A few pictures of some of the dragons I finished for Synergy2

In the order which they were created:

Knotted Thoughts

Out For A Flight

I Dare You or Evoran Found A Treasure

I showed these to Christi Friesen, and she likes the direction I am going with my dragons. I admire her work and much like her, I like spirals, little dots and have been influenced by the Art Nouveau style. I really like dragons but avoided doing them for a long time because I did not want to have my work look too much hers. She assures me that they don't. What do you think?

Artistic Voice

One of the re-occurring themes that I noticed at the Synergy2 conference was that of artistic voice. Trying to figure out what that is and how it works for me has been an on-going challenge. I don't feel that I have anything momentous to say with my art. Because of that I kind of abandoned trying to identify my voice. What I want to do is make pretty things, but that in itself can be a statement.
Now, I don't think that it was any coordinated or planned thing that artistic voice kept coming up at Synergy2. In fact it may well be that I simply noticed it because I was ready to hear it and begin to process. Having voice brought up over and over again with different little spins on it throughout the conference really got me thinking again. I have come to some conclusions.

1. You don't have to have something momentous to say in order to have a defined artistic voice.
2. It is not something that you necessarily consciously work on.
3. As one of the presenters said (sorry I don't remember who), sometimes you just have to collect your work from a span of time and look at it anew to even begin to see what makes it unified and yours.
4. I should relax about the whole voice thing and not try to push it. As long as I am true to myself it will be there.

I did a quick search and found a few links to posts or articles that were about finding your artistic voice. I don't want to step on anybody's toes, so instead of quoting sections (some would be large sections) of these, I am simply going to give you the urls for them.

From "Pottery Production Practices", an article by Laurie Erdman on how her artistic voice developed. http://www.ceramicindustry.com/Articles/PPP_Archives/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000767224

From "develop on fridays" a post by Jefra Starr Linn on your creative voice.
http://www.jefrastarrlinn.com/develop/voice/

From "Entrepreneur The Arts" an article by Jim Hart entitled "10 Steps to Finding your Artistic Voice".
http://blog.entrepreneurthearts.com/2009/08/26/ten-steps-to-finding-your-artistic-voice/

Having Fun at Synergy2

I have been having fun at Synergy2. My brain hasn't exploded from all the information yet, but there are still two more days of classes to go.
There was a beautiful cake for the 20th anniversary of the National Polymer Clay Guild (now the International Polymer Clay Association) made by Charm City Cakes. I was lucky enough to get a fairly good shot of it.

 

Here are just a few of us who were trying to get a picture of it before it is cut. It was quite a crowd.

 

And here is why I love the zoom on my camera. I was still standing in the same place as when I took the other shot, but was able to zoom in on the cake itself.

Kato Clay - Joys and Challenges

Ah, Kato Clay... Wonderful stuff once you get it moving, but the aggravation to get it there. Or so I once thought. I have found that it listens to force quite well and that once you have it conditioned, you do not have to resort to extreme measures for a year or more.
What I do is a modification of the technique that Jana Roberts Benzon uses. While she prefers to work with whole blocks of clay that are still in the wrapper, I many times only want to work with a relatively small amount of clay. I also will buy my clay in the big bricks, so conditioning that much clay is rather time consuming.
My process is this:
*Slice off a section of clay the size you want to work with. You don't have to get it all in one chunk. Don't worry about it crumbling, we'll take care of that soon.

*Assemble the slices, chunks or crumbles into a pile on a hard, smooth work surface. My worktable is wood on which I have set a glass table top.

*Take a wide smooth faced hammer like the wide face on a ball pean hammer or a chasing hammer and start hitting the clay.

*Because the face is smooth, almost none of the clay will stick to it and the little bit that does is easy to scrape off with a clay blade.

*Keep hammering until most of the clay pile starts squishing instead of cracking. You don't have to hit it really hard, but you do want to try to make a dent in the clay. The edges of your pile will still probably be crumbly if you have not struck those as much. Since I work on glass, that is what I tend to do.

*Cut the pile and rearrange it so that the edge pieces are now toward the middle so you can hammer them too.

*Keep hammering, rearranging and hammering the clay until it is soft and pliable.

*Now you can either use your brayer to flatten it out to a thickness that will go through your pasta machine, or you can use the hammering process and let the clay spread out and thin.

*Run the well hammered clay through your pasta machine at the thickest or next to thickest setting, and continue conditioning it as you would a more compliant clay. You should not have to do too much at this point.

*If you find it is still crumbling, just assemble the crumbles and start hammering again.

Using this technique I have been able to "tame" Kato clay into doing my bidding every time.

Working on items for Synergy2

Here are some of the items I have been working on for Synergy2 later this month.

It is pretty obvious that I have been influenced somewhat by the work of Christi Friesen, but hey, I love dragons and swirls too!

Working on Cabochons in the Storm

I have been working on a new batch of cabochons while home since the current Nor'easter we are experiencing has closed the schools. Here are some quick pictures of them as of this morning.

I am doing snowflakes for some winter themed pendants along the same lines of the one I showed last time. I have been trying to mix some dichroics that will reflect winter colors. I'm not too sure of my success in that, but I do like the results I am getting so far.






















All of the green cabs are done with the same powder on the same black clay. It seems that they each are just a bit different in color though. I have heard the the same sort of thing can happen with dichroic glass. Some of it is probably different thicknesses in aplication of the powder.

Here are a few shots of some of the dichroic shifts I am getting in these. As usual it is being tricky to get good photographs of the colors. The color of these when seen straight on is actually more the golden green that shows in the pictures above. The kind of icy blue that shows when seen from the side is just about right though.
















































The one below is not a winter theme, but I love the colors. The shift from purple to chocolate brown can be pretty subtle, but I can wait to work up a setting to show off the colors.

Have You Ever?...

Now I know I said I was going to get back to the subject of narrowing down artistic direction and I will, just wait. I just  have  to share my latest creation first.

Have you ever worked on something that refused to come together for a long time, but when it finally did it was not just finished but it sang to you?

This piece had flummoxed me for about two years(I guess). It was something of a series of experiments. First was the faux dichroic center. I had found some dichroic mica powder and started working with it. (I actually have blended my own color variations, but that is for another post.) Later when I was trying to figure out what I could do with a 1 1/4" domed textured piece of faux dichroic polymer clay, I came across the work of Cheryl Harris in a copy of Belle Armoire Jewelry. What she was doing there with using real dichroic glass cabs I could certainly do with my faux one. I gave it a try and really liked my result.

I just couldn't figure out what to do with it. Should it be a pendant? Should it become a broach? Because of the way I spaced out the elements I couldn't even come to a firm decision of what should be the top and bottom! Now don't misunderstand me, I am not habitually indecisive. I just could see too many different possibilities and really did not want to mess this up.

Well, along came wire sculpting. Now I knew what I wanted to do with it. It took a number of different tries to get something that I felt worked, but I perservered. I'm really glad I did.

In addition to the wire giving the pendant something to hang by, it really complements the piece. By following some of the original curves and adding a few more spiral flourishes I kept in line with the flow of the clay vines.

I will bring this back to narrowing down my artistic direction by saying that when I was finished I just could not stop looking at what I just did. I even said to myself that this was the kind of art I want to do. This pendant sang to me. I immediately began seeing new and different possibilities based on what I held in my hands. I knew that I had found the inspirational focus I had been looking for. To me this pendant has all of the top five elements that I identified that I want to have in my work.

Fantasy; Nature; Colorful; Magical; Earthy