Archive for the 'City Zen Cane' Category

The Collection: Part 2

On the wish list of the Racine Art Museum, WI
Dan Cormier, Fiji Mermaid, 2000
Using a photo portfolio that featured outstanding examples of available polymer art, Elise began to contact some of the nation’s most noted museum curators.  She did hours of investigative research on specific museums, and issues relevant to the concept.   She made [...]

M.A.D. for Polymer

City Zen Cane (aka Ford/Forlano), Flat Necklace, detail, 1991
Ursula Newman, jewelry curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, selected five pieces of jewelry from The Collection for the museum’s permanent collection. Two steps were necessary to formalize her decision, and the first occurred yesterday when the curatorial staff put their stamp [...]

City Zen Cane: early caning

City Zen Cane (aka Ford/Forlano), Earrings, circa 1996
Early in their collaborations, the team of Steven Ford and David Forlano worked under the name City Zen Cane.  Here are a few early examples of their work which illustrate why this name was so apropos and which provide a window into the nature of their collaboration.

More Early Images: Cynthia Toops and City Zen Cane

Are you hooked on Kathleen Dustin’s presentation about the work done by the early polymer bead makers? Then, you’ll want to see even more images by those pioneers. After each of Kathleen’s installments, I have been providing you with an expanded view of those artists’ early work.
In the gallery that follows you can put Cynthia [...]

The Early Development of Polymer Clay Bead-Making: Part Four

This is Part Four of the speech delivered at Synergy: the 2008 National Polymer Clay Guild Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland in February 2008.  The entire speech will be publish in serial form in five parts on Polymer Art Archive .

In the Washington, D.C., area also in 1986, where I was working as a ceramic artist, I [...]

The Early Development of Polymer Clay Bead-Making: Part One

This is Part One of the speech delivered at Synergy: the 2008 National Polymer Clay Guild Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland last week.  The entire speech will be publish on Polymer Art Archive in serial form.
Polymer clay developed initially for making dolls and puppets but it wasn’t until it was embraced as a bead and [...]

Selection from the Collection: City Zen Cane Shell Necklace

While I’m in the studio filling orders today, here’s something to feast your eyes upon.
I purchased this necklace in 1997 at MIPCES from Steven Ford and David Forlano when they still worked under the name City Zen Cane.  Steven describes this piece as “transitional,” perhaps because it represents a period when they began to experiment with [...]

Beadazzled Show in Washington, DC

I was certainly bedazzled to see the this show at Beadazzled in Washington, DC in 1990. It was the first time I had ever seen the work of Pier Voulkos, Sarah Shriver, Grove & Grove and City Zen Cane in person.
The show was displayed in the back room of the store’s original location on Dupont [...]

Food and Fimo

I became interested in polymer clay in 1988, when a number of things serendipitously led me to take a workshop from Kathleen Dustin. At the time I had a large vegetable/herb garden and was experimenting with different colored inlays of herbs and vegetable purees into handcrafted pasta. One day I’d been tempted to buy FIMO [...]

What I saw in Julie

In 1994, Julie: Artisans’ Gallery was just about the only places you could see work by accomplished polymer jewelry artists.  When Julie Shafler Dale opened her gallery in 1973, it was the very first boutique dedicated to wearable art in America.  Ten years later, she wrote the first book on Art-to-Wear. And by 1994 her [...]