This framed 4″ polymer tile from Australia’s Leah Radlett (leaha_radlett) is entitled A Mother’s Prayer. The shades of gray and intense gaze feel solemn and serious.
Leah admits she’s been troubled about mothers and their children in these tough times. Leah rolls balls of color by hand. She calls them her bubble paintings. She recently added a number of new scenes and animals in this style to her Etsy site.
It’s hard to look away from this polymer.
Puzzle night has always been a hit at an annual gathering in the mountains that’s been going on for 20+ years. Though we’re online this year, the puzzle was still a huge hit orchestrated by North Carolina’s Julie Eakes.
Each player created a 3″x3″ polymer tile based on the line drawing that Julie sent via e-mail. Anything light on her black and white clue drawing must be a light value, darks must be dark. We had no clue about the theme or the color scheme.
Julie secured permission to use Thomas Wimberly’s poignant and powerful Global Forefront sketch. We submitted jpeg photos of our square tiles to Julie via email.
She based this ingenious group project on the im-a-puzzle.com site which meant that Julie had to upload our 30 files to them. Today we each tried to solve and assemble the puzzle virtually on our computer screens. Usually, we elbow and jostle as we crowd around a table to figure what goes where. We missed the cheek-to-cheek jostling but the laughter and competition were undiminished.
Now, each of us must mail our actual tile to the puzzle winner. It felt liberating to have creative good times. Click on the photo to see if you can pick out any artist just by her style.
Melbourne’s Allie Robinson (irisheyes6868) follows her fingers as she plays with clay. They have been leading her to a world of textures. This floral tile is covered with what looks like miles of ultra-thin spiraling ruffled-edged ribbons of clay. Other experiments are covered with bumps and dents and flourishes.
When most artists flock left to liquid polymer, Allie heads right to acrylic paint. Some of her earrings are painted with crazy intense dots. She hears a different drumbeat.
You can tell that Allie is just getting up to speed with her ideas and her hands are trying to keep up. She’ll be one to watch on FB and IG.
These tiles from California’s Doreen Willey are a dazzling blast from her past. Encouraged by Christi Friesen’s Play Days and driven by bags of scraps that Doreen was anxious to reduce, reuse, and recycle, she jumped into this project with stunning results.
Years of design decisions added up to works with wild variety yet a cohesive, exuberant look and feel. “If you are like me, you probably have a huge stash of stuff you’ve made that’s gone into boxes never to be seen again,” says Doreen.
“I pulled out my boxes, started cutting my stuff up and put it back together in a new way,” she explains. And we’re lucky she did! What an inspiration! Here on Facebook.
Enjoy the spirit of this 6×6-inch polymer clay mosaic mounted on MDF board by Illinois’ Susie Baim.
“I’m still having fun with Debbie Crothers‘ alcohol ink technique! I used it on the tiles and the heart,” says Susie.
Having fun with a technique and adding her own spin on it comes through delightfully.
This series of non-jewelry expressions shifts our thinking to polymer art.
Ontario’s Karen Pasieka has gathered the blooms in her polymer garden into a bright bouquet on a 4×4 tile. See what varieties of flowers she has in her studio garden on Instagram.
Her creation may remind you to run outside and admire summer’s bounty while you can. Karen has returned to her studio to get ready for the fall and holiday shows.
It looks like lots of you got back to the studio this week. StudioMojo is full of links to new works as we try to wring every bit of summer creativity out of this month. We’d love to have you join our Saturday newsletter where we chat about all the fun stuff we couldn’t cram into PCD.
South Australia’s Leah Radlett tales a different approach to mosaics. Her 4″ tiles are composed of round polymer elements.
Nice of Leah to share her in-progress shots. She starts with the background and works inward. which isn’t what you might have expected.
See more of her landscapes on Etsy and Instagram. She calls this one Joyful and says, “I’ve been blessed by so many nice comments about my work and it makes my heart happy to know that people enjoy my art.”
This use of Angela Schwer’s (DillyPad) polymer Sea Star wall tile isn’t really fair because it has great movement and texture in its monochrome simplicity.
What’s not fair is that today it feels like something similar is scratching the back of my throat. I guess international travel was more stressful than I thought.
So go look at the cool organic shapes Angela comes up with while I recuperate.
No matter how many times I watch Rebecca Watkins dust her bright unbaked polymer work with her special mix of dark PearlEx powders, it feels so wrong. There’s no way you can pull this ugly gray thing back from disaster.
But she does. With a bit of sanding she reveals a dramatic tile for the Fimo50 World Project. Read all about Rebecca’s methods in my book and catch up with her online on Facebook, Instagram, her blog, and Etsy.
Boxes of tiles have been sliding through my mail slot at a furious pace and I’m afraid to talk to the postman until next week when the package tsunami ends. You still have time!
Thinking of making a journal for the new year? London’s Aniko Kolesnikova (MandarinDuck) excels at creating finely textured sculpted polymer tiles. When baked and then glued onto blank book covers, the humble journals speak volumes.
The Indian elephant piece to the left is the early, unpainted version of the tile. Layers later, washes of paint and highlights of color make the image much richer. Nothing Aniko has shown before has captured so much attention she says.
You can watch a terrific timelapse of her making a floral journal on YouTube and she hints that a tutorial about the elephant will follow.
Aniko shares her inspirations online on Pinterest and sells on Etsy. See more in process shots of this piece on Flickr.
