
Silhouettes of the Past
November 30, 2018 Inspirational Art
I think everyone knows Jeffrey Lloyd Dever‘s work but he’s not as prevalent on the social media networks as a lot of other polymer artists. So sometimes, when his work does pop up, it feels so entirely refreshing and new. And sometimes it doesn’t even seem like his work but he has such a definite signature, especially in his forms and the way he arranges them.
I remember talking to Jeff in Racine, Wisconsin at the Racine Art Museum’s In-Organic exhibition in 2014. His installation piece, Whence from a Darkling Heart, a jacket with black shapes arranged on it and below it, was front and center when you walked into the exhibition space. Jeff asked if I knew it was his work when I walked in. I said of course I knew and told him I would be surprised if not everyone else did too. He was surprised. He thought it was so different that people might have wondered whose it was. I think it’s hard, when looking at our own work, to see what our signature style is.
But here’s another piece of Jeff’s, absent his familiar combination of sunset colors or a dominance of blues, and it seems very obvious that this is his work. Or maybe you would see it and wonder if somebody was emulating his work. But no, this is all Jeffrey Dever and I would say it’s the shapes, the immaculate finish and his careful consideration of balance that makes it so obvious.
The thing about going predominantly monochrome like this is that you are challenged to set color side and heavily consider all the other design elements. The forms, the size, the juxtaposition and contrast of elements, and the way the work is finished become paramount considerations. These other design elements must be attended to with care to make it work. Not that those design elements should not always be attended to with care but sometimes, with color, you may be tempted to let the color carry a piece because a bold or well-chosen color palette will still result in a piece that people admire. It’s just that the work can generally be taken up a notch or two if the other design elements are deemed just as important and are given just as much consideration as color.
And this is why this piece works so well. There is contrast in the form of black shapes but the base shape is the same in each one so there is a connection between them all. The red ball adds the drama with his heavy contrast in color as well as surface treatment and shape. Still, the ball’s roundness is an echo of the curves in the pod shapes. Just imagine if the red element was a square. It would lose so much. But it could have been a triangle, with the points of the pods and the points of the triangles echoing each other, although it would’ve felt very different.
Jeff has some other very different forms he’s been working on which you’ll see more of when we get the Polymer Journeys book out in February. In the meantime, you can take a look at his website to see what he’s been up to over the past couple years.
Eliciting a Response
August 27, 2018 Inspirational Art
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.
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.
Swirling Watercolor Clay
April 13, 2018 Inspirational Art
Although this is not part of #the100dayproject, Nevenka Sabo stopped to show us what she does with the sheets she has been creating on her challenge so far.
Nevenka has been working with the torn watercolor technique that Maggie Maggio created. In this small bowl, she uses these surface treatments to create vibrant color and variation within the swirling and crackled lines of the nautilus shell design. The movement and energy of this combination of line and color have made for quite the eye-catching piece as can be seen in the long list of comments about it in the post.
To keep an eye on Nevenka’s challenge and what she does with her watercolor polymer studies, follow her Instagram page. Also, don’t miss out on her tutorials found in her in her Etsy shop.
Now that I am safely ensconced at my sister’s house in Colorado I’ve been catching up on some social media, seeing what other people have been up to this week. I ran across Ron Lehocky’s Facebook page and although I was quite taken by his fabulous “ribbon wrapped” Christmas hearts but I found I most wanted to share these beaded bezel versions of Ron’s hearts created by expert beader Marcia Antle from Atlanta, Georgia, that Ron posted last month.
This is such an excellent pairing of mediums—not that polymer cabochons and beaded bezels are a new thing—but Ron’s hearts are already a collaborative endeavor as he takes scrap canes and surface-treated clay sent to him by other artists to create the majority of his hearts. Then to have a skilled bead artist continue the collaboration with this type of bezel work gives these pendants an unusual richness in their story and creative cooperation. They have a feel-good quality that just fits the season
As you consider your goals and projects for the coming year, perhaps this type of thing will get you thinking about collaboration or mixing mediums. I have a feeling 2019 will be the year of leaps and bounds in mixing or crossing mediums with polymer clay. I know so many people with plans of that sort. It makes you very excited to see what 2019 has to bring.
Don’t forget to jump over to Ron Lehocky’s Facebook page to see the posts of these hearts and his other holiday centric pieces, if you’re not too tired of Christmas motifs and scroll down to November 28th to see more of Marcia’s beaded hearts.
Read More
I think everyone knows Jeffrey Lloyd Dever‘s work but he’s not as prevalent on the social media networks as a lot of other polymer artists. So sometimes, when his work does pop up, it feels so entirely refreshing and new. And sometimes it doesn’t even seem like his work but he has such a definite signature, especially in his forms and the way he arranges them.
I remember talking to Jeff in Racine, Wisconsin at the Racine Art Museum’s In-Organic exhibition in 2014. His installation piece, Whence from a Darkling Heart, a jacket with black shapes arranged on it and below it, was front and center when you walked into the exhibition space. Jeff asked if I knew it was his work when I walked in. I said of course I knew and told him I would be surprised if not everyone else did too. He was surprised. He thought it was so different that people might have wondered whose it was. I think it’s hard, when looking at our own work, to see what our signature style is.
But here’s another piece of Jeff’s, absent his familiar combination of sunset colors or a dominance of blues, and it seems very obvious that this is his work. Or maybe you would see it and wonder if somebody was emulating his work. But no, this is all Jeffrey Dever and I would say it’s the shapes, the immaculate finish and his careful consideration of balance that makes it so obvious.
The thing about going predominantly monochrome like this is that you are challenged to set color side and heavily consider all the other design elements. The forms, the size, the juxtaposition and contrast of elements, and the way the work is finished become paramount considerations. These other design elements must be attended to with care to make it work. Not that those design elements should not always be attended to with care but sometimes, with color, you may be tempted to let the color carry a piece because a bold or well-chosen color palette will still result in a piece that people admire. It’s just that the work can generally be taken up a notch or two if the other design elements are deemed just as important and are given just as much consideration as color.
And this is why this piece works so well. There is contrast in the form of black shapes but the base shape is the same in each one so there is a connection between them all. The red ball adds the drama with his heavy contrast in color as well as surface treatment and shape. Still, the ball’s roundness is an echo of the curves in the pod shapes. Just imagine if the red element was a square. It would lose so much. But it could have been a triangle, with the points of the pods and the points of the triangles echoing each other, although it would’ve felt very different.
Jeff has some other very different forms he’s been working on which you’ll see more of when we get the Polymer Journeys book out in February. In the meantime, you can take a look at his website to see what he’s been up to over the past couple years.
Read MoreI 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 MoreAs 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.
Read MoreAlthough this is not part of #the100dayproject, Nevenka Sabo stopped to show us what she does with the sheets she has been creating on her challenge so far.
Nevenka has been working with the torn watercolor technique that Maggie Maggio created. In this small bowl, she uses these surface treatments to create vibrant color and variation within the swirling and crackled lines of the nautilus shell design. The movement and energy of this combination of line and color have made for quite the eye-catching piece as can be seen in the long list of comments about it in the post.
To keep an eye on Nevenka’s challenge and what she does with her watercolor polymer studies, follow her Instagram page. Also, don’t miss out on her tutorials found in her in her Etsy shop.
Read More