Polymer brush strokes

Wendy Jorre de St. Jorre’s Weeping Willow cane is just one in her yearlong study of trees and canes. Every week this year she’s constructed a cane based on a species of tree.

This example is based on a Monet painting of willows. “I wanted to see if I could make brush strokes with clay,” she says.

If Boabs, grass trees, and river gums look exotic to you, it may be because her trees are inspired by Australian landscapes.

Her latest effort, Snow Gums, is a 5-cane series that matches horizontally to make a continuous panorama. She wanted to have all her assignments completed so that she could play in Las Vegas at Clay Carnival this week.

Wendy carefully documents her efforts and shows her canes on her Flickr site and there’s a concise overview on her Pinterest page. It’s an impressive project to follow.

Showing off polymer

If counting the number of artists using polymer in a prestige art show makes us more credible, we’re doing well. According to this year’s roster at the San Francisco ACC show, polymer pops up frequently in the roster.

There’s Wiwat Kamolpornwijit, Jillian Moore, Ford/Forlano, Debo Groover (the birds polymer painting here), Mary Filapek, Anne Klocko (the bicyclists at right) and I’m sure I missed someone.

We span categories from jewelry to painting to mixed media to sculpture. The show runs August 8-10, but if you can’t hop over to SF, thumb through the exhibitors.

(You’ll get a better sense of the size of Debortina’s paintings on their Facebook page.)

Chinese vases

Beefball Papa seems an unlikely name for a polymer artist from Bejing. It could be a bad translation.

There are few other clues to guide us and we will have to let this Chinese artist’s Flickr photos speak for themselves. You can see how he has moved from creating small vessels to larger items over the last year.

His latest mokume gane striped vases are particularly interesting.

The extruded strings make his vase resemble the colorfully melted candles that were popular in the 60s. Heidi McCullough sent the link to PCD. Let us know if you find more information.

Polymer confessions

This post is late because I’m vacationing out west. I confess!

These couple of frames are from the newest Facebook video from Georg Dinkel. He again addresses our religious and technological lapses in a piece appropriately called The Sinner. It shows a blogger flogging herself with her laptop (that’s my interpretation).

If you can’t access the video, take a browse through his website to experience his remix of architecture and religion in polymer. I’ll be a better person tomorrow!

Stockpiling polymer gems

Texas’ Randee Ketzel provides us with this weekend’s pile of bling.

She’s stockpiling her imitation opal cabs for sale at the upcoming IPCA retreat in Ohio. She’ll be working with these babies and demoing how to set them in bronze bezels (plus teaching a pre-retreat class).

Can’t come? Take a look at Randee’s recent book, Polymer Clay Gemstones: The Art of Deception, that provides 20 projects on how to make your own ancient artefacts.

Learn more about Randee on Etsy and Facebook.

Romantic polymer

In Sonya Gallardo’s latest collection called Loverboy/s she reflects on romantic love. You may never have seen polymer look quite so sexy and fashionable as it does in her video. “Each piece in this project consists of a pairing of two parts and what they represent reflects some of my ideals on what love is,” she explains.

This LA artist’s Golden Ardor necklace was created for the trendy Of a Kind online artisan fashion store. Sonya and Of a Kind are part of the current issue of American Craft magazine which focuses on artist-made fashion and wearables. Her work (like this two-part Amity necklace) is also sold at the Cooper Hewitt Museum shop.

When she dropped out of art school and moved into her brother’s old room, she asked herself, “What can I make that’s small enough to fit on this table?” A blogged photo of her work went viral and her aesthetic caught on. HighLow Jewelry was founded in 2011. Read her bio here (it contains some great stories).

Polymer fish out of water

Melissa Terlizzi’s Like a Fish Out of Water picked up an award at the Art Works gallery in Richmond, VA even though Melissa says she feels like all her polymer nature scenes look like fish out of water when they’re shown with other traditional art.

She gravitates to bugs and tide pools, shells and sea life. This cane is the result of her taking a long look at turtles, a hard job for someone who admits she can’t sit still.

Melissa has created a following for her Clay and Cabernet nights at a local gallery on warm summer evenings. You’ll find her on Facebook and Flickr.

More autumn creatures

This slightly stunned group of CandleWycke sculptures sprouted in Dawn Schiller’s Chula Vista, CA class last weekend. They fit nicely with yesterday’s woodland find. In a second workshop Dawn taught her famous PocketFae sculpt. Wouldn’t that have been fun?

Oh well, you can glean how-to’s from her book and stroll through her world of Odd Fae on her blog and her Facebook page. This week Dawn is part of a panel of experts presenting on the Rise of the Artist Entepreneur at Comic-Con in San Diego.

Polymer shrooms

Jana Roberts Benzon recently collected ideas from walks in the woods and hikes in the mountains and turned what she saw into polymer beads.

She used alcohol inks to color these polymer versions of the mushrooms she found. See the bark and berries that she grouped with other components into a dramatic Woodland Gathering neckpiece.

“I’m having so much fun creating things from nature and close to my heart,” Jana says. These photos appeared on Jana’s Facebook page where she also unveiled a prototype of new some new work like the spiraled piece at the right that she may be teaching soon.

Small pleasures

There’s something appealing and comforting about small ideas. India’s Shirali Patel specializes in polymer paper clips, magnets, push pins, flash drives and other little delights. She calls her business just what it is – Small Ideas. Her visual jokes and mementos are what Shirali describes as, “Whimsical craft with purpose.”

She flattens favorite sports figures into Splatta Coast’z or brightens house plants with funny garden stakes. She cooks up your favorite Indian food – in miniature. This meal also serves as a computer flash drive.

Shirali was trained as a biochemist, worked in fashion design and landed in her polymer studio where she’s worked 10 to 12 hours a day since 2011. You can tour her immaculate studio on her Facebook page. Here’s her site, her Flickr page, and her Pinterest presence. Have some small pleasures this weekend.

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