Spring has sprung

For a long time, I have been wanting to do an art vessel focused on negative space as the major design element. The theme for the May PCAGOE challenge is "negative space".  So, the PCAGOE challenge was the impetus that I needed to bring one of those ideas to life.

I had the idea to make a continuous spiral as the body of the vessel, combined with some side supports to buttress the spiral shape. I decided to try this with a method that Donna Greenberg generously shared on facebook. Donna used an epoxy clay as the under support for one of her wonderful openwork sculptures. If you're not familiar with Donna's work, you should definitely check her out. She is, without a doubt, one of my polymer heroes. You can find her facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/Donna-Greenberg-Arts-151594531536806/?fref=ts

 I had some epoxy clay on hand so I decided to give Donna's method a try. Unfortunately, I initially only made the spiral, my thought was that I'd cover it with polymer before adding the side supports. Well... I wish I had realized that once separated from the form I was using to mold the spiral, it could potentially just become a great big epoxy clay slinky... needless to say, I didn't think of that. I guess I  assumed that the epoxy clay would be sturdy enough to hold it's own, but it wasn't, big epoxy slinky is indeed what I got.

I then had to put the slinky, I mean sculpted spiral, back on the mold form and try to add the side supports. When I finally was able to cover the epoxy clay with polymer it was a tricky undertaking. Difficult first, because the lower spindles of the spiral did not have a lot of space for my fingers to get in and smooth out the clay; and second, because the epoxy clay form (because I removed it from the base too soon) was a little wonky. Yes, that's a technical term. ;)

I decided to wrap strips of black polymer around the epoxy clay spiral shape of the base form. But because smoothing out the polymer was not going to happen easily with the limited space between the lower spiral spindles, I decided to use a technique that I used last year to make a necklace for myself... I took thin crochet thread and wrapped it around the raw polymer, then cured it and removed the thread, then backfilled the spaces that were created by the thread with some acrylic paint. Here's a photo of that necklace (and the sweater I wanted to match it to) that gave me the idea for how to treat the coil of the vessel:

This was a good idea, only thing was that with the necklace I was able to smooth out the clay, but with the vessel and the tight spaces, this wasn't feasible, so the vessel's finish is rougher than I would really prefer. Instead of acrylic paint I decided to use some peacock pearl colored Premo mixed with some LPC and thinner to make a paste that would be thin enough to fill the thread voids. I like the fact that this mixture clung to the cured polymer a bit more than the acrylic paint did, which I think gave it a little bit of a mokume gane feel.  Here's a shot of me holding it, so you can see the scale of the piece:

So, while I'm happy to see the idea come to life, I'm not really happy with this piece. I have another idea for how I might construct this next time, and I am considering doing a second iteration very soon. The thing I'm most unhappy about is how wonky the spiral got because of taking it off the form before adding epoxy supports on the side. I also don't like the fact that I had to texture everything because of how it was formed. My new idea for designing this will allow me to finish it smoothly. So, while I'm not completely happy, I am grateful for the lessons I learned and the inspiration I received while making this piece. What about you? Has there ever been a piece that you made which turned out less than you had hoped, but you were still grateful for the lessons learned? Did you do another iteration of that piece and better it with those gained insights? Tell me about it in the comments... and let me know what you think of my Spring Sprung vessel too!

Voting time!

Voting time is here! ...actually we're already 3 days into voting time!  You have until midnight on April 7th to cast your vote, so please head over to the PCAGOE blog and choose your 3 favorite entries!  This month's participants really pulled out the stops with so many creatively engineered and carefully constructed pieces.  I know it was a tough choice for my top 3 votes... Have a peek at all of the lovely artwork for this month:

Remember, you could win a prize for voting, so head over to the blog and cast your vote!

Diamond in the rough

I had decided to do something with a different shape for the April PCAGOE (Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy) challenge.  The theme this month is "containers".  I had this wooden form in the shape of a hexagon that tapers to a point (the shape of the bottom of my piece).  Something in the shape reminded me of a faceted diamond and thus the wheels went spinning! 

My first job was to cover the wooden pyramid with translucent white clay.  That was then covered with gradients of black to translucent white cut into triangular shapes to give the feel of light reflecting on the facets of a stone. 

The bottom part, having been cured twice, was finished when I set to work on the top.  I had figured if I covered just the widest part of the wooden form up only part of the way, this would create the walls of my lid and should sit easily on top of the base, but how to get the flat piece on the top of the lid?  Well, I just happened to have a big Fat Daddio's hexagon cutter which I used to first determine how far up the wooden form the lid walls needed to come and then cut out a flat piece of translucent white clay.  After curing both the lid walls and the flat hexagon, I glued the two together.  Because I wanted the lid to sit securely in place, I needed to build up a lip inside the lid's mouth, so I did that in the next baking and added another layer of translucent to give more strength to the lid.  After another curing, I then mapped out and placed layers of black to translucent white value in triangle and polyhedron shapes to mimic light refracting off the facets of a stone.

After curing a final time, I sanded and polished for hours.  I was almost afraid I wouldn't make the deadline, but I squeeked it in with an hour and a half to spare! The metal holder was something I hadn't originally planned, but when I had considered this piece laying on it's side and the potential of the lid falling off from the angle which it had to sit, I decided only yesterday to go to my local thrift store.  It seems that whenever I am in need of something specific, serendipity or my fairy god mother, just makes it appear at my thrift store.  I'm quite lucky in that regard.  I had wanted something gold.  I think this piece had once belonged to a copper coffee carafe, it is an aged copper metal (close enough!).  And the hole and three support curves were perfect for my 6 sided geometrical shape!  

While the piece doesn't really scream faceted stone, as the original thought had been, I do like the minimalist geometric shape of this piece and the design interest which the varying values in shapes lends to the whole.  If I were to recreate this piece I would construct the bottom in similar fashion to the top, with more solid values instead of gradations... lesson learned.

Another interesting thing with this piece, is that it can be flipped around to have the lid be the bottom and the bottom become the lid.  With this switch, it can even be simply set on a table without the metal holder.  I like it both ways, but think I prefer my originally intended positioning idea.  Though there are a few things I would change to remake this piece, I am quite happy with how it turned out.  I do think it's a deviation from my typical style, but that's just my opinion, others might see this as fitting right in with the rest of my work....  And I think it is an example of how my handwork is getting better with executing my crazy ideas.  I noticed with this piece, and with the last, that things just seem to fall in place and work out the way they were intended with little struggle, which has not always been the case in my history.  I know that in setting a goal for myself, to complete a full year of my guild's challenges (I'm now halfway into my 2nd year of continuous entries), it has strengthened my skills and honed my idea process, for which I am so grateful.

What about you?  Is there anything that you have done to sharpen your talents or hone your idea process?  If so, please share with me in the comments!  And let me know what you think of this new piece!

Voting for this challenge opens on April 1st and will run through April 7th at midnight.  I'll be sure to post again here, as a reminder!