Polymer Art Archive

Kathleen Amt. Heart/Butterfly Pin, 1997
Polymer, closed dimensions, 3.75″ x 1.5″  x .25″

Just today I received this belated valentine from Kathleen Amt. For those unfamiliar with her work, Kathleen was an early pioneer in the field. Around 1999 she decided to return to her first love, art books and  ephemera.  Here’s what Kathleen’s valentine message said:

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I’m on the road delivering works from the collection to their new homes in museums on the east coast. More details to come later this fall.

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If you are a new visitor to Polymer Art Archive, you can find background about this event in the 2 posts, Past, Present Future and All About MIPCES.

LIZARDO DIABLO 11”L x 7½”W x 7”H
For the MIPCES catalog, Amy Zinman wrote:
“Just as the chameleon can change its appearance to blend into the environment, polymer clay can [...]

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In 1987, at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in the Washington, D.C. area, I taught my first workshop on polymer bead-making based on the simple techniques I had developed.  On the advice of an artist colleague, I submitted a short article to Ornament magazine.  Published in 1988, my article was entitled “The Use of Polyform [...]

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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 [...]

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This is Part Three 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 1984, Pier Voulkos conceived of simple millefiore designs based on some limited experience with glass-working in [...]

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This is Part Two 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 .
The Earliest Polymer Bead-makers
Many of these American artists first became aware of the polymer brand Fimo in [...]

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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 [...]

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Several emails have come to this blog, disputations on the general theme of “who-did-what-first.” So let me lay out for the readers who gather here how I’d like to handle this issue.

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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 [...]

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