PMC class results

Here's my most excellent first creations in precious metal clay (click on picture for a slightly better view*):



The nautilus at the top is the best, IMHO. I forgot to put a hole in the other shell before it was fired, so if I want to use it as a pendant I'll have to drill it with my Dremel. The round, heavily textured piece doesn't show up too well, but is very pretty. The other two little ones are faces - the one on the left was too thick, didn't get completely dried out before I fired it, and "popped" when the little speck of water boiled (it doesn't show up well on the scan because it's being propped up by the little exploded place on the back.) It's still going to be cool for some project. The second face came out sort of rough, because the clay had gotten a little too dry to work with, so I dampened my hands to give some more moisture to the clay, and when it was fired the surface was sort of pitted. Oh, well, it looks pretty cool anyway.

Yay! It was fun, I got to play in mud *and* set things on fire!

*OH! HAY! If you click on the picture, then click again, then click AGAIN with the little magnifying glass, you get a pretty good look at them!

It's a new year

Ugh. So much for my intention to regularly post here about my art endeavors. Oh, well, we can only go forward, n'est-ce pas?

Things I am doing in 2008 for my artistic health:

1) Taking my first PMC class next Weds. Several months ago I was at a bead store's customer sale (where customers set up to sell their unwanted beads/supplies) and scored a PMC hot pot kit and a gob of supplies for $25! (I know! it made me squeal like a teenager!) The same store also offers classes, so rather than start fooling around with the stuff and making a hash of it I'm going to FIRST take a class. And my friend MC is coming with, which is always fun. I know, I know, I always swear I don't need YET ANOTHER MEDIUM TO GET INVOLVED IN because there are always more supplies and tools and ways to spend my money, but hey, many of the tools and supplies and skills I already have from polymer clay and other media will transfer nicely, thank you very much, and besides, $25 freaking dollars, people! That's about 1/4 of what the kit and supplies are worth retail.

See?! I can rationalize with the best of them.

2) Going to my first meeting of (and possibly joining) the local art dolls group. I had previously thought that they were only a fabric doll group (which is not my thing a-tall), but after corresponding with the person who runs their website it seems they do lots of different things. The activity after the meeting this month is image transfer, which I have done in a couple of different ways but it's always good to practice and learn more approaches. My only concern is that the meeting starts at 10:30 a.m. and the activity starts at 1:00 p.m. - PLEASE don't tell me that their meetings are 2.5 hours long?!?!?! Maybe they take a lunch break before the activity. Maybe I should email Cyndi and ask her :).

3) Taking a class on using Shiva PaintStiks on fabric - stenciling, using rubbing plates, etc. I want to start using more fabric in my work and any time I can take plain inexpensive fabric and customize it that's a good thing.

4) Reading and working through Sark's Make Your Creative Dreams REAL: A Plan for Procrastinators, Perfectionists, Busy People, Avoiders, and People Who Would Rather Sleep All Day. I have discovered that much of my procrastination/avoidance is perfectionism gone awry. I get so overwhelmed by the prospect of having to do everything right - and right the first time - that I do nothing. Which means the things that aren't getting done pile up, which makes me more overwhelmed... None of this is conscious, of course, but the fact that I'm unaware I'm doing it doesn't make it less of a problem. SARK may be a little too cheesy/magical thinking/New Agey for a lot of people, but she's walking her talk, and her books are a joy for me to read. If you can read one of SARK's books without a big smile on your face through most of it, I would suspect you need a heart transplant. Or a big ol' squooshy hug.


On a less resolution-y note, I got Jane Wynn's Altered Curiosities for Xmas and am nearly giddy over it. I have gotten to the point where I HATE project books, because so much of the time they tend to gloss over the process in favor of the outcome, and I'd much rather learn new techniques and then apply them to my own stuff. Jane has achieved a lovely balance - starting with a raft of diverse techniques (resin, metalworking, reworking little plastic doo-dads) and then applying them to a handful of projects that are easily adaptable to your own choices. The best part, IMHO, is the section where she talks about the process of working out *your own personal symbology* and how important that is to making art that is truly yours. I've had the book out of the library for a couple of months already, so getting my own copy was an excellent score. Of course there were a few questions I had, so I looked up her website and emailed her - got an awesomely gracious note in return and answers to my questions. I'm finding that people are extraordinarily generous with their knowledge and experience - hopefully some day I'll be able to return the favor.

Gwen Diehn's The Decorated Page is one of the most useful books I've encountered on the topic of art journaling, and I've found its lessons (like to buy good quality materials and tools even though they're more expensive, because you'll be happier with the results) follow through to other work. The concept that has really stuck with me is that of neutral vs. determined materials, which is really applicable to collage, assemblage, etc. - anywhere you repurpose materials or images.

Determined materials are those that come with their own identity - patterns and colors that suggest a particular meaning, readily recognizable images, images that carry with them a historical interpretation. Neutral materials are those that have no inherent "meaning" of their own and can be used in any way one would care to. In Ms. Diehn's own words:

"Art materials can be described as falling along a continuum from neutral materials (those that don't have any meaning or much connotation of their own) to strongly determined materials (those that carry meaning and connotations of their own.) Neutral materials would include plain white sheets of paper, standard colors of paint, uncarved rubber stamp-making material, ordinary black ink, colored and graphite pencils, or any other materials that, rather than assert themselves, become transparent once they've been incorporated into artwork. Because these materials don't carry any meaning of their own, they won't interfere or conflict with the ideas that you're trying to express.

"Strongly determined materials, at the other end of the continuum, already carry messages... it tends to dominate and weaken any artwork in which it's used unless it's changed in some way or used very deliberately, relating to the content and concept of the piece.

...

"When gathering materials, things about the meaning and connotation of the particular material, especially if it's strongly determined. Decide whether or not it can be used to express the ideas and feelings you want to get across in your work. If you decide to use some strongly determined materials, be sure that the meaning of the material contributes to the expression of your own meaning, and that it doesn't leap out and overwhelm your work. You can also use a strongly determined material ironically."

The most obvious examples I can think of involve the extensive use of public domain images in altered arts - etchings from 19th century books, Victorian greeting cards, mid-20th century magazines, even those handy Dover books of clip art. They can be extremely useful, especially if you're looking to sell your work and trying to avoid copyright infringement, but there's a wealth of underlying meaning to those images. If you believe what they're telling you, children are always clean and well-behaved, women are graceful and impeccably dressed in sweeping floor-length gowns or "day dresses" complete with a string of pearls, men are strong, businesslike, lantern-jawed. All very nice if you're trying to be ironic, but the tone doesn't work for every project.

I'm not saying don't use those materials, but be aware that you're telegraphing an idea to the viewer that you may not intend.

Artist Spotlight: Chris Malone

Chris Malone recently joined an online art dolls discussion group I belong to, and I LOVE his work. He was born and raised not far from where I live, altho' he currently lives in D.C. (Funny how many artists came from Ohio but don't live here any more...)

His work reminds me somewhat of Jim Henson's more complicated puppets - whimsical, stylized faces and funny, more cartoony bodies and legs. They're SO colorful and the movement of the dolls (even when stationary!) is so much fun - another source of inspiration!

Teaching a old dog new tricks

I have a bad habit of buying "workbooks" - books where you are given certain assignments to complete while following the text - with good intentions, fully planning to complete them and thereby acquire a new skill or personal insight or whatever, but somehow I never actually do the work. The best example I can thing of is Sam Keen's Your Mythic Journey, which is a really terrific book about using autobiography and journaling to identify the myths that underpin your worldview, the "truths" about how the world works that you were raised with and that color the way you interact with the world. Great book. Wonderful exercises to help you figure out your authentic self and "re-write" the stories you tell yourself about your life (another way in which people get "stuck".) Did I ever *do* the work? No. I still have the book, and periodically I think it would be really valuable to follow thru with it, but I never have.

So right now I'm reading and *doing the work* of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards' classic manual on learning to see differently in order to improve one's drawing skills. I've previously said that I draw on a grade-school level (I may even have said kindergarten), and it turns out that a lot of people really do stop developing the skills needed to draw well when they're young - due to a combination of negative reinforcement from self and others (I mean, who would continue to pursue an activity when people make fun of your results?), and the hardening of certain representations (a house looks like this, a person looks like that) in one's drawing. Edwards teaches you to see differently - to stop trying to make, for instance, a nose that looks like a nose, and instead to draw the shadows and light, positive and negative space, that end up representing that nose, that chair, etc. The before and after illustrations of student work - the first exercises are done before reading any of her instruction, so the student has a baseline to look back on and see how far they've come - are really astonishing in some cases. So I'm hopeful, and I'm having fun, and I'm really feeling like I'm going to complete this one. Keep your fingers crossed for me - I'll see about posting some results when I'm able.

Reading List

I think I probably have an addictive personality: fortunately, my drug of choice is not whisky or heroin or gambling or sex, but information. When I get obsessed with a topic I tend to compulsively read, research, and think about it. Since I started expressing myself artistically I find myself reaching further and further, to new media, and every time I learn or want to learn something new it opens up a whole new array of materials to examine. Currently my reading list/library books include:

Artful Paper Dolls: New Ways to Play with a Traditional Form
Beaded Embellishment: Techniques & Designs for Embroidering on Cloth
Creative stamping with mixed media techniques
Celebrate Your Creative Self: Over 25 Exercises to Unleash the Artist Within
Releasing the Creative Spirit : Unleashing the Creativity in Your Life
Kaleidoscope : projects and ideas to spark your creativity
The decorated journal : creating beautifully expressive journal pages
Pretty little things : collage jewelry, trinkets, keepsakes
Artists' journals and sketchbooks : exploring and creating personal pages
Drawing on the right side of the brain
I'm not trying to do all of these things at once, but they're all inter-related in my mind.
Sometimes I feel like if I could just unscrew the top of my head and pour in all the information everything would come together.

Chaos in my wake

The thing that gets me stuck, as far as working on art/craft projects, is too much stuff. Stuff everywhere, and no clear space to work in, and things that can't be found to do what I want to do because there's no rhyme or reason to how things are stored. I've even been known to buy something that I'm pretty sure I already own - black Neopaque paint, for example - just because I can't find the one on hand.

Oh, there used to be organization: when all I did was gourds, I had one of those tall wheeled 5 drawer things that contained my tools, embellishments, paints, and dyes, and all of the things I needed fit in that one unit.

Then I branched out into polymer clay, and there were more tools, and jewelry findings, and wire, and different kinds of paints, and inks, and of course the clay itself, which you always have to buy more of when the local craft store puts it on sale at more than 50% off. Which meant more sets of drawers to house those materials.

Unfortunately, starting from the point where I focused on one medium and then expanded into several others, I didn't keep up with sorting things appropriately, because, you see, so many things cross over into other media, and my original system fell by the wayside.

My real downfall is the altered art. I have board books. Regular books. Altoid tins. Other tins. Little wood cabinets to be made into shadowboxes or shrines. 37 different kinds of glue (you think I'm kidding?) And paper - oh, god, the paper. Tissue, scrapbook paper, handmade paper, collage paper, plus all of the magazine pictures, old photographs, and ephemera (AKA "old paper that our forebears would never have imagined would be considered important or appropriate for making art from.") There are now shelves, and clear plastic shoeboxes, and stacking bins, and clear plastic envelopes, and little sets of drawers that sit on my tabletop. There are also multiple work surfaces, depending on what I'm doing - a large ceramic tile or glass board for clay, a self-healing mat for paper, newspaper for painting dolls... and everything requires storage space.

And there's also all the publications - Polymer Cafe, Art Doll Quarterly, Cloth Paper Scissors, Altered Arts, Belle Armoire, Legacy... I only subscribe to a couple, but periodically there'll be a special issue that catches my attention, and I'll have to add it to my library. These days I've gotten better about the actual books - I'll check things out of the library to make sure they're worth devoting the money and the space before I actually buy - but my art/craft library is still pretty large.

So this weekend I'm launching a reclamation project, in which I completely revamp the way my "studio" space is organized. I've secured a pile of empty boxes, and I plan to spend at least an hour each day sorting the drawers and the boxes and the piles of art supplies into categories, and ridding myself of some things (I have a bad habit of buying things just because they look interesting/useful, not because I actually already have a use for them, so I'm sure there are at least a few things that can go to a new home.) Once I have a better grasp of what all is there I'll be better able to assess what I need in terms of additional storage and how things can be set up for future, on-going organization.

And no, I WON'T post before and after pictures. Maybe after. Before is just too depressing. (Note: the pic above is NOT my space. Mine is not that bad. Really.)