Dancing in the dark

Sara's glow-in-the-dark earrings light up the dance floor on PolymerClayDaily.com

Seattle’s Sara (g.oo.d.ee) works in a digital environment. “I don’t get the chance to craft and build physical objects with my hands as I used to,” she says.

Enter polymer clay. Her hands are now happily sketching, rolling, cutting in their off-duty moments.

Check out how this free-flowing pattern that includes glow-in-the-dark clay lights up the dance floor. Sara’s only been at this since December. Look out!

In the weekend StudioMojo newsletter, we love to suss out artists like Sara who are new to clay and take to it like ducks to water. This week’s edition looks at head-turning new designs that are commanding high prices and showing up in the most fashionable places.

How I spent 2020

Julie Eakes goes rogue in 2020 with bright, funky earrings on PolymerClayDaily.com

It’s 2020 so why be predictable? Bet you didn’t guess the maker of these funky dangles.

North Carolina’s Julie Eakes creates photo mosaics and silk road patchwork and 3D dolls. She even dipped her brush into gelli prints. So it’s not surprising that she’s wandered off the reservation again with these layered cane slice earrings.

“Kinda crazy, like this year,” she says. Why not?

A PCD reader took me to task for my casual comment about “going off the reservation” in this post and she is right. My apologies for using an insensitive and racist phrase. As I told her, it stings to be taken to task…but in a good way and I thanked her for making me more aware.

Concepts that ricochet

Galka Vasina cleverly combines popular designs on PolymerClayDaily

Russia’s Galka Vasina is playing here. She’s swapping beautiful components to see which ones look best together. They all work in my book.

From what I can glean from the translation, Galka was inspired by Tanya Mayorova. The commenters seemed to be lamenting what’s happening on VK, their version of Etsy.

To me these cutouts and textured components look like Sona Grigoryan meets Donna Greenberg meets Henri Matisse with a 2020 twist. Lots of artists contribute along the way.

I’ll happily jump on that bandwagon. Concepts are sometimes in the air and they pick up steam as they ricochet around the world.