Florida’s Lorraine Vogel (wiredorchid) makes your heart flutter with her newest series of hearts on Flickr. They’re stamped and painted and have the look of enamels.
She captures flowers and butterflies and other designs within the heart shapes and with a beach-meets-boho style. Here she is on Instagram.
This Saturday’s StudioMojo suggests that you let your weird light shine brighter. We take a look at how polymer art has gotten edgier. Join us at StudioMojo.org
Laurie Mika’s encrusted polymer heart dazzles us with its layer of charms and Milagros. Can you imagine what her stash of glittery bits and bobs must look like?
And the leaves topping off her Peace heart are equally rich and sumptuous. A big ceramic base was wrapped with polymer and covered with jewels and treasures. Her metallic finishes, upcycled gems, and dark rich colors give her works a regal air full of meaning.
A class with Laurie is still on my bucket list. Yours too?
I’m not sure what hearts and love tokens will make it into tomorrow’s StudioMojo. At the end of the week, I open my own stash of links sent in, ideas stowed away, new tools and tidbits I’ve stumbled on. I layer them on and a theme emerges. It feels like the word equivalent of Laurie’s process. What emerges isn’t predictable but it’s pretty darn juicy and fun. Join us on Saturdays!
Yes, many of us are smitten with heart designs like this Unbind My Heart from Vermont’s Christine Damm (Stories They Tell).
Christine is on a 14-day run of love challenges. Her titles (Noir and The Complexity of Love, for instance) make you stop to think about her intent. She uses veneers and acrylic paint to illustrate her bound heart here.
Follow her daily valentine sentiments on Facebook.
Illinois’ Linda Webb (creeksidestudio) tells her story in mosaic code, this one a heartfelt condolence to Manchester, UK families.
Linda keeps her work surface covered with sheets of veneers that she crafts into images. This Instagram photo of her workspace explains it all.
Mosaics offer another use for the polymer, paint and ink veneers that have been growing in popularity.
Christine Damm’s hearts are wild and spontaneous and very much her. She’d like you to throw away all your templates and cutters!
Christine explains to her students that, “Your piece will become truly unique only if you address every single aspect of its design and source or design it yourself. That means devising your own shapes and forms whenever possible.”
She recommends a quick-sketching method to discover your own heart. “The shape itself means something to us culturally and anthropologically on a subconscious level. It’s also a very universal symbol.”
Before you start cutting out polymer hearts this week, doodle a page or two of your own valentines. You may find that your heart is in a different place and has taken on a new shape in 2015. Christine wears her heart on Pinterest, her site and Flickr.
Did Ron Lehocky think we’d celebrate Valentines Day without featuring the King of Hearts? Not possible.
His production of polymer heart brooches reached 25,801 yesterday and if you multiply that by ten you’ll have calculated how much this Kentucky doctor has raised for kids. You helped him by donating your scrap.
This year he also set his sights on helping the Samunnat women in Nepal and he was relentless. He knows how art can make a difference in lives and how the significance of bit of effort ripples out as others join in. Love to all who were part of that effort this year.
Ron used Lucy Struncova’s extruder disks to make this special edition of heart patterns. He has finally jumped onto social media and shares his methods and his news on Facebook.
South Carolina’s Kathy Koontz combined 7 polymer hearts in reds, pinks and purples to make this 4″ valentines dish. She textured the clay before curing, later applying white paint to enhance the marks. The dish sits on short purple legs.
Kathy’s bright colors are everywhere on her Etsy store, Flickr, her blog and her Pinterest boards. Oh, and Facebook too!
One of the reasons Kathy landed on polymer is that she gets bored easily. She jumps with delight from dishes to buttons to jewelry, changing techniques along the way but retaining distinctive and personal colors and themes. She’s a polymer artist at heart.
Kathleen DeQuence Anderson’s Forming to New polymer heart box will be part of this year’s Black Creativity Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago during the month of February.
The box will be shown along with the works of 99 other African American artists from across the US in the nation’s longest-running exhibition of African-American art.
She started making heart boxes when her aunt died unexpectedly. Kathleen quickly created a piece in which she and others could write heartfelt parting messages. The boxes have evolved over the years and here’s her gallery of samples, her shop and her Facebook link.
This box was designed with the exhibition’s innovation theme in mind. Its rich colors, patterns and textures represent the stimuli, conversations, discussion and collaborations that feed the innovation process.
Veronika Sturdy (from Prague and now working in London) brings us charming off-season dotty hearts. The texture and the individually placed dots on a slightly graduated background make a soft and romantic statement.
Veronika has heaps of works in all kinds of polymer techniques for you to explore on Flickr and Facebook. She’s a ceramic artist who googled “clay” and got thrown wildly off-course when “polymer clay” came up in her results.
Veronika’s heartfelt reminders reflect my comfort with being back home with my lusciously large desktop screen and screaming fast Internet connection. Happy to be home! Now to answer all your emails!
Ron Lehocky boosted his tally of polymer hearts past the 23,000 mark this week, creating popular designs from scrap canes destashed from other artists’ studios as well as his own creations. At $10 per heart, you can calculate how much Ron has raised for the Kids Center in Louisville Kentucky. Click on the picture for a closer look.
Ron talks about how the consistent size of the heart-sized canvas has allowed him to focus on technique and explore design within the limits of the brooches’ scale. After beveling 23,000 hearts, he can undercut an edge with remarkable speed and precision. His finishing techniques are superb.
Ron’s putting together a class on Ronnie Gane, a variation he’s developed that reveals spirals and geometric shapes. He plans to teach his method when his schedule allows.
In this StudioMojo video Ron talks about how the heart project began and why creating something tangible has been so important to him. See previous posts on his progress here.
