Be thankful that your power grid doesn’t look like this one in Kathmandu. It’s been fastest and easiest to post to Facebook if you’re interested in tollowing my travel news.
I hope you’re poring over the PCD archives and taking this vacation time to visit the wider world of polymer.
Tomorrow we leave for Birtamod where it will be very hot and we’ll take lots of pictures of the Samunnat building that you have so generously supported and the ladies who are used to working in the heat.
I miss talking to you daily and am feeling rejuvenated even with all my mosquito bites. Yes, I’m taking malaria medication.
The stories we tell with our art was a consistent theme throughout the conference. Again and again artists showed how their stories came through in their work and how those who buy art are looking for the connections and the narratives embodied in our work.
Georg Dinkel’s I-reliquaries and shrines captured the hearts of the EuroSynergy audience in Malta. A long time photographer, Georg’s first shrine housed his daughter’s ipod.
The shrines grew bigger and more complex. His latest elaborate creations won best of show honors in the IPCA Awards challenge.
Georg grew up surrounded by both religion and architecture in Germany. Using polymer, salvaged materials and wood he began building ancient-looking constructions that pay homage to today’s important icons – namely Apple products.
Georg’s presentation at Malta was stunning, amusing and inspirational. He makes his own tools from what must be an amazing basement full of odds and sods. His extruder was fashioned from an outdoor spigot handle, a length of pipe, a long screw, and a metal washer. His iphone shrine was built over the skeleton of a lamp salvaged from the trash.
He plans to edit his Malta presentation into an online video that he’ll upload to his site in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can see his winning entry here. In this silly photo Donna Greenberg crowns the ever-irreverant Dinkel with her polymer tiara.
The other top winners include Fran Abrams, Laurie Mika, Angela Garrod, Cornelia Brockstedt, Annie Pennington, Penne Mobley, Claire Fairweather, Joyce Cloutman and Emily Squires Levine. The winning works are posted here.
No time or bandwidth for captions but you may enjoy these passing glimpses of polymer finery at EuroSynergy in Malta. Winners of the exhibition will be uploaded soon.
Desiree McCrorey has long been known for sharing her thorough experiments with polymer. Irena Saravanja’s crackled polymer surfaces started Desiree’s wheels turning and she headed back to her science lab/studio.
Desiree offers her results to you and they’re fascinating. She’s tested lots of ways to crackle the clay with a heat gun using various utensils and methods to arrive at very different results. She may inspire you to add more tests of your own.
CORRECTION: The work of France’s Agnes Dettai was what prompted Desiree’s exploration. You’ll find the inspiration on Agnes’ Flickr site.
