Spectrum Upcoming Show

Since I'm on the topic of show themes, I thought I'd show you a couple of pieces I made for the upcoming show at the Spectrum Art Gallery in Centerbrook. The theme is "Life in the City." The picture to the left is one I'm calling "City Nights." To add a night time effect, I used gold leaf on the moon and in the window areas of the buildings. The stars are AB crystals. The photo below shows a scene I think looks like city buildings in a heavy rain.

January Theme

Hello! It's hard to believe we're already into 2024. I'm look forward to another year of creativity and learning.

At the Westerly Artists' Gallery, we've started a new year of monthly shows, many with a theme. This month's theme is "Inner Worlds/Outer Worlds. Artists are encouraged to try to create something that fits the theme, if appropriate. I had a couple of ideas, so created three pendants demonstrating my interpretation of the theme. The first and last pendants show an outer world with an opening to an inner world. The middle piece shows a little creature from the inner world peeking out at the outer world. It was interesting and fun to make these. What would you do to "fit the theme?"

Lady ( and other) Bugs

I made these little bugs for a demonstration on how to make stick pins, post earrings or magnets. They're pretty straight forward to make, relatively quick, and fun. They also use very little clay. Since the back is totally flat, adding the flat portion of a post earring or a stick pin is done by adding a thin circle of clay over the post and against the flat bottom of the bug. For magnets, a hole the size of the magnet is made before baking. After the piece is done, the magnet is glued in place. Magnets cannot be baked because high temperatures weaken a magnet's strength and magnetic field.

More 3-D Jewelry

Just wanted to share a few more pieces based on Jana Roberts Benzon's techniques. Instead of using a traditional polymer design cane, I made a design stack along the lines of those developed by Carol Blackburn. Since these were not canes that could be covered around the edges, the design shows everywhere, giving these pieces a different look. The rectangular shape of the stack also inspired me to decorate a brass cuff. Fun!!

"Painting" with Mica Powders

I haven't done this particular technique in a while, and thought I'd give it a try for some holiday pendants. Basically, after you impress a design in the conditioned clay, you use tiny paint brushes and "paint" various parts of the design with mica powders. Pan pastels will also work, and give a more muted look. After baking, I added Magic Gloss resin to help protect the powders from wear.

Angels

The Westerly Art Gallery is all festooned for the holidays. In addition to the little lit trees I posted the other day, I made a few decorations based on an angel theme. Here are two angel ornaments, about 3 inches tall (not counting the silver hangers) and one of my angel votives, about 6 inches tall. These items were new for me, and it took a while to figure out forms and shapes and how to put things together. It's fun to try new things!

Snowflake Hangings

Well, for those who have no snow on the ground, I decided to make some snowflake hangings. These can be placed on a wall, door, or in a window to catch the light. They all have very sparkly snowflake shapes, as well as crystals in open spaces or imbedded in the polymer snowflake itself. They were fun to make - though I did have to be careful about cleaning up the glitter afterwards. I made a couple more in other color combos, but these give you a good idea of the concept. They are hung on strong fishline that is knotted and glued.

Polymer Trees with Rainbow Tea Lights

A huge thank you to Fiona Abel-Smith for her generosity in sharing this wonderful polymer holiday project! If you haven't ever watched any of Fiona's polymer YouTube tutorials, you're missing out on some amazing ideas. If you have watched and/or followed her tutorials, you know exactly what I'm talking about! When I saw this tutorial, I had to give these sweet trees a try. I experimented with my own bases, so I ended up with 3 different heighths. I also took a photo of one of the trees showing the color from a rainbow tea light shining through. These are especially lovely in a dim or dark room, or just in a spot where the colored light can show up well.

3-D Jewelry a la Jana Roberts Benzon

Once again, I had the chance to spend a wonderful day learning from Jana Roberts Benzon. As I have said before, she is really amazing. This time, the class was on dimensional pieces formed from canes of varying complexity. We made a variety of canes from complex kaleidoscopes to stripes, bulls' eyes and all sorts of options in between. Jana guided us through the process of assembling slices from the various canes into pendants and earrings. There are just so many possibilities, and the work the participants have posted on our group site have been amazing. Above is my first pendant and below, a pair of earrings to harmonize.

New Pieces for Spectrum

Once again, it's holiday show time, and I've been putting together some jewelry for the show at Spectrum Gallery in Essex. Below are several pieces. I'm loading them in as small images. You can just click on any you'd like to see more closely. I've been having fun with mica powders and iridescent shift paints, so you'll see those looks in many of the pieces.

Bonnie Bishoff Workshop

I've just spent 2 days on Zoom with Bonnie Bishoff at a workshop she taught through the Kansas City Polymer Clay Guild (KCPCG). It was an excellent workshop. Bonnie is very creative and her demonstrations and explanations were clear and easy to follow. She spent the first day teaching us how she does marquetry - also known as inlay. She is a wizard with the Exacto knife and creates very intricate pieces. On the second day, she helped participants learn how to join their pieces into jewelry in which the individual sections moved freely against each other. This created necklaces what were fluid and comfortable. I enjoyed the class, and really appreciate that KCPCG arranges these excellent learning opportunities via Zoom. Below are some other pieces I made.

"Frog Workshop" with Pavla Čepelíková

This weekend was the Southern Connecticut Polymer Clay Guild (SCPCG) Weekend of Clay. One of the presenters was Pavla Čepelíkova. She has some excellent ideas for creating your own texture plates, and led us through the process of making some designs similar to patterns you might find on a frog. When she showed us photos of frogs from all over the world, it became obvious that the colors and patterns were much more varied and interesting than we had orginally expected. I made some texture plates and created a brooch and a pendant. Neither is completely finished, but I thought I'd share. The green piece will be a brooch. I experimented with layering patterns over one another, so it has a different look. The photos below show a multi-piece pendant. The first 2 photos show side 1 and side 2. The third image shows some of the pieces flipped. Each of the sections rotates, so the user can vary the look. I like the way the patterns and colors seem to complement each other, and I think this will be fun to wear.