My February Beaded Journal Page

Mar7

My February page is finished. In honoring of relationships and love, my page symbolizes what happens when 2 people love and nourish each other. Their hearts touch and a beautiful silver river flows from one heart to the other and back again in a continuous flow of love, sharing and nurturing.

Shooting the page in the sun reveals brighter color and texture.

Originally, my plan was to bead the background but I love the pattern of this fabric too much to bead over it. It’s like a fireworks celebration and so colorful. In my Synergy class, “Unconventional Polymer”, Karen Woods suggested looking for inspiration for your polymer art in fabric and textiles. Wouldn’t this fabric pattern make fabulous canes?

ACC Show and Synergy Wrapup

Mar6

There were over 700 artist vendors participating in the ACC Show at the Baltimore Convention Center a couple of weeks ago. Since we were a little pressed for time because we were meeting friends for dinner, we walked the show in an hour and fifteen minutes. There were so many beautiful art pieces that caught my eye but I could only stop and savor a few.

Carol Owen creates “Spirit Houses” from all sorts of ephemera and mixed media. “My Spirit Houses are shrines to family memories. They make sacred those shards of the past that have made us what we are.” I found myself so drawn to these little shrines, wanting to open the doors and peer inside. In our dreams, the house can be a symbol for ourselves and each room a different aspect of who we are. So, I think I loved her work so much because it reminded me of my dreams. I love this quote from her website:

“Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house, a world, and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then that a world exists for you.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Karen Smith creates jewelry combining fiber, stones and metal. I found myself very drawn to her work because it reminded me of ancient tribal pieces. It spoke to something very deep within as I gazed upon the rich weavings encasing gorgeous stones. I was so disappointed to see that she doesn’t have a website or a blog because I wanted to read more about her work. I am so intrigued by the idea of incorporating fiber into jewelry pieces.

Kimberly Willcox makes the most amazing sculptures, as described on her business postcard “A Contemporary Spin on Primitive Form”. She shares with us: “My goal is to create a unique art form that shares a seamless integration between the world and the human spirit.”

I think that she accomplishes her goal quite wonderfully. Her sculptures seems to incorporate all sorts of materials including but not limited to wood and metal. I wonder what she uses to sculpt her faces.

To see the work of more ACC artists, you can read my friend, Amy’s, account here.

So, that concludes my account of all of my experiences at the 2008 Synergy Conference.

A huge thank you to all of the fabulous artists who worked so hard to make this event come true!

My Synergy Experience

Feb28

The dawn of the first day of the Synergy conference in Baltimore. I stayed at the Tremont Plaza Hotel, located about 1/2 mile from the Baltimore Convention Center where the conference was being held. The room that I shared with my friend, Amy, was quite spacious with a kitchenette, sitting area and 2 big feather beds. We could eat breakfast in our room and it was very comfortable for sleeping. We walked back and forth to the conference center everyday. The brisk walk and crisp winter air helped to wake us up for our first morning class at 8:30am. The 3 days were so jam packed with classes, panel discussions and guest lectures that I am still digesting the volume of information I absorbed and recorded in my notebook.

Jeffrey Lloyd Dever has a 20 year background in graphic design. He shared slides of his amazing work in polymer clay and its progression from vessels to pod shaped jewelry. His art graces the cover of the latest issue of Art Jewelry magazine. The article explains how he creates his pod forms and he also shared this process with us in class. There is also a chapter on his “Sculptural Pod Necklace” in Katherine Duncan Aimone’s book The Art of Jewelry: Polymer Clay.

Robert Dancik is a mixed media artist with a background in teaching at all levels from elementary school through college. A very engaging teacher, he opened both classes I attended with the sounding of a small Tibetan singing bowl. Its soothing sound helped to create a shift in our brains that opened us up more fully to the information he shared with us on artistic technique and process. We learned about Cold Connections such as riveting, tabs and prongs, and nuts and bolts. These techniques are from the metal world but can easily be used in polymer clay creations. My all-time favorite class was entitled “Dance to the MUSEik”, where he discussed various ways to access your artistic voice.

Lindly Haunani is very well known in the polymer clay community as an expert on color. I took 2 classes with Lindly, one on color confidence, which she taught with another queen of color, Maggie Maggio, and one called Teaching 101. She is such an entertaining teacher and as I laughed at her colorful stories and techniques, I felt myself opening to my playful child within. Lindly is very much in touch with that playful child and I would love to take a color workshop with her someday. There is much to learn.

Maggie Maggio is writing a color book with Lindly. Hooray! She has a wonderful blog called Smashing Color. As its name suggests, it is all about color and has shared tutorials about making color scales and practicing with color mixing. Her beautiful jewelry displays her amazing color sense flawlessly.

Sarah Shriver is best known in the polymer clay community for her intricate kaleidoscope canework. Her class was called “A Teacher’s Quandry”, all about the challenges she faces in teaching her exacting technique. This sparked a lively discussion which carried through into some of the panel discussions on finding your own voice in your art. A teacher would like to facilitate the discovery of that voice in each one of her/his students but the quandry results when you are teaching a specific technique and the project causes an imitation to be created. As the question of finding your voice and expressing it in your art has been a journey I have been on within the last few years, I was most fascinated and intrigued by these discussions. What constitutes true art? Does all art have to actually say something? What and who determines this?

Karen Woods is a weaver and fiber artist. In her class, Unconventional Polymer, she shared her explorations of combining polymer clay with basket weaving. She also showed us a slideshow of magnificent work of artists from polymer clay, fiber, glass and paper arts. She is an enthusiastic proponent of letting your work be inspired by many different materials.

Judy Kuskin is a jewelry artist, marrying polymer clay with metal in her beautifully graphic pieces. We explored asymmetrical design elements with her in a slideshow of the work of various polymer clay artists. I learned that one of the key words of asymmetrical design is balance.

More in my next post on the guest speakers and panel discussions…

Saturday Morning Tea

Jan19

And precious the tear as that rain from the sky,

Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.

-Thomas Moore

I have been thinking about pearls lately and the wonder surrounding their creation. I invite you to join me in my thoughts for a moment. What starts out to be an intrusion, an irritation, is transformed into something beautiful. In meditating on the life of a pearl, we can use it as a metaphor in our own lives. In our day to day life, challenges arise and in the process of dealing with those challenges, we are transformed as well. In honor of my “pearl” musings, this morning I have chosen a pearl jasmine tea, Dragon Phoenix Pearl, for my cup of tea.

Steeped in 180 degree F water for 3 minutes, I watched in fascination as the little spheres unfurled themselves, reminding me of hermit crabs reaching their legs out of their shells. Gorgeous full green leaves are revealed as I remove the pearls from the water.

The journey of the tea pearls. After green tea processing, the leaves are laid out with blooming jasmine flowers so they will absorb their intoxicating scent. This process is repeated and then the leaves are steamed and hand rolled into little pearls. I deeply feel that the pale straw colored liquor in my cup has been steeped from little works of art in themselves.

The tea is so pale that you can see the wonderful texture inside of my tea bowl. This is one of the bowls I purchased at the Kaji Aso studio. The aroma is delicately floral and not overly perfumey. The taste is sweet jasmine, smooth and subtle.

I have not yet laid down a single bead for my January journal page but there is a lot of inner gestating going on. Being guided by my meditations on pearls, unfurling spiral shapes and turning 50 the other day, it will be called “The Journey to Myself”.

Goals for the New Year

Jan6

I have been reading many blog posts lately about goals for the New Year. So, inspired by my online friends, I have set forth a few goals for myself for 2008.

-take a painting class/workshop to bring painting back into my life

-create a visual journal by sketching more

-recreate my website

-nurture my writing, including writing poetry

-plant a garden at my new home

-open an Etsy account with updated photos of all of my jewelry

-learn transfer techniques so I may incorporate my photos into my art and my jewelry

-spend more time in nature

As I scan through my list, I see my resolution word, “Beauty”, already guiding me. In the last week, my meditations on my resolution word have led me from thinking about creating beautiful things to experiencing “beauty in the moment” and finally to finding the beauty in myself. As I approach my 50th birthday, I celebrate my blessings, my growth and, yes, my beauty.