More funny things

Julie Eakes helps keep our Funny Things week going with a class sample and a funny blog post. “It’s a cross between an organic piece and a framed piece,” Julie says. She hasn’t decided.

Her Las Vegas Clay Carnival class centers on Delft-like patterns. “You know Delft pottery,” she says, “that blue and white pottery that makes you think of tulips, wooden shoes and the boy with his finger in the dike.”

Her challenge is to use only blue and white polymer and very few canes. The variations come from taking slices at different stages of reduction and recombining them. You can see more of her samples and read the hilarious descriptions on her site.

Don’t you wish you were going to learn about this one-cane wonder? Me too.

Patching polymer

What did the neighbors think when they saw me down on my knees in the middle of the driveway? The few that ventured closer saw that I was jamming red polymer into some thin cracks that had developed near the corners of the pavement.

In the wider areas, slices of bright patterned canes decorated my ragged red lines. The summer sun began the baking process and a heat gun finished the job.

This small, manageable art project felt appropriate as we waited for word on the health of my husband's elderly mother. This was something I could fix and make better. I could control the outcome and it made me feel helpful. I patched the driveway.

Polymer is not just for earrings, you know. Sometimes it brings a smile or makes a statement. Will my art make it through Ohio's freezing and thawing winter? Who knows how long anything will last?

My husband has begun pointing out other possibilities for my artwork. What will the neighbors think? (Here are the original canes based on an antique Iraqi kilim.)

Pushing with polymer

"I pushed myself to create something large and more complicated than in the past," Alice Stroppel says of her newest 20" x 29" polymer painting. "I bake my polymer clay in a regular kitchen oven, but even so I had to construct it in pieces like a giant jigsaw puzzle," she says.

Track her progress (here's the Flickr version) and see how she assembled the piece on her blog. Alice uses a process she calls cane mapping to combine lots of cane slices into a cohesive painting.

Examples of Alice's famous Stroppel Cane continue to appear online and she has recently added her own Stroppel Cane Swirl necklace to the long list of variations.

Is this your week to push out of your comfort zone?

Polymer pests

Utah’s MaryAnne Loveless found an old wire egg basket at the second hand store that was perfect for holding her selection of polymer insects. She admits that the display could be confused for a buggy hat.

MaryAnne’s colorful creepy crawlies are particularly alluring at this time of year. What a great use for tail ends of canes!

See all the caned and textured pieces that she’s been putting together.

Polymer under construction

The sign on Ruth Ann and Michael Grove’s site says under construction and let’s hope the sign is right. Only Ruth Ann’s pin and necklace galleries are operational.

The California duo were a driving force in polymer in the 80s and 90s and collectors would vie for their pieces. Grove & Grove sold their inventory in 2010 and after a couple years off they’ve hinted that they’d like to try their hands again.

Polymer Art Archive tells the story well in posts about their Flora or Fauna, their big early exhibition pieces and their early, early geometrics. This spectacular necklace is from 1994. Vacation posts from the archives

Trading in polymer

These faux African trade beads from Utah’s Cody Craynor pop up from time to time. They’re modern-day reminders of other times and cultures.

If you’re a polymer artist drawn to caning, you can’t help but visualize what it would take to capture this pattern. Thanks to Cody’s excellent reproductions, faux trade beads have long been on my “to-do” list. Yours too?

Class tonight

Pop on over to Craftcast.com to check out Christi Friesen’s live online class this evening. Christi shows you how to combine polymer clay elements with beads, pearls, gemstones, and crystals to create your own spectacular fantasy necklace. And you’ll have a chance to win a free copy of Polymer Clay Global Perspectives!

Vacation posts from the archives. I’m in Europe and will check in whenever I can.

Intense polymer

Put on your sunglasses to enjoy Dusdee Chotipruk’s small sculptures, hangings and jewelry. This picture of her work area shows how she immerses herself in color.

Thailand’s popular Dichan magazine featured Dusdee in its June issue. “I am a very low profile person but my creations may be loud,” she says.

She mixes crocheted rounds, bright polymer canes and glass beads into an updated ’60s fashion statement.

Playtime polymer

When Carol Simmons gave herself time to play, she found some new ways to make use of her kaleidoscope cane pieces. “The lack of perfection adds a primitive charm to the necklace. To me it looks tribal,” she says. Read her post about how playtime helped her.

If you need some partytime/playtime, sign up for Wednesday’s live online Craftcast class with Tejae Floyde. Tejae’s romantic polymer Spinner Hearts combine elements of a wheel of fortune game with a pocket-sized memento. Sit down at your computer and join the group watching Tejae explain her methods live. You can download the video and review it again when you’re ready to play on your own.

Tejae is one of the 13 featured artists in the Polymer Clay Global Perspectives book coming to bookstores soon.

What if polymer?

It’s time to catch up with the newest versions of Stroppel and Retro cane tutorial possibilities. Just when you thought these cane formulas had been explored thoroughly, Page McNall stretches her scrap into striped tubes, Antonina Lyamaeva from Germany wraps her retros into multicolored swirls while Linda Wentink extrudes hers in flat strips that look very Klimt-like. It pays to keep asking, “What if?”

The Turkish way

Turkey’s Alev Gozonar tied together large pixelated polymer portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Virigina Woolf, Frida Kahlo and other VIPs pairing them with renderings of VOPs – that’s very ordinary people – for her Way exhibit at Mabeyn Gallery in Istanbul last year.

Here you see Alev with her Sahne IV piece that combines thousands of lengths of extruded cane into a striking 49″ x 40″ image. Polymer QR codes designed into the portraits offered viewers another way to interact with the works.

Visit the gallery site and read the news coverage to comprehend the scale and impact of these unusual mosaics. There’s a weekend worth of research here that may make you rethink scale and size.

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