Bracelets by Mary Harding– in progress..you can see the threads… now all complete and many of them are at the Thousand Islands Art Center in Clayton, Ny for their Wares and Wears Holiday Show which opens on Dec. 2, 2015.
Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you’ll leave comments! As an incentive, we offer a prize each week to encourage you to use that keyboard and tell us what you think. The following week a winner is chosen at random from all eligible entries. And here are the results from last week!
Congratulations Denise McCabe
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This week I am takiing you into my studio to see what went on during our annual Artists’ Studio Tour up here in Northern New York and to introduce you to my two wonderful guest artists who shared this event with me:
AND
You can imagine how excited I was to have these two Canadian Polymer Clay artists in my studio for this weekend event.
This was the first time I had seen such a comprehensive collection of their work , and not in photos either. The real thing to touch and to hold!!
The studio tour took place in our 1835 barn. Mid afternoon a 5 minute rain storm turned it into a magical setting. The shadow is Allan Nodelman who took this picture and the ones for the poster above of Sharon’s work and put together Claire’s brochure and kindly edited them for me to use today in this blog post.
And now for the magic inside;
Polymer Clay Vessels by Claire Maunsell
A large tray of Claire’s beads
Earrings
Pins
Claire’s Owl Pendants
Pendants
One of the purposes of this Studio Tour is to invite the public into our studios and give them a chance to see the artist at work and in some cases, to try out a technique themselves. In the photo above you can see Claire’s set up for demonstrating and explaining how she makes her Owl Pendants. She uses the technique called pouncing. I checked it out on Wiki and found that it is an image transfer technique.
” The most common method involves laying semi-transparent paper over the original image, then tracing along the lines of the image by creating pricked marks on the top sheet of paper. This pounced drawing made of pricked holes is laid over a new working surface. A powder such as chalk, graphite or pastel is forced through the holes to leave an outline on the working surface below, thus transferring the image. The powder is applied by being placed into a small bag of thin fabric such as cheesecloth, then dabbed onto the pricked holes.” Claire has been very creative with this technique and adapted it to work well with polymer clay. As you can see in the examples above it is the jumping off point for a great variety of results beginning with the same image.
Claire enjoying some homemade squash soup ( my husband made it)
Close up look at Sharon’s pendant necklaces. Sharon deomonstrates a great sense of design with exquisite craftswomanship. She works in polymer clay. You can see more of her work on her just completed
website . Check out the slide show option for the full eye candy experience of her work.
Close up of one of Sharon Nodelman’s polymer pendants-photo by Allan Nodelman
Sharon and Claire sharing polymer clay talk and supply info. Those colors in the open tin are Derwent Inktense blocks.
In addition to Claire’s Demo of pouncing, I shared a free Make and Take Earring project with visitors. I did several demonstrations of soft soldering, using a disk cutter and letter stamping on metal.
Visitors made their own earrings using these soft solder flooded disks that I provided.
and this model of what they might make.
They were a creative group and all came up with unique earrings.
Below is a picture of visitors working on their earrings.
Visitors working on stamping their earring disks.
Completed earrings stacking 2 disks.
Om Earrings made by one of our guests
I hope you have enjoyed this look into the Studio Tour of 2015. Now it is time for the question. So here goes. Do you think a studio tour is a good way to see art work ? Or any comment you would like to make about the concept of a studio tour. Like what kinds of activities would make you want to visit an artist’s studio. Leave a comment below to be automatically entered into a drawing to win a surprise package of my beads.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
Mary
