Manuscript beads

Barcelona’s Sona Grigoryan offers much more than this handful of Manuscript Beads on her Flickr site. For these ethnic beads Sona transfers flowing text and historic Armenian images to clay and forms the beads from strips torn from the flat sheets of transfers.

Lately she’s been constructing hollow organic beads and wrapping them with fiber or fiber-like vines and pods. She even tries macrame in polymer.

You can watch her work move from beads to sculpture to fiber and then to a combination of all three. She’s not finished with her experiments so we’ll visit often. Here she is on Facebook.

Refrigerator shrine

Amy Christie is a maker and a mom. She offers a quick free tutorial on how to transfer kids art to polymer, add magnets and make what I think of as a refrigerator shrine.

Darling doodles and sweet scribbles deserve to be kept as a reminder of innocence and pure play.

When I said that my grandson’s drawings looked like Willem de Kooning’s work, my daughter-in-law rightly said that the reverse was true. De Kooning worked hard to recapture the grace of children’s brushstrokes, color and composition. We’re all trying to get back to our unaffected, free selves.

Do you have drawings that you’d like to enshrine?

Polymer shrine for gamers

Inspired by scenes from the video game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, this mostly polymer sculpture from Tucson’s Camille Young stands 5″ x 15″.

The piece, entitled Cross Section, was created for the Fangamer X Attract Mode show in Seattle. Video gamers love seeing their 2D characters brought to life in 3D by Camille and her sculpture represents a kind of modern shrine.

The Animal Crossing game allows players to build their own happy places and make the decisions that shape their lives.

These concepts may be completely foreign to us non-gamers but the audience for this artwork is huge and growing. Read about Camille in Polymer Clay Global Perspectives to get a glimpse of how and why this art is so important. She offers a 3D project for you to try.

Camille’s been sidetracked by her 6-month old daughter and it’s great to see her working (after Iris is in bed) again. Sample more of her work on Flickr and Facebook.

Upcycled triptych

Wendy Moore’s triptych is made from an discarded dart board upcycled with papier mache and polymer. It’s entitled Chautara which means resting place in Nepali. “This is a resting place for me; a place to reflect, meditate and reground,” says Wendy. See more of Wendy’s works on Flickr.

The shrine is part of her month-long show at the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery in Australia. Her works highlight the contrasts of living in the Outback and her frequent travels to Nepal where Wendy teaches women to create jewellery and objects to sell, enabling them to escape lives of poverty, trafficking and abuse.

Donations from the polymer community have helped the Samunnat project begin construction on a permanent home. Here’s their Etsy shop and their U.S. outlet on Kazuri West.

This week’s shrines show what potent places triptychs can be. Are you beginning to plan yours?

Polymer enshrined


Sing in me, muse, and through me tell a story. – The Odyssey	Mari O’Dell and Barb Harper enshrine their skills	Let yourself become living poetry.

Maryland’s Mari O’Dell, teacher, and Colorado’s Barb Harper, airplane mechanic, combined talents for this portable personal shrine. As you might expect, Barb engineered the hinges, the rod for the prayer wheel and other structural parts. Mari concentrated on the poetry and the imagery.

Neither would have accomplished such a complex and powerful polymer piece on her own and their success has prompted them to continue their collaboration. Two heads are often better than one.

Payoff polymer

Denver’s Rosemary Probst insists on calling me Cindy (no one calls me that). When I taught her my latest polymer rock technique, she insisted on putting rhinestones in her version. Rosemary loves to taunt me in the most delightful ways.

This three interlocked circle pin that Rosey created is simple, clever and fashionable. Discussions about taking your work to the next level have netted results for her. Many of Rosey’s works are sold to support cancer research and Facebook is as far as she ventures into technology.

We all know artists like this who don’t seek fame but have happy hands that bring joy to our community. Surely after this post Rosey will stop calling me Cindy. Have a happy weekend.

Lap studio

Do you use your lap as your easel? At the retreat, Heather Campbell’s work space was crowded with the ephemera she used in her mixed media work plus tools and glue and wire and such. So she worked on her lap. She wisely wore an apron.

You had to wonder how the iron trivet, table knives, rhinestones, dolls and other repurposed items would fit on this 12″ x 12″ canvas. The trivet made an interesting design element but on my next visit, it was buried beneath polymer, paint and ornate trim.

Old table knives took on a new life wrapped in polymer and treated to a coat of paint with metallic highlights. More is much better in Heather’s vocabulary. This piece is entitled Peace Making.

Heather’s sumptuous style belies the unvarnished messages buried beneath her avalanche of ornamentation. See her sales page on Artful Home and her blog here.

Polymer mashups

The mashups that occur when artists meet are fascinating. Can you guess who came up with this collaborative polymer piece?

A sinuous, sexy frame surrounds a bumpy colorful geometric center that invites inspection. The result is a very natural, organic and flower-like pendant.

In this case, Jana Roberts Benzon flipped one of Helen Breil’s Big Twist shapes to accommodate a pod covered in Jana’s Fakir dimensional bits.

More mashups as the week continues. Check Judy Belcher’s recent book for more meetings of art minds. Got a pal who might collaborate with you? It expands your vision.

This mountain network is quite slow so delivery may be quirky. The good news is that there will be lots to share with you when I get home.

Revealing color

Jenna Wright’s Tarot necklace combines neatly carved polymer beads interspersed with companion disks and dotted barrels.Her Flickr site reveals how she has perfected her style using Celie Fago’s carving tools, preferring to carve the beads after baking.

On this Flickr picture she explains the tools she uses for each effect. Controlled nicks in the bead surfaces reveal surprising colors that delight the eye. Jenna is from Nova Scotia and sells on Etsy as Boxes for Groxes.

Oops, PCD is a little late today. I set the clock to the wrong time zone. The mountain air has this flatlander light-headed.

Martha meets polymer

Gourd season is just around the corner. It’s rare to see a decorated gourd that incorporates polymer. Laurie Prophater featured gorgeous painted ones last week. Then this lovely polymer example from Oklahoma’s Penni Jo Couch popped up, part of her display at the Michigan Festival of Gourds where she’ll be teaching classes.

Penni Jo started making polymer miniatures in 1981 and after years in the giftware industry, started her own Best Flexible Molds business as she continues to travel and play with clay.

Voting Day

Voting begins today in Martha Stewart’s American Made competition. Let’s stuff the ballot box for polymer’s own Steven Ford and David Forlano who have entered in the craft category.

You have to jump through a few hoops (give your email) to participate but think of the fun of watching them win and take our craft to new places. Their entry page is a treat, complete with a video look into their studio. Go vote!

ALERT Two more nominees!

Thanks to Lynda Moseley who slogged through all the nominees to find two more polymer artists for your consideration in the Martha Stewart competition. Please check out contestants Loretta Lam and Corliss and John Rose too!

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Artists

Voting Day

ALERT Two more nominees!