“Curiosity is essential for progress. Only when we look
to worlds beyond our own can we really know if there’s room for improvement.”
Simon Sinek
I’ve always thought that curiosity is the best
characteristic of our brains. It’s the ‘what if’ that expands our world in
any endeavor that requires innovation to thrive and grow—art, science,
cuisine, philosophy, whatever.
Most of my best ideas come out of a curiosity to know
what would happen if I combined this with that or tried this process
differently from what everybody else is doing or used a product that nobody
else uses on polymer clay. I’ve just never been a follower of trends. If
everybody else is doing it or wearing it or buying it or listening to it, I
probably won’t.
Sometimes my curiosity prompts me to think “if everybody
is doing THAT, what would happen if I do it this way?” That’s how I got started
painting on polymer. It also helped that Sculpey decided to discontinue some
primary colors in their Premo polymer clay range, so you couldn’t count on your
blending formulae always being consistent. So thinking that the only
consistency is the one you create yourself, I started using Genesis heat set
oil paints on polymer, which I still use to this day. I’m not sure what got me
started on applying texture but flat and super-shiny was never my thing. I hate
sanding! Early on I set up a bead polishing system that involved a vibratory
tumbler and plastic media which I learned from Grant Diffendaffer’s
book.
So maybe innovation is a combination of curiosity and
personal preference (or aversion). You hate sanding so you find some way to do
your art without having to sand. Your supply chain is compromised so you find a
way to get consistent color without having to depend on the whims of a
manufacturer.
2014 may be remembered in the polymer clay community as The
Year of the Hollow Bead Tutorial. Everybody seemed to be creating their own
unique method of making hollow beads. Given how light the medium already is, I
couldn’t see changing the way I made large beads using aluminum foil cores. Polymer beads are practically weightless so I just kept doing that. I was more concerned with
what you do with the surface of the enclosed void (hollow bead) that you now have—how do you
make THAT interesting? After covering a number of beads with veneers made with my
newly-created, ‘super-textural’ texture sheets, I asked the ‘what if’ question
and decided to make molds of some my most-favorite shapes. I’ve always done
one-of-a-kind beads but I wanted to see how the same bead shape looked with
different colors of base clay and a different color palette.
I’m still working on perfecting the technique but it
mostly worked. I made a necklace up with two identical beads—one with a black
clay base, one with white—and used them together. In the piece below they are the beads closest to the wire rings connected to the chain. They add a bit of symmetry to
an otherwise very asymmetrical piece. And I’ve once again progressed a bit
through the exercise of my curiosity.
Azo Gold Bead - Polymer, acrylic, crayon, heat set oil paint - same bead as above with a textured layer sandwiched between the halves
Azo Gold bead, flip side
'Planetfall' - polymer clay, found amber piece, acrylic, heat set oil paint
If any of you have had a similar experience, I’d love to hear from you about something you did last
year that curiosity caused you to discover about your art.
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