Georgia’s Cynthia Gougian-Fisher can’t resist new technology. That doesn’t mean she’s leaving polymer behind.
She cut these wooden earring frames on a laser cutter and then gave them pattern, color, and shine by inlaying polymer. Lots more on Instagram.
In this week’s StudioMojo you’ll watch Texas’ Paula Kennedy hand sand her bowls to a smooth, satiny finish. And you’ll learn how shoe paste wax and face cream are part of her brilliant process.
Not-quite-finished box elder bowl composed at a recent get-together.
It helps to sit next to color expert Lindly Haunani and have friends like Julie Eakes lend a hand in positioning the inlay. “Teamwork is dream work” as Julie says in the video.
The clay is only 1/16″ thick and I fire it with a heat gun. Details to follow.
Experimented with the new Premo teal in my palette. Me like!
This Mendocino bowl brings back memories. I made it while on vacation with friends in California some years back.
I loved that walnut bowl and its polymer inlaid pattern. The photo is being used to promote an upcoming exhibit of works by seven black and seven white artists.
I decided to revive these lively stripes on a new bowl. Finally, I’m tackling the stack of polymer-ready bowls turned by my husband. The bowls languished in my studio while life got strange and creativity waned.
I’m excited (and nervous). Can I do it again? Come back next week to see. Can you tell that I’m forcing myself to finish this project?
Hold me to it.
Texas’ Deb Hart shows the start of these petroglyphs on Instagram but how she arrives at the small squares with caned petroglyph images in the middle is still baffling.
They are built into an extruded string outline. Wow, that looks labor-intensive. She’s releasing more photos of her progress on the new inlays as she goes.
Here, she shows a Zuni Bear petroglyph and a coiled snake. Maybe she’s gearing up for a tutorial about her newly developed methods.
See an overview of Deb’s Southwest and Native American-inspired sculptures and jewelry on Flickr.
The UK’s Fiona Abel Smith is fishing for something on Instagram. This is no ordinary polymer fish pendant. Fiona added the details over a Skinner blend-covered sculpture. The stripes are patterned cane slices inlaid into the blend.
Fiona’s fish has personality and sparkle and believable tropical colors. She’s had some practice. Look at this school of fish she made a while back. Practice makes perfect.
I hesitate to feature my own work but when I run out of research time, it’s the best option. Here’s the 11″ diameter bowl I inlaid last week.
I was happy to get back to my easy stripes at the Virginia conference. Rather than fight against doing the “same old, same old” I welcomed the ease of the familiar. And I had Lindly Haunani nearby to give me color guidance.
I laid narrow strips of veneer into a shallow groove in the spalted maple bowl turned by my husband, Blair Davis. There’s something comforting in knowing that the bowl is made from the tree across the street. “Spalted” is a fancy word for rotted and the tree had to go. You can see a few in-process shots on my Instagram.
Now I can get to composing this week’s Saturday newsletter and gathering up the last tidbits that surfaced at the end of Shrine Mont. Just as we were packing up, people were sharing their “one-last-thing.” And there was a sudden spring crop of tutorials online this week. Join us over at StudioMojo for the scoop.
One benefit of teaching is what the students teach you. Look at this imaginative Miro-like polymer inlay from Florida’s Lynn Yuhr (TheFlyingSquirrelStudio).
My class in Georgia focused on making polymer art for the domestic environment. Students quickly embraced the concepts and happily dressed up sticks, covered paper forms, and drilled holes in whatever wood they could find to inlay. You could see their attitudes change as the possibilities expanded.
Lynn brought wooden jewelry components with her to our class. She and her Florida friends at Banyan Bay are tinkering with wooden beads that can be inlaid. While they were originally thinking of designs for bead weavers, Lynn urged them to consider polymer inlay as well. The new products should be available soon.
Once you enter the land of what if, a whole new world of possibilities opens up.
My husband and I need deadlines to motivate us to finish new work. This week we had to hustle to finish some walnut pieces for a woodworkers gallery show. Deadlines help us stop thinking and get it done!
The striped polymer inlay idea has been marinating since I took a class with Carol Blackburn in Santa Fe where she taught us to make big sheets of variegated colors.
If I seemed distracted this week, it’s because I was awash in color. Here’s my husband’s complex turning project.
Gwen Gibson
One of the first bowls I ever inlaid was in a weeklong class on Whidbey Island with Gwen Gibson who passed away this week. She was a marvelous artist and a lovely person with a huge sense of style and a generous heart.
PolymerArtArchive chronicles several periods of Gwen’s works. Read about her early work, her wall pieces and her cuff bracelets. La Cascade, her home in Durfort, France remains a jewel that draws artists from all over the globe. We will miss Gwen and were lucky to have her creative spirit among us.
Opal has tickled the “faux rock” area of my brain since Donna Kato offered her free online tutorial. Camille Young, Randee Ketzel, Liz Hall and others devised their recipes.
My husband’s turned walnut bowl and a looming show deadline gave me the perfect opportunity to try out my own color combinations and mixtures.
Though I learned along the way and would do some things differently, these ideas are finally out of my head and strewn about my studio. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared with you and I want to start the year right.
Party tonight over at Craftcast where the group from the Polymer Clay Master Class book will gab and guffaw. Lots of prizes and fun. Join the gang!
The UK’s Fiona Abel-Smith created this polymer box with its decorative panels using an ancient inlay technique called pietra dura. Fiona watched Sue Heaser demo the technique in November and she was smitten.
The box is 5 1/2 inches (13 1/2 cm) square and 4 1/2 inches (11 cm) high with decorative panels of birds on each side and the top. Fiona details the her successes and failures (cracks during baking) with this technique and shows how she began with inlay and added minute dabs of polymer from fine extruded strings. Adding these flecks of color for the feather details gives the piece a more painterly feel.
This ancient technique may not be for everyone and Fiona admits that the box took 120 hours of work. See more pictures on her Flickr site. The link came to us from another polymer painter, Cate Van Alphen.
