After The Ball

Synergy 3 is over.  The Ball is over. There were ups and downs at the ball.   I gave you a hint at the last post of what my my most recent cane was.  Did anyone guess Cinderella?  This was a doozy of a cane to build.  I'd say that there was at least 15 different canes that were made, reduced and then incorporated into the final cane.  I really wanted to get this cane finished prior to Synergy.  Unfortunately I didn't have much time to come up with some necklaces so I could have something to sell in the gallery.  I came up with this design.

 I created one for each of my fairy tale themed canes.  They included my little sayings for each.  Cinderella's says "As she sat lone in the ashes, the ball seemed a fading memory".  For Little Red Riding Hood "As you're pretty so be wise; wolves may lurk in every guise".  "She looked into the beast's eyes and saw the beauty in his soul" goes with Beauty and the Beast.  I had time enough to finish four necklaces.  One of each with the sayings and one without that I donated to the auction.  I liked the way they came out but I guess I was the only one.  Or else I was delusional with my price point.  I felt like I was participating in  Project Runway and Heidi was questioning my taste level.  Of course when you are competing with sales with Kathleen Dustin and others I shouldn't have placed my hopes so high.  Oh well it was a reality check but then I had another possible disappointment. I had placed my auction piece to be included in the live auction.  By Friday I was getting into panic mode because I was afraid no one would bid on my piece.  Fortunately Tracy was a great auctioneer and some friends came thru and my piece sold at auction for close to $300.  Thank you to those who bid.  Again I take my hat off to those who sell their artwork.  Putting your heart into something and then feeling rejected can be tough.  This was the down part of the ball.  In the next post I will talk about the ups.

Barb, this is for you.

 

 

A friend of mine who is also a member of the Asheville guild always make a point of telling me she checks my blog everyday.  At first I thought she was just being nice and telling me she enjoys my blog.  It took me a while to catch on.  What she was really saying was "I check your blog every day.  Why don't you post more often you lazy @#$%^!"  Well maybe not that last part.  But she is right I don't post often enough.  But there is a reason.  I have been really busy getting ready of the up coming Synergy 3 in Atlanta.  As you know (if you are a frequent reader like Barb) I don't sell my wares too often but this is going to be one of those times.  In order to do that I need to have some wares to sell.  Being one to push the caning envelope I decided to make another cane with the fairy tale theme.  I also had an idea for a mosaic wall piece.  I have been working on these two creations for the past three weeks.  Sometime I wonder about me.  What was I thinking?  The mosaic is almost done and I have finished the cane.  I don't have any finished pieces made with the cane yet (Synergy is days away!) but I wanted to give you a preview/sneak peek of that cane.  There is also a picture of my wall mosaic during the process.

Polymer Soutache

As I was spending some time with pinterest (much better than house work!) I discovered the art of soutache jewelry.  Soutache is braiding that can be used on clothing.  Some artist have taken this into jewelry and I really like some of the pieces.   It was obvious that this was something that would translate into polymer clay.  I did a search and really couldn't find much in the polymer community.  I decided to give it a try.

 My first attempt was like so many things in my life -- it got too big.   I liked where it was going though so I pressed on.  I used some of the cane I created from my "5 from 1 Craftartedu class" as the focal beads for the next piece. Many of the soutache jewelry that I saw online also had bead work.  When I taught my class in Kansas City I spent some times with two friends there who were big into beading.  Let me tell you their studios were like walking into a beads store.  Now I have a few beads at home but I don't do a lot of beading (that's one of the reasons I am so terrible at finishing things) but I have a drop in in the bucket compared to them.  Didn't quite get it until I decided I wanted to add some bead work to my latest creation.  I get it now.....you never have the right bead when you need it.  My local bead store was having a huge end of the year sale so I got my big butt (told you... like so many things in my life...) over there and bought some beads.  Don't let the picture fool you - it is not finished.   There is no clasp.

It was very difficult to work the beads in with the polymer clay.  My next attempts were scaled down and with no beads.  I like the way they look.  It was a nice diversion from my complicated cane work.  I hope you enjoyed seeing them.

Working with my brother and remembering Phyllis

Several months ago my brother asked me if I would create a pendant with the likeness of his mother-in-law, Phyllis.  She had passed away this year and he wanted to give these pendants, as Christmas gifts, to those who loved her.  Of course I said yes.  I knew it was going to be a great opportunity to challenge myself and to work together on an art piece with my brother.  If you have been reading my blog you know that last year I created pendants for all of the women in the family.  This pendant was of my grandmother and was taken from an old photograph.  I never knew my grandmother and the only requirement was that it look sorta like her photo.  Here is a picture of the mosaic cane that I made.

I decided that I did not want to make this cane in the mosaic style.  I wanted it to be more like the African woman cane that I created.  This meant that we were going to have to reduce the number of colors in the photograph but also make it so that it could be created in clay.  I didn't want too many little pieces of color but we wanted a more photographic look to the piece.  Glenn, who is an artist and much more proficient in Photoshop than myself, did a lot of the preliminary work.  This is the original photo graph and the "working photo" he came up with.  Thankfully he decided to eliminate the background.  After going back and forth we opted for a palette of 16 browns for the hair and face, 3 more for the eyes and 3 for the mouth.

OK at this point I kept telling my brother, "I can do it".  While to myself I was saying "how in the hell am I going to do this?"  I have gotten pretty good at reducing large, thin canes but in order to get the details right I knew I wouldn't be able to create this as a single cane.  I decided I would create her face, reduce it and then finish the rest of her hair and body.  Here are some more pictures.  These were taken with my phone so they aren't the greatest but you get the picture.  Ha Ha "you get the picture"

All seems to be going well.  So now I needed to reduce this final cane.  Usually when you reduce a cane the middle is the hardest to get moving.  So a lot of the time at the end the middle appears larger than the outside because it was a bit slower to reduce.  Now if you have never reduced a large cane you may not know what I am talking about but trust me that is what usually happens.  (to me anyway)  Well not this time.  Maybe it was because I had already reduced the face but for whatever reason this time the middle reduced faster and therefore the face was smaller than the outside.  Here is a picture of a slice taken off of the reduced cane.

You can see that her facial features do not match in scale to the rest of her.  Now comes the tricky part.  In a perfect world the cane would have reduced evenly and all I would have to do is take some slices and  create my pendants.  Not this time.  I had to had manipulate each slice.  I won't go into the details but it was tricky. Lets just say it's why I make the big bucks. This project was different from other projects in that not only did it have to look like a woman but it had to look like a specific woman.  It was very easy to pinch or pull the slice too much in one direction which would change the look of the piece.  Each one is unique. As usual I find fault with every one.   I finally made enough "good" ones and let my brother choose his favorites to made into pendants.  One slice got a little out of control as to its size so I made a framed piece which I pictured at the start of this blog entry.  It was a challenging project and I enjoyed pushing the boundaries of cane making.  I enjoyed working with my brother and hope to do it again soon.  Phyllis will be missed by her loved ones and I hope they will enjoy looking at the pendants and remembering her.

Close, but no cigar

 

 

 

Here is a part of a project that I started awhile back.  It is different from the mosaics that I have done in the past.  This one is made up of over 50 black, white and gray canes.  After making the canes I reduced each one to 1/2 inch square and sliced them up.  The final piece is 36 inches by 24 inches.  To bake this I needed to build the piece in sections because it all wouldn't fit into my oven.  I also wanted to give it some texture rather than have flat pieces.  To do this I built a bottom layer of scrap clay. I formed each to have even raised bumps.  I baked these and then applied the slices one by one to this base in order to create my picture.

What you can't figure out what it is.  Maybe this will help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about now?  Is it getting any clearer?  Let's step back some more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still can't figure it out?  Maybe we are too close.

 

 

 

 

 

If your computer allows it perhaps you would like to see this little movie.  It was my first youtube upload so I hope it works.

 

 

 

 

Are you any closer?

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully you can tell that it is a man.  But do you know who?

 

 

 

 

My husband thought it was Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad.  I told him he was close, but no cigar.  But it wasn't a "Bad" guess.  Here is Bryan Cranston.

 

 

 

 

OK Here is the complete picture.  Do you know who it is?

 

 

 

 

 I am sure that many of you have guessed that it is the artist Chuck Close.  I think he is a wonderful artist and obviously has influenced my art.  My brother had the wonderful opportunity to work with Chuck Close when he was an art student.  I even got to meet him on one occasion.  He was doing his large photo realistic paintings at the time.  His illness has forced him to change his style but he is still leaving a impact on us all.  My brother who is a digital artist now created a 3d model of Chuck.  The image of this model was published on the cover of "the Village Voice" magazine in New York City.  I created my polymer clay mosaic using this photo.  Here is my brother, Glenn Dean's, photo from the magazine.

 

 



 

 

Yes, you can say talent runs in our family.  If Chuck ever sees either of these images I hope he will be pleased.  We thank him for what he has given us.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometime things that happen in Vegas come home

Sorry it's been so long since I posted but I promise I haven't been idle.  Soon after I got back from Kansas City I headed off to the annual Clay Carnival in Las Vegas.  This is a yearly event headed up by Donna Kata.  2006 was the first year that I attended the Clay Carnival.  A lot has changed since then.  I have taken several classes, been to retreats, published a book, traveled to teach and have made many many clay friends.  I can remember the first year I attended walking down the halls of the Imperial Palace and passing Donna Kato in the hall.  I was star struck.  After all it was THE Donna Kato.  I had only seen her on the Carol Duvall show.  This was my first polymer clay class that I had ever taken.  Six years later and I am happy to say I think of Donna as a friend now, along with many of the instructors.  I even had some surreal moments myself this time with strangers coming up to me, introducing themselves and I can only guess having a moment similar to what I experienced when I saw Donna for the first time all those years ago.  Now I am not saying I have the stature/notoriety/famousness (I know that's not a word) that Donna has but I guess I have reached the notice of some polymer clay people through my blog and through my art.  One lady came up and told me she had taken my classes on craftartedu and was thrilled to meet me.  Another woman from France admitted she was a fan and that she followed my blog.  OK I admit it, it was fun, it was uplifting and I appreciated it.  But it was still weird after all it's just me.
OK that's enough about me...WTF this is my blog.  I can make it all about me if I want.  So what I did I do in Vegas.  I still enjoy taking classes.  They push me to do things that I don't normally do.  I will admit that a lot of things I make never make It out of the bag but I still leave having learned many things and also with more confidence in those area that I don't tackle that often.  If you read about my "Benjamin Button" sculpting you know that sculpting isn't my thing.  This year at Clay Carnival there seemed to be a lot of sculpting.  A new instructor this year was Wendy Malinow.  I had met Wendy before I knew that she.......let's just say she has her own drummer. She likes bird sculls, bones, teeth and other odd bits.  I just loved her class.  I think it was the most productive that I have ever been in a class at Clay Carnival.  It was the opposite of complex caning.  Just what I needed.  This class was a combined with Leslie Blackford's class of sticks and stones and creatures.  I was able to follow their examples and had fun making the bits for this bracelet.

For Donna's class we made pods.  I will be honest and going in this was not my favorite class.  Usually Donna's class is one of my favorite.  I think they had a "sculpting" theme going this year and she followed with a more sculpted piece.  She taught us a stripey/ikatish cane and then attached to a pod shape.  OK so the piece I brought home I hated.  I thought it looked like one of those yucky orange peanut marshmallow things you find around Halloween.  Now this was my choice of texture not Donna's so don't think I am saying it was her fault.  Having said all that i have to say I loved what I did with it once I got home.  First I colored it with some colored pencils and pens.   I tried darkening/antiquing afterwards to fill in the white peanut divots.  This didn't work so I had to apply more paint and then sanded if off (which of course took off all of the color)  I then reapplied the colors.  I hit the high spots with some guilders paste.  Now I can't say I love the pod shape but I love the depth of the colors that I got on the surface.  Below is a picture of how it looks when I got it home and then how it looked after I colored.

For Kim Cavender's class we were to make ..........well let's just say something that many in the rowdy room thought resembled a certain female body part.  I chose to do my own thing and came up with this.  It has holes for a pendant.

That's all for now I will write more about my fun time in Vegas.  I have been working on a new project which I hope to write about soon.

I'm Going to Kansas City. Kansas City Here I come!

I hope you sang the title of this post.  I am leaving tomorrow to teach a face cane class and I can't get that tune out of my head.  We are going to have a great time.  Wish you here!

Who was it who said that I never get anything finished?.....Oh wait, that was me.  Well I am here to tell you that at least for now that has changed.  I got two new pieces done that I left with Ellen and Sue at the Create Journey Studio.  Of course once I did that I didn't have anything left so I got to work.  I finished a framed piece with my grandmothers cane in it.  I also did a few more framed piece centered around my mosaic faces.

 I also went back to some of my fairy tale canes.  I have written about my little red riding hood cane but I don't think I mentioned much about my Beauty and the Beast cane.  I think I was working on that when I got the brainstorm for the bowl.  Well I wanted to send a piece to my niece who was nice enough to pick up a new iphone for me.  (Verizon pisses me off but that is another story)  Anyway I came up with this cylindrical pendant.

  From it are little tiles which say "Beauty comes from within".  I liked the way they looked.  They reminded me of scrolls.  I did another Beauty and the Beast.  I just now realized, as the picture loaded, that the image is reversed.  It's funny to me because usually I have my pieces in the orientation that I built them which would have been like the first one. Oh well since they are canes it makes no difference.

 

 

 

I then decided to make a some with my Little Red Riding hood cane.  I managed to get the cane slice to wrap around completely.  Working the tree and the bushes together to hide the seam.  Really looks cool up close.

 

 

 

On one the tiles read "sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth"  the other says "wolves lurk in every guise".  I need my nephew back to take some better pictures.  I hope you enjoy.