A leisurely spring web walk led me to Arden Bardol’s site. She’s a Niche Award winner with a spring/summer collection that will start your juices flowing.
Pour your coffee before you dive in. Mining her site will take a while. I’m liking these polymer rings stacked over textured surfaces. The muted colors are restful and very wearable.
When PCD first featured Eva Soehjar back in 2008, she mostly painted on polymer. Now she applies minuscule pieces of polymer to create illustrations on the surface of her pendants.
She tells stories, like this Red Riding Hood, by applying small clay shapes with a sharp needle onto solid colored clay bases.
“I want to make people happy when they see my jewelry,” she says. It’s hard not to smile when you look at her delicate appliqued illustrations and her softly colored florals. Visit her work on Etsy and Flickr and have a happy weekend.
Serbian artists Milena Babic and Miloš Samardžic teamed up to share their cubist-like vision in polymer in pieces like this Face Up brooch.
Their Tramps and Glams are their interpretation of silent film stars, charming tramps and other surreal characters. You can see the pictures that inspire them on their blog and some additional pictures on Flickr.
Though the duo has been collaborating since 2008, it looks like they’ve just jumped into the digital pool (FB and Twitter) where you’ll want to watch them. Thanks to Alice Stroppel for the link.
How lovely to end the week with Kathleen Dustin’s Layered Fragment brooch. Kathleen explains, almost apologizes, that her focus is changing from narrative and representational to abstract.
“It seems to me that truly abstract work probably most reflects our humanness because it is based on spirit and what we do not see or know. Narrative or representational work is based on what we see and know. It has been a true challenge for me to make work not based on what I see or know,” she says.
Though her focus may change, her reliance on ways of translucent layering that she developed remains. Breath-taking washes of color pull you in as scribbles of metal float in and out of the frame. This new direction forces other changes and she asks for your suggestions here.
Dayle Doroshow’s Rounds are playful accumulations of layers and cane slices and they remind me of the playtimes that Dayle and I have had together. These pieces began as companion pins for her fabric collages.
She added center pieces but abandoned that idea when someone said they resembled breasts. She set the work aside.
Over time the designs were revived with more slices and fiddling. They seemed to play nicely with each other. Notice the stamped scrap beads she uses as spacers in the resulting necklace.
Dayle practices what she preaches in our Creative Sparks book (now available as a download). She shares many tricks for stalking your muse and for teasing each project to a happy conclusion.
Annie Pennington uses colored pencil on polymer on her mixed media Diatom Series commissioned brooch (left) which is set in copper and filled with felted wool. Annie is associate editor for ArtJewelry Magazine and was trained as a metalsmith.
When Janice Abarbanel featured Annie’s work on her blog, I noted that all the captions listed “clay” as one of the materials. A quick email clarified that the material was polymer and Annie happily amended the descriptions in her captions.
“I have just recently begun working with polymer clay again after close to 20 years (and I’m still using the same old clay!). I think it may be time to get some new clay,” she admitted. “I recently stopped by the Racine Art Museum to see Terra Nova before it closed. I’ve been to countless exhibitons and art shows, but that was definitely one of the best exhibits I’ve ever seen,” she added.
When the very disciplined Dayle Doroshow admits that she’s veered off her creative course to dabble in a few new polymer ideas that weren’t on her list, I sigh with relief.
These Les Fleurs brooches aren’t the earrings she was supposed to be working on and they don’t directly relate to her project but aren’t they lovely? Dayle allowed herself some guilt-free time to play with glowing colors and sift through her stash of vintage buttons from French flea markets. The petals are polymer with a few fabrics tossed in. The center of each flower is highlighted with a button.
Seeing how fruitful and fun Dayle’s play time has been might take some pressure off your to-do list and give you a nudge back into the studio. Need more creative nudges? Check out our Creative Sparks book.
Navigation and travel are often themes in Tory Hughes work. I was particularly taken with the bright colors and faux pine embellishment on this recent Festive Angel Brooch in her postage stamp series.
And since I’m navigating my way south today Tory’s work seems particularly appropos. Have a festive holiday weekend!
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You’ll want to look closely at Bettina Welker’s newest faux raku bangles and brooches. The densely crazed surface of her faux technique was achieved after much experimentation.
Her process is a further exploration and refinement of the ideas she developed for a class last summer. This will be a fun one to watch.
Let’s hope your weekend isn’t totally crazed! Bad pun but it fits.
Lindly Haunani has watched her Niche Award-winning pinched petal design evolve and change as the idea spread around the globe. The latest incarnation is this brooch version from Jeanette Kandray. Here Lindly’s pinched petals meet Eva Ehmeier’s artichokes.
Lindly chronicles some of the earlier versions on her blog. The process for making her original necklace is outlined as a color study in the Color Inspirations book.
