My New Work is Coming Along

If you’ve been following this blog at all you know that I am frantically trying to pull it all together for a show in Switzerland and a second gallery that has asked to carry my work, (but I dropped off what little I had at a first gallery).  The upshot of all that is I have new work  and I will have more new work as time goes on.  I’m very excited about the new pieces and what I have cooking in the near future for when I return from Europe, (now that I finally found my passport!).

New paper cloth collage lady pin

The piece pictured here is a complete mixed medium work.  The body and face are paper & cloth collage with added sequins and glass seed beads.  There is polymer clay for the backing.  I’m very excited about these new pieces – I have 5 more that I’m working on right now.

I also have some new work that is focused around liquid polymer veneers that I’m *really* jazzed about.  Some of them have the veneers covered in resin, some don’t. I am also talking with a metalsmith for some signature bezels so I can make some polymer/sterling combination pieces.

Polymer and PMC bird pin.

Lastly, I saw the galley for the new book that I am one of the co-authors for.  I can’t tell you the title yet but it will be available before the Tucson Gem Show in February for sure.  It’s in the final correction phase which will be finished this week.  The book is beautiful.  There are a lot of projects using seed beads, wire and collaborative pieces.  Kathryn St. Martin and I each wrote PMC projects and Kathryn made a piece using a piece of one of my liquid polymer veneers that’s in the gallery portion of the book.

Pictures of My Work

Here are some pictures of my work.  Let me know what you think!

Entire Word Chimes painting/collage.

Lady pin, fine silver, glass beads and polymer clay.

'Tibetan Running Bird', Precious Metal Clay and colored pencil by Meredith Arnold

Shiver Me Infidels! Clay Camp was Fun!

View from the dining hall at Clay Camp

    Clay Camp was a blast, as always.  What better way to leave distractions behind, experiment, play and really get some good work time and lifelong laughs while hanging with the cream of the crop?
   Some of the highlights include a gift my dear friend, Autumn, gave me:  Mad Libs, the Pirate version! Friday night we played “How to talk like a pirate” and N.G. (short for Nice Guy), came up with ‘infidels’ for a noun that left us with:  Shiver me infidels! HILARIOUS! He says he’ll never look at infidels quite the same way ever again. Autumn popped up with ‘killdeer’ for a noun so we had a ‘tri-cornered killdeer’ as the hat of choice in our pirate story.

Autumn playing with doll hands she made at camp.

 

   We have so many goofy associations with camp now from so many years of quirky behavior ranging from peeps to pirates that it’s just funny to go to camp.  It’s all about artists breaking loose and having some great laughs. Who needs exercise when you laugh that hard?
Next up is a road trip to Canada this weekend. I am planning on finally getting to Maiwa on Granville Island. Maiwa (www.maiwa.com) carries hand carved wood textile stamps. These stamps are carved in India and they have lots of them. I have never been able to find them but I have it scoped out now. I’m hoping to add to my collection of these original stamps. I use them in my work with polymer and metal clays and fabric decorating. Maiwa also carries everything for the fabric/textile arts including silk paints, silk, tools, dyes, and more. I told my travel mates that they will have to plan on slouching about the Farmer’s Market while I’m in Maiwa because I will be taking my time!

My work area at camp. See my new Hello Kitty spritzer bottle? I got it in the brown bag gift exchange!

Next week it’s off to West Virginia for the Polymer Clay Collaborative Mixed Media Retreat at Sheperdstown University. I’ll be teaching classes on Silk Beds and also Polymer Clay Bound Books. I’ll post on that later, of course.

Clay Camp 2009 group photo