More articles on Polymer Clay art and artists…
Article on Michelle Davis Petelinz and her Arican tribal inspired shadowboxes:
New dimension: Petelinz was surprised that she became drawn to sculptural objects. “In school I always felt my two-dimensional sense was good, but my three-dimensional was awful.” She learned she was mistaken when she took a polymer clay course in the mid-1980s and really loved the process of making tiny sculptures to wear as jewelry. “It was the first thing I did as a business. I was wearing a piece I made and a woman said, ‘Where did you find that necklace?’ She then ordered five for relatives. And when Petelinz delivered them to her during a party, partygoers became customers.”
Article on dollmaker Nita Keeler:
“Not long after I started, polymer clay came out of Germany,” Keeler said. “I thought I had died and went to heaven.”
Studier, more durable and colored, the polymer clay allowed Keeler to create some of the images she envisioned in her head.
Saying she would “explode” if she didn’t get the ideas out of her mind, she’ll often sculpt and bake five or six heads at one time, then muse over their faces. She said for her, starting with the head is crucial.
“If they’re not looking at me and smiling, it’s just a blank image,” Keeler said. “I always do the face first. Sometimes, I’ll give them a hat or certain other characteristics that will effect the doll.”
Article on photographer June Hunter who transforms her images and transfers them to clay pendents:
Twenty centimeters… Ten centimetres… Hunter’s initially Brobdingnagian prints were slowly shrinking to Lilliputian proportions. “I thought if I could find a tiny tile, I could make a necklace,†she says, and, with a silver-making course under her belt, launched into jewellery-making late last summer, transferring the miniature images onto polymer clay, signing the reverse, and hanging the pendant from a thin black-leather thong fastened with a sterling-silver toggle. Since then, liking its slight translucency, she has started to work with precut squares of white shell as an alternative medium and recently added white agate beads to her materials. Her workspace is a movable feast. If she’ll be using chemicals, she heads for the large shed in the garden; if technology, her computer and scanner are in the basement. Often, she assembles pieces in the living room “so I can watch Prison Break out of the corner of my eye.â€
