Polymer Art Archive

Polymer Art Archive is officially “on vacation” until we have finished migrating the site to a new hosting service. Thanks for your patience.

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Elise asked me to lead a small team of volunteers to research and write about gatherings that influenced the development of polymer as an art medium. This is the second of these posts and we hope to follow up with more. Special thanks to Steven Ford who provided this information about the Arrowmont Conference.

Name of Event: Making History: Pushing the Craft of Polymer Clay, the first national Conference of the National Polymer Clay Guild

Sponsoring Organization: National Polymer Clay Guild

Dates and Place held: Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, TN; September 7-13, 1997

Mission Statement: The theme was to challenge polymer clay users to think differently about how they use the material by adapting traditions and techniques from other media; most of the polymer clay techniques at the time came from glass techniques. We wanted to expand the adaptive techniques to include metal, printmaking, fabric design and construction, and ceramics. Steven Ford envisioned bringing in “Masters of Other Media” to work with polymer clay, adapt and teach new techniques developed from their working methods.

Continue Reading »

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In Jed Perl’s article, “The Artisanal Urge” American Craft (June/July 2008), he defends the “human desire to make something with one’s own hands” against the current stylistic trend of a more detached approach to creating art. Perl, an author of several books on art and the art critic for The New Republic, argues that the point of creating art is to allow the hand of the maker to be expressive whatever the chosen medium- be it paint, clay, ink or metal. Continue Reading »

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Dear Readers:

New and more serious gremlins have surfaced with PAA software. For the past week I have been blocked from uploading any image files either through Wordpress or through an FTP client. As a result, in the near furture, I will be migrating Polymer Art Archive to a new hosting account with a clean install of Wordpress. Once that happens you WILL experience problems with pages which you’ve previously bookmarked. It is possible this migration may also require you to re-set your RSS subscriptions… that remains to be seen.

In the meantime I’ve scheduled 3 posts to publish on consecutive upcoming Fridays. While these posts are image-free, they are rich in thought- provoking ideas and information.

If the migration is not complete by June 29, Polymer Art Archive will go on a short sabbatical until that work is finished.

Thank you for your patience

Elise

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INSOMNIA BOWL, Undreamt Dreams
12¾” x 11¾” x 3¼”

For the MIPCES catalog, Margaret Regan wrote:

“I like images that float, and my work is characterized by a high degree of drift and space. There’s a dream state where you recognize an object, but not it’s surroundings. I love the interaction of control with happenstance, and the blend it produces seems true to how we live our lives.”

Recently, Margaret reflected: Continue Reading »

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ANEMONE HAT
polymer clay, brass, velvet, aluminum screen
7” diameter, 3 1/2”h

In the MIPCES catalog, Cynthia Toops wrote: “Dan and I create beads for elaborate jewelry pieces. For this project I wanted to make a full-size hat and imposed one restriction- no beads. We partially encased wire elements in polymer clay in a different way and by forcing myself out of the jewelry mode, it automatically gave me freedom to experiment. What began with the hat will become a starting point for new jewelry ideas.”

More recently, this is what Cynthia had to say about her piece: “I wanted to make a hat and I’ve always been interested in marine biology. Growing up in Hong Kong, I went to the beach every chance I could. I would swim and beach comb all day and that was my idea of a perfect day. I missed that horribly in Des Moines, Iowa where I did my undergraduate degree in Biology. It was better in Seattle where I could see the ocean often but getting there was another matter. In art school I would do silkscreens of marine life and sea creatures.

Then came polymer clay and jewelry. Continue Reading »

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POCKETS AND PILLOWS OF AIR
2 ½’ x 3’ x 3″

For the MIPCES catalog, Pier wrote: “This unique clay softens before it hardens in the baking. So most often a large form needs some kind of internal or external armature to keep it from distorting or collapsing while it bakes. I tried air as an armature. Each of the enclosed shapes have a little extra puff of air sealed inside. (I blew them up like balloons.) When they bake, the hot air expands and holds the form.” Continue Reading »

Tags: MIPCES Exhibition, Voulkos

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OLA NYINGMA
peace-pole, prayer-wheel
Approx. 14′ h

In 1996, when Tory Hughes first heard rumors about Michael Grove’s Wall of Polymer, she immediately sensed a creative challenge. I remember the sly smile on her lips, the emphatic quality of her voice when she swore not to be outdone by “the men.” If anybody was going to construct the BIGGEST sculpture in the exhibit, if anybody was going to flex the most MASSIVE artistic muscles in the room, it certainly was going to be a woman, a Tory not a Tony! She laughed when I recently reminded her of that conversation.

In 1997, Tory’s answer to that challenge was Ola Nyingma. Here’s what she had to say more recently, reflecting on that piece:

Continue Reading »

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Ruth Anne Grove, WAITING TO DISAPPEAR
wall mural, approx 15 feet wide

We all know and can appreciate the rallying cry of the 1970’s environmental movement, “Small is Beautiful.” Many polymer artists have put that aphorism into practice. Cynthia Toops made “small is beautiful” into what you might call a devotional practice, a religious worship.

So when the director of the OCCC extended the MIPCES challenge to create something that really “pushed the envelope,” Ruth Anne and Michael Grove immediately took up that challenge by considering exactly the opposite artistic approach, asking “Can’t Supersized be Beautiful?” Each of them began planning monumental sculptures of a size that had never been previously attempted in polymer. Continue Reading »

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An upside to all this downtime has been making the acquaintance of Elaine Robitaille. Elaine does Wordpress development for her clients in Canada as part of her day job. She stepped me through some diagnostics, then taught me some coding to work around remaining problems. Best of all she has agreed to continue providing technical assistance as Polymer Art Archive moves forward.

Thanks to Elaine, the next PAA post should appear on Friday.

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