Polymer paintbrush guy

Alice Stroppel’s Brush Man is part of a new series of Found Object Character classes at her Studio 215 in Florida. Repurposing objects is not new to Alice. Who can forget her Alice tea service?

Alice has been hosting more and more events in her facility. She credits finishing ideas learned in Doreen Kassel’s Pods and Flowers class at Studio 215 for enlivening her characters.

Looks like this might be Character Week on PCD. Don’t you have weeks when your eye gravitates to a style? See one and then see them everywhere? Why fight it? Is there a brush in your basement waiting to be rediscovered?

Polymer Om

A quick liftoff for the week! This serene polymer doll is from Barcelona’s Elena Kantur.

Elena’s text is hard to translate but the graceful hands and meditative posture of the horned creature make her seem hopeful and calm. We can leave it at that.

The delicacy of Elena’s characters’ hands and faces inspire. See all her sculptures on Instagram and Facebook. Happy Monday!

Prickly polymer

One more edgy post to round out PCDaily’s week. Lindsay Locatelli (WazoDesigns) shifted into production mode and cranked out 14 pairs of these spiky dangles one evening.

Maybe it’s her background in wood that makes her unafraid of chopping, carving and prickly bits. There’s raw energy in the pieces on her Instagram and Artful Home sites. Her audience loves the roughness.

These pieces remind me of the pointy spring shoots bravely poking through this weekend’s snow. Join us on StudioMojo for more budding news.

Wild ride to Niche Award

Maine’s Linda Leach’s journey through polymer reads like a 13-year odyssey through classes and guilds and experiments in her own multi-media style. Linda’s voyage and this necklace brought her a 2017 Niche Award in the Polymer Jewelry category.

She created the necklace for #39 of last year’s weekly polymer challenge. Linda called it, “…a wild new piece that I know is over the top, but I love it anyway.” The necklace incorporates leaves bound in brass strips and brass wire with polymer clay cane work as well as her liquid clay/alcohol ink over etched copper technique. The cane repeats the design on the etched copper.

You can watch her step-by-step work in progress on her blog. Learn more about Linda on her site (Dancing Dragonflies), Facebook and Etsy.

Kudos to Linda and what she’s accomplished. Where is your art odyssey leading you?

Sleek spare looks

One more look at the sleek, scratched, sgraffito pieces that take an engineered, minimalist turn. They give us our last bit of winter’s gray and they’re both from France.

Sonya Girodon’s flat resin Wildfang bangle is embedded with horsehair and accented with two slotted polymer beads that slide on adding more shapes and a touch of bright yellow.

The horsehair looks like scratches floating in the clear resin. If you look at her Flickr page you’ll see how productive the winter has been for Sonya.

Céline Charuau’s (grisbleu) faceted and scratched gray dangles are complemented by white beads wired securely to the larger surfaces. Look more closely on Flickr.

These designs have power in their sparseness and prepare us for spring’s exuberance.

New connections and directions

Wiwat Kamolpornwijit on PolymerClayDaily.com

Take a look around and you’ll see more polymer artists switching up their connections and experimenting with wires and tailor-made findings. Virginia’s Wiwat Kamolpornwijit makes wire a feature along with his metallic polymer shapes.

Wiwat’s background in environmental research shines through in many of his pieces. Here in an ACC Baltimore piece he flips his focus, highlighting the connectors that hold the curved polymer segments together.

Otrzan's industrial focus on PolymerClayDaily

Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan stretches out a roughly textured tube and captures it with two polymer findings that hold the bar in place. Just look at how Nik stacks, cuts and connects her jewelry with an urban, industrial edge.

Here’s her new site with lots of tutorials that detail her methods.

These polymer pieces (and yesterday’s) speak more and boldly with an eye on construction and craftsmanship.

Tubular polymer

Two artists have gone tubular for spring. Same thinking with very different outcomes from Austria’s Izabela Nowak and Pennsylvania’s Genevieve Williamson.

Izabela uses slim tubes in graduated purples formed into a 3D necklace. She has been experimenting for months with what she calls her Straw Technique.

Genevieve takes a more minimalist approach with long slender polymer tubes strung into a bright multi-color strand. “Is it too light?” she wonders on Instagram.

PCD will look at several new stringing, assembling, designing developments that have emerged recently. Looks are changing for spring!

Cascading polymer

This Cascade necklace by Russia’s Tatiana Parshikova (seventh-heaven) is a feast of pattern and color. Eight strands of folded polymer beads are sumptuous and naturally eye-catching.

Tatiana has added the right mix of colors and patterns, a dash of sparkling crystal beads and touches of shimmering gold on the surfaces which take the piece to the next level.

I would not have chosen the blue of the model’s sweater but the color accentuates the beads perfectly. Tatiana has a knack for drama.

PCD featured her gold-flecked mokume gane bangle last year and it was one of the year’s most popular posts. You can catch up with her work on Instagram.

Join us on Saturday’s StudioMojo for more sumptuous and delightful behind-the-scenes finds.

Polymer surprises

Even if you won’t be traveling to the Czech Republic for Polymer Week 2017, July 2-8, you’ll want to take a closer look what the 15 teachers will be presenting. (Scroll to the bottom of their page.)

For example, these brooches from Spain’s Fabiola Perez Ajates pull you in with their layers, colors, patterns, textures, cutouts. So neatly and cleverly done!

Just when you think that your eyes have taken in all the details, you find another point of interest. Shapes that look easy and geometric turn out to be slightly askew. These visual surprise packages will be part of Fabi’s classes. She shares glimpses of her patterns and palettes on the group’s Facebook page as well as on her own blog and FB page.

Could your work benefit from another helping of surprise?

Spring breaks

Florida’s Lorraine Vogel (WiredOrchid) brings us a springy look with her combination of layered surface techniques. If lightly layered beach motifs speak to you, Lorraine’s tutorials let you in on her methods

Whether it’s batiks, transfers or a mix of media and methods, Lorraine builds over a light clay, adding and subtracting until she reaches a tropical mix of color and shape.

Here’s her freebie tutorial on StencilGirl to experiment with. Lots of examples of her sun and sand on Etsy, Facebook. Flickr and Instagram.

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