Meeting your quota

To meet his quota of 10-12 polymer heart pins each day, Ron Lehocky has to get up early (we shot this video at 7:00 a.m.) and take advantage of every spare moment.

Funny how that daily quota has added up to 27,000 hearts in 9 years! All the proceeds support the Kentucky Kids Center where he is also a physician.

Used to the routine, Ron’s hands moved gracefully and effortlessly as we chatted. He’s refined his process to 3 steps which he shows in this demo. A few hundred hearts are always waiting for sanding and finishing which he does as he watches TV or listens to music. To purchase hearts, contact Ron on Facebook or via email. Watch the video here.

In this weekend’s StudioMojo, Ron continues talking about his studio habits, his motivation, and his own designs. Join us on StudioMojo if you’d like more.

Sunday school

Those of us who love both technology and polymer are ecstatic that Mags Bonham will teach an online Craftcast class that explains how to cut polymer using the computer and a Silhouette Cameo printer/cutter. That’s on Sunday at 12:00 noon (EST). I plan to be in the front row (virtually) with the rest of you artist/nerds.

Polymer costumes

Reinhard Fritz’ people always look dressed for Halloween. He creates small polymer sculptures that capture his subjects’ essence…right down to the pink Crocs on this interpretation of a tourist.

Visit the party his characters are having on Flickr and read more on Facebook.

He shows how he works over foil and wire armatures. Everyone is fair game (including himself) and he loves looking at the world with a wink and a smile.

Balancing composition

Tory Hughes has long been fascinated by linear compositions. What better place to play with balance and color than in making mobiles? Tory is working on an edition of ten Red Dot mobiles that measure 24″ across. The first one sold to a Santa Fe collector.

Another of Tory’s mobiles was suspended in the exhibit at Carthage College. It fluttered like a celebration of colored wings above guests at the show.

See more mobile photos here and here and on her Facebook page. She will teach in Portland, Oregon November 7-9 with a few seats still available in one of the classes.

Big gestures

Jill Palumbo’s big beads have an unselfconscious flair that’s part tribal, part fashion flash.

The layers and layers of pattern on these big beads have an appealing gestural quality as if she confidently shrugged her shoulders and flung on color. The fuzzy fiber cords fit right in with her “more-is-more” attitude.

If you’ve ever tried collaging with abandon, you know what a trick it is to tread the line between just right and too much.

Jill often finds inspiration in art challenges and does some of her best pieces when she’s reinterpreting great works of art. Here are her Pinterest and Flickr pages.

Start simple

The possibilities for patterns expand when you insert a cane into the tube of an extruder. Here are just a few examples from the Mammoth Cave retreat.

Mari O’Dell showed students how to position, control and combine canes. A striped cane started these petals. Slices of the resulting extrusions were shaped into flowers or reinserted into the extruder to create even more complex designs. Nancy Nearing created this lovely lotus.

The retro flower fabric (right) was an experiment with slices from my petal disk impressed on a striped background (see Debbie Crothers free tutorial).

Folded charms are made from slices of a checkerboard cane. Amy Koranek manipulates the slices into a graceful shape by lightly pressing corners together.

Will simple ideas grow into more complex ones in your studio this week?

Extruda-Palooza

It’s all-extruders, all the time here at the Mammoth Cave Extruda-Paloozain Kentucky. This Black Widow Spider by Ohio’s Chris Kibitlewski is mostly polymer. He makes the legs from the thinnest extruded tubes I’ve ever seen by using three disks (a corer and two circles).

Amy Koranek fills bottle caps with bits of Halloween-themed extrusions. Mari O’Dell is filling our heads with new ways of thinking about extruding that I’ll share next week.

Moving the furniture

Viewers at the Carthage College exhibit said that Laura Tabakman’s installation made them feel good. They described it as a meadow or a wildflower garden. The thin wires on which the flowers were mounted swayed gently as people walked by. The effect was calming, delicate, meditative and cheery.

One flower bed was tucked against the walls near the gallery entrance. A second free-standing patch of flowers created a path that guided visitors into and through the meadow.

How did she do it? Her in-process photos gathered here show how Laura moved all the furniture out of her living room to try the piece out in her Pittsburgh home. She’s used to moving the furniture. Take a look at some of her previous works.

Look who’s trending

The UK’s Lizzie Campbell (Clay Disarray) has thrown polymer right into the middle of popular culture with her Breaking Bad Polymer Poster.

“Much of my personal work is inspired by my love of films – particularly horror and dark genre, as well as slightly smaller independent films – and all of the ‘polymer posters’ I’ve worked on are for films that have creatively inspired me in some way,” she admits.

She only began with polymer a year ago and her polymer popstars, politicians and posters are quite the rage. What fun to flip through them on her site, store and in recent press. Even her business name makes you smile.

Will Elvis appear at 6:00pm EST?

A few more hours remain for voting for the Polymer Prison Project grant on Crafthaus. No registration necessary! Don’t despair, we’re close! (The voting figures are slow to reflect the changes but your vote counts!)

CLICK TO VOTE

Leslie Blackford is donating one fabulous Elvis to make this more exciting. Leave a comment on this post for your chance to meet Elvis and join in support of this project.

Polymer in waves

Carol Blackburn came to polymer through knitting and you can see how she has thought through her work. Her brain stacks and repeats and combines patterns and shapes that appear both engineered and organic.

For several years her strips of color have marched next to each other in increasingly interesting formations, most recently in this Striped Shell Necklace.

In her new Waves series the components now dance and flow more smoothly.

You can witness how she has evolved and moved through the process by looking at her site, at Pinterest, at Flickr and Facebook.

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