Puttin' It Out There

I realize that I've been MIA for several months so I'm blogging to let all you readers know that I plan to be back in the action starting today and hope to have new posts at least two times a week from now on.

That said, most of my time was spent either applying to various competitions or “calls” for artwork from polymer clay artists or on submissions to magazines. Stressful activity, in that deadlines wait for no one but exciting too because having your work recognized nationally is very gratifying.

I was actually working on some pieces but mostly I was applying. There are these online sites where you park your uploaded images and then when you decide to apply to a “call” -- as in, call for entries-- you just download them into the application, pay your fee online and off you go! The problem is, the images have to be higher resolution than I need for this blog or my Flickr site or for most of my everyday needs and so I just can't financially justify purchasing a full verison of Photoshop. So a week was mainly spent in frustration at having to dedicate large chunks of prime working time futzing with my Canon camera, reading the owner's manual, playing with settings, re-doing shots and searching for someone in my little rural town who could set up the images the way they were needed.

Grrrr!. But happy to say, mission accomplished, my little works were on their way to the Big Time-- that's the International Polymer Clay Association's “Progress & Possibilities” competition, which only comes around every two years-- and I'm anxiously waiting for the winners to be announced. I wasn't even doing polymer clay last time this occurred! One of my submissions for P&P was my “Lady of Shalott” necklace, which readers of this blog may recall was done for an Art Bead Scene challenge and the second one was “Blossom”, which was also for ABS.

Lady of Shalott

Blossom

In addition to stressing about various applications, I was also bummed that the piece I submitted to another magazine didn't make the cut.

Remembering Kathmandu

I was reminded of a wonderful quote on my friend Barbara Lewis' website:

“There is a force, an energy, a quickness, that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it. You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. It is not your business to compare yourself with others. It is your business to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you, to keep the channel open.” Martha Graham

With all the social networking sites and things like Twitter urging us to put it out there, the volume of work being presented is overwhelming. It almost goes without saying that we will begin to feel competitive and work to a commercial standard, even if working as the quote suggests is the best avenue to a body of work that truly reflects our best creative effort and highest artistic standard.

I had a special new piece that I was trying to finish for Progress & Possibilities but it had a mind of its own and evolved into several pieces so I just let it happen. I think this might just be the best way to work.

Steampunk Tidepool

Artifact

Just Rewards

For all of you who contributed to the Villa Bracelet project, my thanks and my apologies. I posted that I would get the “rewards” sorted out last month and then life intervened-- as it does when you're not paying attention-- and now it's May! More about my distractions in my next post but now I'm moving along again in a more or less straight direction and it's time to announce who the Random Number Generator picked to receive the goodies. I added 2 more to the mix so five people will receive some of my work as a thank-you for their contribution. Here are the two additions:

Tribal Pattern earrings

Domino pendant

First picked was Jana Osborne and she will receive my Metro earrings.

Next was Mary Jane Dodd and a set of my Bumblebeads will be flying her way.

Third the Generator picked Lori Anderson-- Hi Lori!-- and I'll be sending her one of my faux ivory cuffs.

The fourth person chosen was Susan Colosimo, hope you like your Domino pendant!

And last but not least, Barbara Lewis-- for the Tribal Pattern earrings.

If you will all please send me your addresses, I'll get these out to you in the mail this week.

Please know that strong and peaceful energy and good vibes went into each and every piece I'm sending out to you fabulous ladies! But all of you are in my heart as well and will be with me as I begin to put Villa's bracelet together tomorrow.

A Bracelet for Villa - Progress Report

In a world where it sometimes seems that the rude, the greedy and the heartless triumph, I have seen that there is hope for this Third Rock from the Sun, even if it shows up in the form of a tiny charm.

I invited, and you responded-- 28 folks that wanted to do something for a person they don't even know and for no other motivation than it felt right to do. It was like a little miracle taking place in rural Vermont, watching those bundles of creativity and hope arrive in my mailbox, knowing each one was made just especially for Vila and sent with love and good wishes. All were handmade with care and all were different. Some were metal, some were resin, some were glass, some were polymer clay. All of them are precious to me and I look on them as on a great treasure because they came from the heart, the source of the greatest resource we have as human beings-- the ability to care about and empathize for a person other than ourselves.

As I sit here, my mind swirls with possibilities-- I'm thinking of a way to expand this out into the wider world, to keep sending hope in the form of a charm, to touch someone who we don't know at all but in whom we recognize our own humanity. A way of paying it forward. We know that our crafting community is worldwide, we could celebrate our global connection in the way we love best-- making art and sharing it!

Next Monday I'll announce the names that were picked by the random number generator to receive the thank-you gifts from me. I've added another two to the group-- but I'll keep the surprise until next week!

Thanks to all of you for your kind and thoughtful generosity and for being my partners in this. Bless you all!

A Bracelet for Villa

My sister-in-law, Villa, was diagnosed a year ago with leukemia. She lives with her husband in Washington state, a continent away from us. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy again to regain remission status but the ultimate prognosis is uncertain. So I cast about for a way to let her know that Douglas and I are thinking of her every day, that we send our positive energy and our love her way. I thought about making her a bracelet, something she could wear and think of us when we couldn't be there in person, something that might bring a smile to her face when things get tough.

As I was thinking of how I would do this, I remembered that this past summer I was invited to participate in a bracelet round-robin exchange with several talented designers, ultimately ending with a piece that I cherish more because of the wonderful energy in it and the generosity of the participants in giving of their time and talent than the monetary value of the finished item. So I thought of a way to kick that idea up a notch-- invite mostly total strangers to contribute a charm to make a bracelet for Villa.

Here's what I would like: Contribute a charm that is handmade by you-- that's the only stipulation. The charms can be anything, any theme, any color, any material, any technique but about 1” X 1/2” would be ideal. Send your creation to me and then I'll attach it to a nice chain that will become a charm bracelet with everybody's charm on it. The energy created in making the charm is what I'm after-- it doesn't have to be perfect, or expensive or elaborate. It could be resin, or metal or polymer clay or fiber or layered paper. My friends Cindy Wimmer and Barbara Lewis have already sent me their charms-- see the photos below for examples.

Charm by Barbara Lewis of Painting with Fire

Charm by Cindy Wimmer of Sweet Bead Studio

Now I really love the concept of the “random act of kindness” and I have a pretty good idea of the kind of people I'm writing to out there so I know that a carrot isn't necessary to encourage you to participate.

But I want to offer some items for a giveaway in gratitude for those of you who would like to contribute to the piece. I'll use a random number generator to pick the three winners.

Here's what I'm giving away to say “thank you” for helping me to make this piece really special for Villa.

Jane Eyre cuff

Metro earrings

Set of Bumblebeads, 15mm

The deadline for contributions is Monday, March 22, 2010. E-mail me at cdamm1@myfairpoint.net if you plan to send a charm and I'll e-mail you my address back as I'd rather not broadcast that over the Internet! If I receive more than 50 or so charms, I'll collect them and pass them on to someone who wants to do a similar “kindness” bracelet for a friend who needs one. If you have your own blog, it would be wonderful if you would tell your readers about this-- just a short note-- to direct them over here where they can find the information.

I will keep you all updated on the progress of the bracelet and post pictures of the completed piece when I get ready to send it off to Villa. I'll do the drawing for the gifts from me the first week of April and announce the winners in a blog post. Thanks, everyone!

Winter Work

If you choose to live in central Vermont, you've got to embrace winter. As we like to say up here, Vermont's weather is nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding. Actually, this winter other parts of the East coast are experiencing better sledding than we--and Vancouver!-- are and I know that's the understatement of the century. And when you're digging your car out of a snowbank, you tend not to think about winter sports.

You've got to get into the cozy-- fuzzy things to wear that feel like your kitty's fur, flannel blankets, rough handknit wool sweaters. There are many positive sensory advantages to winter. Nothing on earth feels like the wave of woodsy heat that comes off a blazing pile of crackling oak logs. This weekend we sat in front of such a fire, chatting with old friends and munching Asiago and crackers. Ahh, the best part of winter!

And the long months from November until April are ideal for the incubation of ideas. It's quiet, you aren't distracted by needing to work in the garden or going swimming and your daily walk is inevitably shortened by concern for frostbite and frozen digits. You have time to think.

And think I have been. I've been experiencing a veritable flood of new ideas. And now I may have the makings of a book. I'm as surprised as anyone by this turn of events, as my next goal this year was to decide where I might want to offer my beads and jewelry for sale-- be it craft shows, bead show venues or other online opportunities besides Etsy. Now my Muse seems to be pushing for a larger commitment to sharing my work than simply by way of this blog. So I'm listening to Her and making notes and thinking up a title. Stories They Tell is going to be showing up in a worldly context in several new ways in the coming months so somebody may actually think a book written by me might be a worthy venture to sponsor.

For now, I'm letting the subtle colors of winter inspire me, either to craft subdued shades in complex designs or to revolt against the subtle palette of the season with a riot of color as I put together submissions to magazines for their Fall issues. The colors of Fall are my favorite but winter is the best season for contemplation and imagination, locked away from the cold in a warm home with a sketchpad and your imagination for company.

Colorado Earrings - in my Etsy shop

Strata Earrings - in my Etsy shop

Marrakesh necklace - my submission for the Art Bead Scene challenge for November 2009

Marrakesh -- detail

New Ideas, New Techniques

One of my favorite blogs is French-- Parole de Pate. I love that they post these little tutorials-- “tutes”-- with new techniques that their readers come up with and then share with everyone. You can try them out and really take them places with a little imagination!

It helps to read French but Parole will cheerfully translate for you if you ask. And the pictures are great so you can usually figure out what's going on just by looking.

On Sunday I happened by Parole's site and saw a post about using alcohol inks on raw clay and just had to try it. I'd been experimenting with TLS (liquid polymer clay) combined with inks to create a glazed stoneware effect on polymer clay and so my attention was really focussed on those sadly-ignored little Ranger ink bottles that had been sitting there just full of potential. I recently re-discovered them while experimenting with some faux raku techniques and so I just breezed along with the latest messy fun.

A while later, my wastebasket full of ink-dabbed paper towel and I had a few sets of earrings that I'll share with you now. Oh, and that paper towel is so pretty with all those inky prints, I might just iron one out and resin it up in a bezel! Potential is everywhere-- even in your garbage can.

Metro earrings - Available in my Etsy shop

Nile earrings - Available in my Etsy shop

Twilight earrings - Available in my Etsy shop

Glaze experiments - faux stoneware

Completing the Old-- Beginning the New

Right now I have three pieces sitting on my bench awaiting final touches before I declare them complete and ready to face the world. This doesn't particularly bother me-- I have no deadline but my own for them and I've noticed that if I let these pieces sit for a bit, I usually discover some little touch that they need, design-wise. Rushing to finish them would not have given me that “moment of grace” needed to find that final note of completion that is like fitting the last perfect stem into a vase of spring flowers that transforms the whole into something sublime.

But lest you surmise that I've been simply sitting around eating the last of the holiday cookies (actually, I never got them made and a good thing too, since I've gone back to my healthy eating plan with a vengeance), I have become enamoured of blank cast brass cuffs. They are the perfect little empty canvas for all sorts of luscious experimentations and if I could only find a source for cast pewter ones, my artistic life (at least for now) would be complete! You may recall that I discontinued my line of cuffs built around aluminum blanks but I still love the cuff-- it's so easy to wear and feels good on the wrist too.

My love of faux can find perfect expression here but so many of the polymer clay veneers that I use work equally well. Faux ivory has been very successful on them and today I'm trying faux jade and the Ancient Metals technique of Laurie Prophater. I already made a nice trade of one cuff to Barbara Lewis for a marvelous bracelet/necklace she called “Hialeah”. When I wear it I can feel myself wearing a floppy straw hat, sipping an exotic drink and watching racehorses spin around a track in some tropical clime. She really has that “Margaritaville” vibe down in this piece!

But after a rich diet of large, complicated necklaces I've made in the last few months, it's nice to take a break and narrow my focus for a bit--to take one idea and push it as far in one direction as possible. Besides, as 2010 begins, I'm eager to head in some new artistic directions. These cuffs are rehearsals for some collaborative work that I've got in mind to do in the future with a very talented metalworker. He would be the dream partner-- as far as I can see, he can do anything I dream up and he likes a challenge! Also, this week my focus is writing a tutorial I've been invited to do for the Summer issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry--wire bezels for polymer clay. You may have seen some of these used in previous pieces and the idea is just too much fun to keep all to myself. I'm very excited about the opportunity to be in this publication-- it's been one of my goals since beginning my polymer clay odyssey.

Cernunnos cuff

Handmade antler, granite and decayed wood molds, polymer clay - available in my Etsy shop

Aboriginal cuff

Polymer clay faux ivory, hand-applied textures from various shop tools - available in my Etsy shop

Ancient Peoples cuff

Polymer clay faux jade, texture plate purchased from Cool Tools, cuff form handcrafted by Douglas Damm, DD Arts, from repurposed copper flashing

Relic bangle

Ancient Metals technique on polymer clay, texture plate from Victoria James - available in my Etsy shop

Antiquity cuff

Ancient Metals technique on polymer clay, texture plate from Victoria James - available in my Etsy shop

Sorcery bangle

Polymer clay faux ivory, hand-sculpted embellishment, texture from my hand-drawn Zentangle, tearaway technique