Looking for a good time in the studio and exciting polymer clay work?
Listen to Marcia Herson’s recipe, “I surround myself with clay, images, texturing tools, gold and silver, pieces of glass, a cup of tea and then I play. My work is about integration and balance. There must be both movement and stillness, vibrance and subtlety too.”
Marcia’s been working her formula for a number of years and you can see results on her other sites here and here.
Heather Wynn stamps heart-melting quotes into polymer clay. Then she textures, paints and buffs them into romantic pendants and charms. She’s aptly named herself “swoondimples” on her blog and Etsy gallery.
She’s sees it as her duty as an artist “to ignite the heart with an abundance of love, compassion, and hope.”
If spring has turned your fancy to thoughts of love, Heather’s work will show you how to wear your heart on your sleeve or around your neck in style.
As I sat on the deck having coffee (retirement is grand), it was obvious that Juli McCarthy’s work was just right for today. Juli’s Skinner-blended swirl pendant perfectly mirrored the colors in the spring treetops above me. Simple and so right for the season.
Read all about this Wisconsin artist on her site, her Etsy gallery, and her Facebook page.
We begin the week with Psychotic Reaction! This young San Diego artist describes her polymer clay rings on Etsy as “fun and chunky” but she doesn’t give us much more info about herself. The simple geometry, calm colors (that blend with PCD’s colors nicely), and neat assembly of these pieces feel more zen than psychosis.
Here’s her MySpace page where she shows more of her work, including glib commissioned portraits.
Thanks to Betsey Baker for the link!
Friday’s artist is a bit of a mystery. These segmented polymer clay bracelets by Toni Cardoza are elegant with great cane work. But Toni doesn’t google well.
Her
work is for sale on the Society of Arts and Crafts site and I know that she teaches at the Bead and Wire Shop in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Other than that, I’m clueless. Can anyone fill me in? Thanks to Susan Lomuto for the link.
Amy Wasserman ordered replacement scraper blades for her Atlas pasta machine through the importer for $5. She reports that the new ones are made of plastic and seem to work fine. Contact Dawn at Valentimp@aol.com if you’re looking for parts.
Lori “Tab” Phillips majored in ceramics and she brings a potter’s sensibility to her polymer clay faux ceramic beads and pods. Her palette is bright…perfect for spring…as in this chic and charming magic bean necklace.
If you take a look at her photo site, you’ll see how her eye gravitates to the same palette in nature.
Lori uses a strip of unbaked polymer as a bead board when she’s assembling a necklace. Pretty clever, eh?
This Kentucky artist is new to PCDaily (thanks to Darleen Bellan). You’ll want to keep tabs on her blog, her Flickr and her Etsy sites.
The polymer clay artist whose art most resonates with today’s Earth Day is Portland’s Meredith Dittmar. Many of her pieces express deep levels of union across biology, technology and consciousness.
It’s what Meredith has called “psychepolymereganics” where the interconnectedness of all things is revealed. She sees the act of spontaneous artistic creation as part of a larger practice of being present, and a way to better understand herself and reality.
One of the Same, the 24″ x 12″ piece shown here, was mounted in an acrylic case, lit and shown in a dark immersive environment in the 2008 Biome Show in Brooklyn.
Perhaps today is a good day for all of us to consider our psychepolymereganics.
Lynn Davis makes polymer clay faux ceramic beads like no one else. In her recent post she lets us peer over her shoulder as she finishes a batch.
Repeated painting and buffings give her beads a patina and hints of past lives. These faux fossils are particularly alluring and the use of links instead of holes in the beads makes them even more unusual. Her Etsy shop shows a great selection.
If, like me, you want to know how to get started, take a look at this polymerclayweb tutorial. Here’s an earlier post about Lynn.
Holland’s Annette Duburg folds polymer as if it were fabric, shaping it to resemble those double daffodils that have popped up in my yard. So springy.
Sophie Dowse treats polymer as fabric in her “Bloomies” series that she describes as bud-like pieces that “remind us there is still so much more that wants to blossom in and outside of us.”
Sophie’s shop is in Quebec City and she’s got an Etsy gallery up. Here’s an early post about her. Thanks to Betsy Baker for shouting out about Sophie’s Etsy site.
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The irregular shape of a Hamsa (the image of a hand often worn in the Middle East and Africa as a charm) makes it difficult to fill with design and pattern. Polymer clay artists have to work especially hard to make cuttouts interesting since our eyes read the shape first.
Israeli artist Angela.B21 takes an interesting approach, refusing to be hemmed in. She lets her polymer clay patterns spill over the hand shape creating a sense of spontenaity and freedom. Her added textures, lively color palette and careful craftsmanship make for lucky and lovely charms.
Angela’s approaches her pendants and bracelet designs with the same lack of constraint and you can see her collection here. You can see Hamsa examples from a variety of artists on WhiteFluffy’s site.
