Polymer Art Archive

It’s not everybody who gets fascinated by lizards. What’s to account for such tastes?
Amy Zinman was always a pushover for rescue animals, but most of those have been the predictable dogs and cats. So what was her entry into the world of the little horned creatures? Amy says, ”I was living near a reptile store in Hoboken, New [...]

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Having given birth to this website exactly a month ago, and having nursed it through its formative days, I’ve gained some unexpected rewards.
 
To get the site up and running, I’ve had to review thousands of slides that had been sitting in boxes as well as taking new photos of my own polymer art collection and [...]

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After returning from a trip to Japan in 1994, I felt inspired by much of the textile design I had seen there.
Steve (Ford) and I were looking for new cane ideas as well as new jewelry forms to work with. After looking closely at much of the ikat patterns we found in books and Japanese [...]

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“Seeing the horse again makes me want to make another one.”
That was Donna Kato’s reaction when I asked for her thoughts about what may be the most beloved piece exhibited at the 1997 Masters Invitational Polymer Clay Exhibition and Sale (MIPCES). The New Jersey event, which I conceived and coordinated, brought together 28 artists from [...]

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One afternoon several years ago, Pier and I were driving slowly around Oakland and Alameda, looping along Interstate-980 in the ubiquitous dense traffic that proves you are in The Bay Area. She had picked me up at Jeremy Gordon’s house in Berkeley to take me over, see her studio, hang out a bit.
We had already [...]

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It seems to me that innovation in the medium of polymer often resembles our own adult version of “telephone.” One artist comes up with a great concept, something she just has to tell a colleague about. In a rush of excitement, that second person passes along the original idea, inevitably adding a personal twist or [...]

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Over the span of three National Polymer Clay Guild Retreats at Shrinemont, I was able to witness the evolution of Laura Liska’s bargello beads. One year she spent hours mixing color samples that nestled back into a neat hexagram, another year she experimented with different shapes for her beads, earrings and necklaces. Every aspect of [...]

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I’m hoping that visitors to the Polymer Art Archive will often have a visual experience like walking into the diamond vault at DeBeers headquarters: suddenly dazzled by sparkle.
 
In that vein, let me introduce you to Jo-Ellen Trilling, one of the hidden treasures in my slide collection.
Jo-Ellen had been a painter before venturing into mixed media [...]

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I first became intrigued by the particular characteristics of translucent polymer in 1989 when I made two goblet forms entitled “Angel’s Goblets.” I layered it very thinly with some opaque millefiore intending to let light pass through it in order to see patterns layered over other patterns. I did not continue exploring this whole idea, [...]

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