Archive for January 3rd, 2007

Goals for the new year

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

It seems like everyone’s making resolutions and setting goals this time of year and it started me thinking about my own:

Gradually reorganize and reclaim my claying table.
It never lasts – I always end up working in a 4-6 inch square area surrounded by shaky piles of supplies and tools. But getting that clear space to start with always gets my inspiration going. Somehow my mind hates an empty space I think and longs to fill it with clay and clutter :)

Improve my sculpting skills.
I’ll be taking a class with Christopher Long in Mystic, CT. Then I think I’ll start looking at some art and anatomy books and doing some studying.

Make some stuff.
Generic enough? :) I want to make some sculpted relief wall pieces, some sculptures in a slightly larger scale than my usual jewelry using beach rocks as bases, and of course some kaleidoscopes.

Have fun.
I want to dabble and doodle a bit this year, with no particular purpose in mind, just because I feel like it. I’m also going to try to scale back on anything that’s becoming a drudgery, cancel some magazine subscriptions that have nothing I like in them, etc.

Doesn’t sound too ambitious, does it? But I think I need to take some time off this year to ground myself a bit and just enjoy making things.

Posted in mynews, ramblings | No Comments »

Craft skill transfers to jewelry art

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

Check out this article on jewelry artist Lauren Van Hemert which discusses how she went from scrapbooking and tablecloths to polymer clay art.

“For my mom I had made this tablecloth where I ironed on family photos. …everyone wanted to know how to make that tablecloth. That’s about the time I started teaching.”

A way with clay: “I started making jewelry, and because it’s so nice and lightweight, I started making big necklaces.” The store Raindrops on Roses in Raleigh asked Van Hemert to teach a photo transfer class using vintage cigar labels they planned to sell. “I had read about this transfer technique using gin. I didn’t really believe that it worked. It was so challenging. I went to throw my piece away, and I thought, if I can crumble it up to throw it away, I bet I can wrap it around a bead.” And so she did.

From class to cash: During a polymer clay workshop with author and artist Irene Semanchuk Dean of Asheville, Dean noticed Van Hemert’s necklace, made of polymer beads covered with vintage cigar labels. “Because she had much more knowledge about polymer clay than I did, she knew that no one was wrapping a colored image around a three-dimensional object. Most polymer clay artists, when they do transfers, they do one-dimension flat transfers. So it’s really become my signature technique,” she said. Dean urged Van Hemert to stop teaching and start selling her artwork.

Craft to art: “Somehow it went from church shows to doing the Baltimore show,” she said of the American Craft Council’s juried show she attended in February.

“A year ago I was juried in to Artspace [in Raleigh], and I would say that really was the catalyst that changed me from being more of a hobbyist to a business. And I went from being a technician to making a work of wearable art.”

Posted in news, polymer clay | No Comments »