Bugle and seed beads are embedded among the collaged areas of textures on Monica Rotta’s three-medallion necklace. The neutral colors make this piece both wearable and dramatic. Here’s a closeup of the textures.
A look at Monica’s Flickr and Facebook pages is like an instant vacation as you browse through her rustic northern Italian market stall and look at the glamourous women modeling her jewelry.
Want more? Here’s an earlier PCD post about Monica.
Wiwat Kamolpornwijit admits that coming up with his new designs has been fun and finishing them, assembling them is not his favorite part of the process.
While he has folded and sculpted polymer in his art, this ribbon-like necklace and another spiraled link necklace point to a departure and new experiments.
Wiwat won top honors in the 2015 Niche Awards in the professional polymer category. He maintains a rigorous schedule of shows and also supplies a long list of galleries with his works. Here’s more of Wiwat’s work on Smith Galleries’ site.
You can follow along with his new developments on Facebook.
Did you miss me? It was a long drive home from Minnesota with a stop to visit family in Chicago and seemed a good time to unplug for a couple days. I’m back! Hope you’re enjoying some down time and summer fun too.
Maryland’s Eugena Topina unveiled her Openwork tutorial back in October (here’s the PCD post). Now her cellular-like designs are winning prizes.
Her Openwork Necklace (the white one at right) won top prize in the polymer category at Bead Dreams 2015.
Staci Louise Smith picked up the other two top prizes which you can see on Bead & Button’s page (scroll down to the polymer category).
Cecilia Leonini (of Italy’s ImpastArte) channels the spirit of Miro for today’s inspiration. “No transfers,” says Cecilia of this 26″ necklace of her flat drawings joined by copper rings.
She’s become adept at mixing alcohol inks, pens, pastels and other media with polymer to paint her small pieces of design.
Born and raised in the Tuscany area, Cecilia was trained in music and taught piano for many years until she discovered polymer.
“For me the clay is the synthesis of all the arts that I love,” she says.
You can see how her work has evolved on her Flickr site and note her influences on Pinterest. You’ll find more on Facebook and Etsy.
This cheery eye candy comes from Maine’s Bonnie Bishoff. She and her husband, J.M. Syron create both large and small sculptures – furniture and jewelry from polymer and wood.
Bonnie’s jewelry statement sums it up nicely, “We endeavor to create daily messages of joy, balance, challenge and intrigue; small personal sculptures that enliven the wearer and communicate in intimate detail. We transform specific materials to create tactile, curious and wearable forms, and rich surfaces of continuing interest.”
This piece measures up to their intent, right? They’re also on Facebook. Don’t miss Bonnie’s shawl pin site.
Genevieve Williamson’s 16″ Buoyline necklace is part of retailer Anthropologie’s new arrivals in their spring online exclusives.
You can witness Genevieve building her inventory on Instagram and her blog. Her husband and mother packaged and bar-coded to meet the deadline. Stay tuned as Genevieve reveals what she learned about wholesaling, about business and about herself from this big venture.
In case you need some fashion advice, Anthropologie’s designers say,” We’d pair this neutral strand with skinnies and a boyfriend buttondown now, and with a strapless sundress when the weather warms.”
You can also shop for Genevieve’s works on Etsy. I smile when I remember that she’s one of the featured artists in my book, Polymer Clay Global Perspectives.
Last fall PCDaily looked at Arden Bardol’s triangular shaped winged beads sold online through Artful Home.
Her spring circular version of the design is even more intriguing. Colors and patterns are added on both sides of flat circles. Two circles containing four patterns are curved and joined to small beads at their centers.
Gathered into a necklace, the beads turn and the patterns play against each other.
Another new design, Balancing Act, joins simple shapes in yet another way. Take a closer look at all of Arden’s award-winning designs on Facebook, Tallulah Belle’s online, nd her website.
When Germany’s Bettina Welker and Scotland’s Melanie Muir realized that they’d hit upon the same solution to a polymer connection problem, they got in touch with each other and had a good laugh.
No one would confuse Bettina’s latest Swiveling Neckpiece with this new Standing Stones piece by Melanie but if you deconstructed them, you’d see that the engineering is remarkably similar. They independently worked the connection conundrum out in the same way at the same time.
Swivels and rivets have been around for a long time, of course. This particular solution was a technique whose time had come.
Two takeaways here: you’re part of a community that can solve differences in a frank and cordial way, and sometimes a solution arises in several places at the same time. No harm, no foul.
We can also agree that flawless execution makes everyone take notice. We’ve been searching for ways to hide the distraction of hardware and both these artworks feature polymer beautifully all by itself.
Elena Sevva’s latest series of necklaces look sand-washed and sun-bleached by the Israeli elements. Her Archeological series is strung on coarse twine. The one on the left is From the Beach and features a faded pencil drawing on the focal bead. Another is entitled From the Old Olive Grove.
Elena’s work is rough and worn. She’s at her best when she pulls from memories to create fragments in polymer. Each piece is full of stories, mystery and history.
She’s gathered a large trove of pieces that inspire her on her Pinterest board and she keeps a continuing catalog of her work on Flickr.
Syndee Holt shares her secrets of silkscreening and coloring on polymer tonight (March 18) on Craftcast. She also excels at taking images from camera to computer to polymer and then bringing them to life with inks, pencils and markers. I’ll be in the front row! Come join me.
Germany’s Bettina Welker will show how she swivels in an April class in Barcelona. Her full-day class is all about playing with shape, color, texture, pattern, dimension and movement.
Bettina has a background in graphics that shines through her work. She’s also got an engineer’s brain and enjoys devising new ways of riveting, hinging and connecting in polymer.
Here’s her newest moving art and she explains that, “All the parts are connected in a hinge-like manner so that every little piece can move freely.”
Classes fill fast so you’ll want to check Bettina’s schedule to see where she’s teaching next. (She’s in the US this fall.) See more of her art on her Ipernity site and on Facebook.
