Off to Synergy!

I'm about to finish packing everything to be ready to leave for Baltimore and the National Polymer Clay Guild's Synergy Conference. It's exciting to think about all the amazing polymer work that will be on display in the gallery and I can't wait to sit down for each of the seminars that I've signed up for.
Most of my jewelry pieces are packed for the gallery display as well as this necklace that I'm donating to the NPCG silent auction. Quite a ways back I tried my first cane from my own drawing and this iris was the result. From that cane came beads and from those beads came this necklace this week!
My muse has been back in full force in the studio and tomorrow we'll be driving our way to Baltimore for some more inspiration.

Keep the cheer!

I'm getting there...

It's been far too long since I posted. I've found that for most of this fall I've been working too much on new curriculum for teaching and not enough time has been spent in the studio. I have plenty of sketches, ideas and thoughts swirling around just waiting to be printed or 'clayed' but time keeps getting sucked into "work projects".

However it's getting darker earlier - I'm finding that I'm tucking in to the house (and studio!) a bit earlier... and hopefully after this next round of curriculum and grade work I'll be a bit more free.

Wait 'til you see what my newest sketches look like! I'm moving on to more textures and starting to think about juxtaposing funky patterns/colors/textures next to each other... we'll see what happens.

Keep the cheer.

At the Booth.

The show was fun - the two images are of my booth set up and a close up of one of the tables full of jewelry! The setup went very smoothly with the tent going up, tables getting placed and all the jewelry set out. At a few points the my booth was like a small summer gathering of friends that I hadn't seen since we finished teaching in June. I also met many really nice folks. It was an interesting conversation with some people talking about how different making jewelry and tscreenprinting is. But as I spoke about the differences I also mentioned many of the color and technique overlaps! With this show finished and things packed away I'm back in the studio and planning on joining the group again for their Open House in November. The Troy Shirt Factory artists use the weekend after Thanksgiving to become the 'anti-mall' as artists open their studios and line the hallways of the building with beautiful hand crafted works of art. So mark it on your calendar, it's set on mine and now I have work to do!!!

From Sketch to Finish

I keep drawing and coming up with sketches and color combinations for polymer clay pieces that I'd like to bring to life someday. When that someday is varies greatly. I'm heading into the end of the school year which will take up more and more time and with spring just around the corner, playing, hiking and gardening in the great outdoors will take more time.

But for now I've actually managed to pull a piece from sketch to a finished necklace. I wasn't happy with the color combination in the sketch so I 'borrowed' another color scheme from a different page in my sketch book. I'm working on really translating size, shape and concept into the actual materials... trickier than I thought.

Blue Spirals...

It's been grey and overcast for most of the day and it started snowing again this afternoon. So I played in the studio stringing up some spiral beads that I had created a few weeks back. It's really nice sitting up in my studio looking out over the river and watching the snow pile up on the branches and pine trees.
The photograph that I posted is from one early morning looking out from our front yard over to the island in the middle of the Hudson River. The sun touches the tips of the trees first and adds some rosy glow and then warms up the rest of the valley. I thought it would be a nice image to link with the blues and spirals of the necklace.

Tiffany Stained Glass inspiration...

I have always loved Louis Comfort Tiffany and his amazing glass work This summer I was able to see an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that showcased some of his work along with many other Art Deco artists. So that got me on a reading kick in my odd spare moments. I finally got around to taking one of my images of an iris from my own garden here at the river house and using it as a starting point for a 'stained glass' cane.

Building it was challenging, reducing it was tiring, cutting into it once it was reduced to the first size I wanted was frightening... but then I did a dance of joy around the studio. I'm so happy - now I need to finish reducing the rest and see what I can make of it!!! The first image is the original iris photograph and the clay image shows the cane before it was reduced and after at about 2"x2".

Back in the Studio!

We have finally finished our addition on our house which included an art studio space for me. The two images are views of the studio. I actually have a dry area for computer graphic work, reading, researching, sketching and assembling my jewelry. And then I have an area that is more messy for the clay work, oil pastels, pastels, printing, baking and sanding. Because I'm a printer using water based inks I even have a "shower-like" area that I use to hose off my inks to get the screen ready for the next print.
I'm so excited to finally be moved in, organized and getting back to work. With the year's construction pushing me into the basement and then over two months during final construction without a space to call my own - that was just too long!

Still Ripples...

The photograph is an image of a kettlehole in a stream in Northern Maine where my husband and I travel each August to escape before I head back into the art classroom. I tinted the black and white image slightly blue in the water for effect and am not sure if I like it or not... The polymer set is another attempt at a ripple/brain cane. This one went a little awry - I tried to use the traditional folding and pleating of the brain cane technique, but added some gradient blend areas as well as other fill. I'm not sure yet. Maybe I have to get rid of the black and white in the cane completely and work with more subtle blues and greys like in the photograph. Thoughts?

More blues...

This is another water image. When I sit on the edge of a brook, river or any body of water the rippling water and color play is amazing. This print image is not a full final work; usually before I create a print I play around with color, texture and ideas in a sketchbook or on the computer. This is a "sketch" of a possible ripple print. The pendant is one of the brain canes I was playing with for a time... brain canes are fun and the color possibilities are endless. I wonder if I could get a more watery ripple effect with more practice.

Blue hue

I had been posting about wildflowers for quite a few posts and have decided to go in a different direction for a time. This print is from an image of a brook on the backside of Dix Mountain in the Adirondacks. I like close up views of brooks and the tumbling water, it's amazing the amount of color changes and swirls you can see if you look long enough. The pendant and bracelet are a set that I created with mokume gane slices based on these blue hues. The pendant is stand alone at the moment, usually I slide it on a sliver chain, the bracelet is strung with the mokume bead and laborodite chips. I like how mokume gane comes out with polymer clay - I'll have to think of new color variations.

A splash of yellow.

It's a grey and dreary day in the Northeast, so I've decided to post in the brightest of colors I could. The print is from the same wildflower series as the last post, it is a Sundrop and the original image was captured early in the morning with dew still on the petals. It was a beautiful addition to the wildflower series. The print inspired one of my first attempts at an image transfer and in the process, became a bracelet. This is probably one of the more direct links of my prints and polymer.

Purple Blooms.

There are beautiful wildflowers at the barn and it is truly amazing what you can catch with a supermacro zoom. The images from the various flowers inspired a series of ten prints. The print here is spotted-joe-pieweed and I believe it is very thistle like. Polymer clay lends itself to such color mixing that you can match colors so well with images. So... what better jewelry to pair the print with that this purple swish & swirl necklace?

Complex Moss

Sometimes in the mountains it's the commanding view from the peaks that catch my eye. And then there are the times where my attention doesn't move more than two inches from the ground. I had taken several pictures of reindeer moss and lichens during a recent hike and the fabulous greens and lines inspired my first kaliedoscope cane. The cane then became a bracelet with more left over for other pieces in the future.

Layers in the Mountains...

It's amazing looking out over the vista from a mountain top. The layers of the peaks in front of you just wave away with layer after layer, it's beautiful. One of the images that I took from the peak of Giant Mountain is due to become a future print... but it's already inspired a necklace with waves of faux jade. I was testing out a faux tutorial and used a few of the slices to create this pendant.

Texture in both.

The texture is part of a print of a waterfall near our barn in the Adirondacks. The sun had hit the water, the depth of the water was just right, the rocks had just enough quartz in them to sparkle... it made the perfect photo - and then a wonderful print. Later on in the studio I was playing around with scraps and attempts of miscellaneous projects and happened to combine colors in such a way that it brought those rocks back to mind. Made a nice bead or two!

The Start

Two of my favorite mediums to work in are polymer clay and screen printing. I find my inspiration everywhere and I hope that this blog becomes the gathering spot for ideas, interesting thoughts and wonderful imagery. So here is the start of the blog with two images of my work. The barn image is a print from the past year and the jewelry piece follows a retro cane tutorial inspired by the funky fall colors outside my studio. This year had more orange and limes in the colors of the leaves... wonder why?