There’s been an uptick in polymer vessels lately. Could be that thing where you discover something and then see it everywhere. Whatever!
These vessels from North Carolina’s Elizabeth Hamilton are a couple of my favs – extrusions, dots, vessels – a trifecta of favorites.
Scan the polymer horizon with us on StudioMojo this Saturday. We pluck the most surprising, exciting ways artists are rolling with clay and drop these juicy treats in your in-box every week!
High fives to the dance parties and parades and celebrations at the polls. In the midst of terrible news, it felt good to be standing in line being proactive with lots of fellow voters.
I took apart a very old necklace to bring you today’s graphic. Isn’t it amazing how stars and stripes can be combined and recombined? Even the tail ends can be made into what looks like fireworks. There’s joy at the polls. Join the party.
Maryland’s Mickey Kunkle straddles the worlds of fiber and polymer in her jewelry. At Clayathon in New Jersey, Mickey was working on designing a woven polymer bracelet using a kind of loom she made by drilling holes in a round base. It’s a hybrid of fiber and polymer influences.
Mickey extruded round pegs that she cured and inserted into the holes in the base. She then extruded long strings to weave around the pegs to form a bracelet. Her prototype is strong and colorful and wearable. She’s still in the “Whatify” stage.
In her gallery video, Mickey explains her struggles as an artist and how she has learned to combine her talents to suit herself. Can’t decide between your favorite artforms? Maybe you don’t have to.
The way Germany’s Eliska Koliosova (fimeli) experiments with tube beads and plays with extruded patterns makes me want to know more about her and her work.
She’s quite elusive on her Flickr pages that contain mostly dreamy photographs with polymer experiments sprinkled in. Look at how she plays with shapes and scrappy bits in this necklace.
My interest in finding meaning in beads made from scraps has taken me to strange and interesting areas. I’ll be taking the month of November off to explore this phenomenon and write about it. No PCD for a month!
Writing daily is such a habit that taking a break scares me. This week and then some time off. It will be good for our relationship, right?
Something cheery has moved Germany’s Jana Lehmann in a new meandering direction.
Jana extrudes strands of marvelous color and builds modern designs by carefully laying them next to each other.
She adds extremely small dots of color as accents and surrounds the piece with a black and white frame.
The heart is made similarly with flat, graduated ribbons of polymer. These require dexterity and a love of small detail but they exude a joyousness that’s infectious and ready for spring. More on Facebook and Flickr.
A number of woven polymer beads have popped up online. Eliska Koliosova weaves extruded strips in this light summery choker. She alternates the colors under and over each other, perhaps creating a flat sheet that’s then cut up and rolled into a bead.
Or maybe Eliska is using the Mummy Bead technique that Emma Ralph outlines on her site. She starts by winding a base color on a wooden skewer and then layering on additional colors.
My brain doesn’t decode weaving very readily so rather than ponder this any longer, I’ll show you and hope that some enterprising PCD reader can unravel the mystery.
Whatever the method, the effect is eye-catching.
Thanks to Carrie Harvey for leading me to Emma’s tutorial.
