Loretta Lam says its all about organizing your design information into a visual hierarchy and she’ll be teaching that at Creative Journeys Studios in Georgia November 1-3.
The fabric-like textures, juxtaposed lines, and somber colors dangling from a chunky chain caught my eye. Yours too?
Learning how to do this intentionally is the trick that Loretta will be teaching.
Albuquerque’s Gael Keyes envisions fantastical bugs in polymer. Since her retirement from teaching last year, Gael has branched out into dolls and sculpture. It’s her bugs that keep crawling onto her Instagram and grabbing attention.
Gael collects her scraps and twists the colorful bits into Natasha canes. Sliced in half, matched, and shaped, these canes become wonderful wings, legs, and heads. She adds a few beads and wires for legs and antennae.
Insects come naturally to Gael and her bugs are quite beautiful. Scroll down her Instagram to see her fall and winter creatures.
Minneapolis’ Chris Baird came to the rescue when I couldn’t locate Tuesday’s artist (Nathalie Sgard).
Of course, I looked at Chris’ Etsy page and found her on Facebook and was smitten by her little houses and villages made of scrap. They’re patched and pieced together in the most nostalgic and charming ways.
I’m away from home at Clayathon this weekend. It’s a big event with lots to inspire you. Join us at StudioMojo for a look over the shoulders of some of our most amazing polymer artists at work.
Happy International Women’s Day from the work table of Florida’s Alice Stroppel. Alice paints scraps onto a glass tile that she puts directly into the oven. She mounts the finished commissioned piece on wood.
Her father produced a cartoon for the local paper each week when Alice was growing up. She reminisces about how exciting it was to watch over his shoulder as he drew faces. Now we lean over her shoulder and marvel at the women she finds in her scraps.
Come on over to StudioMojo to see whose work we’re examining, what products have promise, and what we can learn from other art forms (or what they’re learning from us). We bump into the most interesting developments in the most unlikely places!
Utah’s Jana Roberts Benzon’s latest new pins/pendants show off her wing-like dimensional, veneer-covered collages.
She’s about to offer her work on Etsy in a few weeks after years of resisting online sales. She’also promises to beef up her Instagram. It may be the grandbabies who are compelling her to stick closer to home.
While we wait for Etsy to launch her, enjoy Jana’s works on Facebook and her website.
Israel’s Angela Bahrenholz shows us another way to paint. Her Frida Kahlo painting measures 6 3/4″ by 9″ and is made entirely of chopped polymer.
No glue, no paint, just polymer. She doesn’t say if she’s using a food processor or chopping by hand to achieve her polymer pointillism.
Either way, her compositions are exciting. You will find her versions of masterpieces Flickr and Etsy.
Angela has developed a number of scrap techniques and tutorials if you’re looking for more ways to use your polymer in innovative ways.
Vermont’s Christine Damm was inspired to play with her scrap veneers. No jewelry inspiration arose from the heap.
“A few screw-ups later, I decided to put them all on a backing and voila! now I have a new veneer that will become holiday cards called Merry Christmas, Baby! on Redbubble. All veneer scraps used were surface painted previously, FYI,” says Christine.
Send greetings to friends and customers that show off your art. Lots of online printers will make the photo of your work into cards and all sorts of items.
UK’s Carol Blackburn creates stripes and patterns from scrap that have been all the rage. She’s developed simple steps that result in mod and textile-like patterns. See them on Facebook.
Some of the results she fashions into flawlessly constructed boxes. For those of us who need easier projects and instant gratification, she offers designs like these graphic Pinwheel Pins. Don’t you love a no-fail design?
Of course, we couldn’t get through scrap week without Louisville’s Ron Lehocky who continues his march to 50,000 hearts for the Kids Center. Ron receives polymer scrap from around the world, turning tail ends and discarded projects into what will be a half million dollar benefit. See him on Instagram and Facebook.
Here you can see how Ron reconfigured Lindly Haunani’s blended cane ends (top left of photo) turning them into bargello-like veneers that he learned using exciting new methods from Lindly’s Sagacious Sumptuous Color class.
Lindly will help Sue Sutherland and Ellen Prophater at the grand opening of their new Creative Journey Studios in Milton, GA this weekend. Lindly will have a trunk show at the gallery’s opening. She’ll also be teaching the first class in the new facility.
Ron’s hearts will also be available at the opening. You’re invited!
