Veronique Hoffmann (Fimomaus in Belgium) has taken Claire Maunsell's (StillPointWorks in Canada) hollow pod examples from the Global Book and given them her own spin.
Veronique provides a shining example of how techniques bounce across the globe, picking up other influences as they travel. View more of her work here.
Speaking of traveling, I'm in Arizona with a new grandson! Excuse me while I babysit and cuddle these lovely little ones.
What did the neighbors think when they saw me down on my knees in the middle of the driveway? The few that ventured closer saw that I was jamming red polymer into some thin cracks that had developed near the corners of the pavement.
In the wider areas, slices of bright patterned canes decorated my ragged red lines. The summer sun began the baking process and a heat gun finished the job.
This small, manageable art project felt appropriate as we waited for word on the health of my husband's elderly mother. This was something I could fix and make better. I could control the outcome and it made me feel helpful. I patched the driveway.
Polymer is not just for earrings, you know. Sometimes it brings a smile or makes a statement. Will my art make it through Ohio's freezing and thawing winter? Who knows how long anything will last?
My husband has begun pointing out other possibilities for my artwork. What will the neighbors think? (Here are the original canes based on an antique Iraqi kilim.)
Mike K. Viner's 10" polymer caricatures are so spot on that they compel you to stop and study them.
Replicating facial features in polymer (no paint) is one talent. Finding a defining gesture takes his portraiture to a higher level. This Russian who lives in Tel Aviv is hard to find online with a slim web site, a few YouTube slideshows and a newish Facebook presence. I keep gravitating back to his page. He'll be worth watching.
Susan Lomuto (Daily Art Muse) starts another online web class in September. It's a dynamite course and the students' web sites are testament to Susan's great teaching. Her sliding scale price offer ends July 31.
"I pushed myself to create something large and more complicated than in the past," Alice Stroppel says of her newest 20" x 29" polymer painting. "I bake my polymer clay in a regular kitchen oven, but even so I had to construct it in pieces like a giant jigsaw puzzle," she says.
Track her progress (here's the Flickr version) and see how she assembled the piece on her blog. Alice uses a process she calls cane mapping to combine lots of cane slices into a cohesive painting.
Examples of Alice's famous Stroppel Cane continue to appear online and she has recently added her own Stroppel Cane Swirl necklace to the long list of variations.
Is this your week to push out of your comfort zone?
The weekend farmers markets are bustling this time of year and these wearable translucent polymer raspberries look as juicy as the real ones.
Moscow’s Natalia Leitman (Madlen) specializes in small fruits, berries and flowers to wear.
What looked like a single J-shaped earring confused me until I saw this photo and realized it’s not an earring, it’s a belly ring for wearing on your pierced navel! Google body jewelry findings to locate the hardware.
Her garden delights make great bracelets, brooches and hair adornments as well. See all her creations on Natalia’s blog and her instagram. Should you consider some fruit this week?
These 1-inch squares from Missouri’s Chris Kapono are packed with color and movement. Textured strips, rolls and balls of polymer have a surprising impact crammed into small spaces. They remind us that we can make a big splash with a few tools and a little clay.
See Chris’ gallery on ClayLessons and her sales site on Etsy. Thanks to Randee Ketzel for the link.
Fishing takes patience and Rebecca Watkins shows us how patience pays off in this July holiday experiment.
She says of her 5″x7″ polymer plaque, “It started off as scrap clay, mostly pink and white on a muddy gray. I decided it looked like a bunch of wiggly fish but I didn’t like the gray so I cut the pink and white shapes out. I scratched some lines into the base for waves and added a few strings of seaweed.The fish were laid on top and burnished down lightly. I used a pointy tool to make the lines and then I covered the entire thing with black and metallic blue Perfect Pearls powder.”
After curing and sanding off the powder Rebecca didn’t like the faded color and started again. “I got out my colored pencils and went to town.” After more coloring, baking and buffing, she caught her fish.
If you’d like to read more about Rebecca, you can pre-order the Global Perspectives book where she walks you through one of her projects step-by-step.
Utah’s MaryAnne Loveless found an old wire egg basket at the second hand store that was perfect for holding her selection of polymer insects. She admits that the display could be confused for a buggy hat.
MaryAnne’s colorful creepy crawlies are particularly alluring at this time of year. What a great use for tail ends of canes!
See all the caned and textured pieces that she’s been putting together.
Try making a wand like Maevinwrenscraft (anyone know her name?). She attaches a naturally faceted quartz crystal or other gem to a wooden rod with clay and bakes.
Then she decorates the resulting wand with leaves and vines that wind up the wooden base and rebakes. The design can become a hairstick or, without a rod, becomes a pendant. The magic continues.
Page McNall provides a chipper Monday with her folkart bird as I fly home. Her 2″x4″ polymer sculpture is formed over an aluminum foil armature and then inked and painted. She placed the bird on a Stroppel cane-covered base. Page talks about her latest works (check out her designer rat) on Flickr and sells them on Etsy. You can see what’s inside her head on Pinterest.
I’ll be catching up and back to work tomorrow! Thanks for helping me out during my fabulous vacation.
