Grab your sunglasses and flip-flops and go outside for some dazzling inspiration as the summer heats up.
New Mexico’s Gael Keyes captures the spirit of summer with a series of trinket bowls capped with blossoms.
One or two canes and you can be competing with Mother Nature.
It’s been a fruitful week for Ontario’s Seanna Bettencourt (thepolymergarden) as she launches into week 2 of a 33-week challenge. She devoted this week to improve the process. Seanna’s cane-slice petals gently cup the buds.
First came the design and petal making. Assembling was too fiddly and intensive for production. She refined and refined until, like Goldilocks, she got it just right. Here’s the finished product.
New Jersey’s Donna Greenberg adds a secret to her scrappy leaf earrings. On the front, she adds dots for interest.
Only the wearer knows that the back is as interesting as the front. Donna added an overlay of cutout clay. It’s like a private message from the artist.
Donna reminds us that the back is as important as the front.
Minnesota’s Sherstin Schwartz (lifeofapaintbrush) admits that she’s an alien.
She sculpts flowers, pods, mushrooms, and other vegetation in eye-popping colors and mounts them on square tiles.
Sherstin calls herself an alien floral designer and her exaggerated shapes and lush colors help you understand why.
The effect of her polymer gardens gathered on a wall will wake up your Monday.
Rather than wait for real blooms in her Connecticut yard, Nancy Nearing grabbed a 36″ branch lying in the melting snow and created some polymer blooms.
She reinforced the stick with Apoxie sculpt and wired on caned leaves and delicate translucent blue blooms. Lights may be next. She has just the spot above a corner window in her studio for her touch of spring.
PCD is getting ready for spring too and will post only two or three times each week. I’m cutting back and clearing my schedule to make time for more art and adventure. If you need additional inspiration, please sign up for the weekly StudioMojo newsletter that arrives every Saturday full of tips, talks, tools, and other juicy bits.
For these organic canes, New Jersey’s Rosalyn Hopkins (RozzHopp) set aside her pasta machine, rollers, and tools. She used only a Bic pen to make indentations. It was a personal challenge.
“I struggled for so many years to show my work in public. I’ve come to understand it doesn’t have to be perfection. It needs to be freeing. Something that pushes me,” said Rozz in a recent post.
Imperfection used to send Rozz off twitching in discomfort. Lately, she’s taught herself to accept flaws and even make them on purpose. “It makes life so much more interesting,” she says. Freedom and playfulness come through loud and clear in these canes. Agree?
Illinois’ Ann Duncan-Hlavach brings red, white, and blue to her polymer roses. She swirls thin cane slices around each other and hides a pearl in their centers.
So here’s hoping that we swirl around each other and find the pearl we want in the middle.
You’ve voted already, right? That’s the best way to keep your garden growing!
Kentucky’s Chris Owens (chris325o) uses layers of Cernit metallic clays with a touch of Sculpey Souffle white to achieve this tree bark look. She’s made a big mokume gane veneer that wraps all around the Blue Bark Flask.
Chris makes luscious mid-century modern patterns collide with woodsy colors. Usually, you hide a flask but I’d want to set this right on the table for all to admire.
Aren’t you curious to know what she used for those patterns? She’s Retrovenue on Facebook.
Spain’s Fabi Perez Ajates (Con Tus Manos) makes stacks of beads and bangles and brooches look like fascinating ceramic sculptures.
The holes and ridges and shapes in her imitative ceramic pieces all have dual purposes.
They can be worn or piled up in endlessly entertaining ways that form totems.
Fabi calls this her Coraline Jewelry since the pieces were inspired by oceanic reefs.
Scroll down Fabi’s blog to see how she plays with her jewelry. (via Sue Ossenberg)
Vancouver Island’s Janet Bouey finishes her 100-day challenge with this hollow twisted tube.
Looking at her recap on Instagram you get a sense of how muscles loosen and fear is diminished by the commitment to a daily studio exercise.
There’s no wrong or right, there’s just moving forward. I’m guessing that Janet will want to explore this new tangent from Day 95.
We’ll look at the challenges (polymer and otherwise) of the last 100 days on StudioMojo this Saturday. What have we learned? What’s next? Join us for an inside look.
