Goodbye Website Shop, Chronic Blog Neglect and more bleedin' Lockdown to get through. . .

Blog neglect taken to the lengths that I have taken it to is probably a criminal offence. . . But I just don't feel the urge these days. The Groundhog Day existence this Covid virus has caused doesn't help. At least my repetitive life involves some repetitive selling. Grateful thanks to all the bead buyers out there still accumulating the raw materials for their jewellery projects.

My website has also suffered. I only have one because I feel I ought to, and my website shop is only there because people say that a stand alone shop is a good thing to have. I am not convinced. I am even less motivated to promote it than I am to make blog posts so it is somewhat unloved right now. Most of all by me. I do OK on Etsy and sell on Facebook so really it is surplus to requirements. I am going to wind the shop up and put the beads etc on Etsy, or FB from time to time. The website itself I will keep as a source of info if anyone wishes to find out anything about my work that isn't obvious by looking at it. .

Black and white scratch design spindle bead

On the domestic front, we are down to two chickens. Not sure what happened to the two that went missing but the F word is the obvious answer, a fox got them I am guessing. No stray tell-tale clumps of feathers though so it was a clean job. Must have been a daylight raid as they sleep in their firmly shut chicken coop thingy (a converted child's Wendy House according to the previous house owner. .) They had also stopped laying a week or two ago, not sure why but it does happen from time to time I am told. I will probably get a couple of replacements next spring, maybe some more arty, feathery legged ones this time, we shall see.

We have four adult geese now as the two goslings have grown into healthy adults, just as raggedy looking as their parents. Sebastopol geese are such eccentric looking things, like they just had a fight with a shredder ;-) Noisy, but amusing have around, mostly. .

Work - More of the same sort of thing. Variations on stripe painted 'spindles' and spikes, with some nice scratch design beads thrown in. Less of the Industrial Boho side of things but I am moving in that direction again.

I did make some moulds using plastic dinosaurs. Not as popular as I had hoped but fun to make and fun to use.

I have made a couple of small assemblage/diorama things but am awaiting a bit more inspiration before I take them any further.

'Nicholson'

Backing Singers. .

I would really like to make more actual jewellery, but it is a whole new ball game and I need to get more confident that I am making the most of my work and my particular way of creating. It has to fit my aesthetic so to speak. Also, if I am going to tie up fifty quids worth of beads and focal etc in a necklace, I would need to sell stuff for a decent price. I have to feel that what I make is 'worth it', not to mention whether there is a receptive audience for it out there.

Earrings do seem to be the way to go too. Everyone else seems to make them, and they keep on selling. I assume that earrings are the sort of thing that buyers like to have lots of around, unlike necklaces. Still considering this. . .

Oh yes, I also made a couple of pieces into cool wall art, by deepening a couple of small, ornate-ish frames that I had knocking around, to make shallow, shadow box type things, into which I put a couple of pieces that were once intended to be pendants but looked good just as they were. I think they came out well. The trouble is that now we have another Lockdown I can't pay a visit to the framing shop to see what other small frames they have lurking on their shelves so I can make some more. Fah!

Oh well, I shall persevere and we will all get through this. . . The vaccine news is good, so far, and though I hate to mention politics, the US election 'should' work out for the best eventually. I must admit it has been depressing the life out of me and I don't even live there!

Anyway, stay safe and stay well,

Jon x

Moulds, Molds, Bears, Giant Babies and The Cautious Emergence of The Weirdly Absurd

Well, I've been doing the usual thing, neglecting this blog and manically experimenting/pottering. 

Allowing that it is possible to potter manically of course - I'm taking the view that it most certainly is. .

The trouble is, as I have probably mentioned before, is that my focus shifts so quickly between projects and ideas that I am into a new idea before I have blogged about the last one. Then eventually, the weight of unblogged about things becomes so great that my Blogger's Guilt kicks in and I try to feature about ten ideas at once. 

Oh well, so be it ;-)

So, first up - You remember the plastic model railway figures from my last post? Course you do. I have made a few more little surreal scenes using them, (in this case some very nice hurrying passengers) and a few very pink plastic babies I came across on the internet (of course). Combined with an image transfer of one of my digital fake-cell-structure creations and a few other bits and pieces this interesting little scenario came about. It's called "Try to ignore The Babies".

Taking this post to be a vaguely logical progression, I considered said plastic babies and wondered how making polymer clay moulds of  them might work out. Polymer clay does seem to be pretty good for mould making. Non-flexible ones but that is OK. This Baby/Alien piece was made using crude impressions from one of the moulds I made. With some crackle effect technique and additional glass beads. (I was given a box of various small beads from a friend. I didn't think they were the sort of thing I would be using but as it happened they found a place)

One mould led to another, this time using a couple of model railway figures, which, my creative process being what it is, resulted in some pieces with a very different vibe. Using inks and Ren wax etc etc helped.

As is the way of these things, before long, some of my little plastic animals got roped in to the mould making frenzy. These two little Red Panda head drops came about that way. 

And this Bear pendant. All interesting stuff I thought.

And moving skilfully on, like a smooth radio DJ style link, talking of bears, I made some bear images using a rubber stamp I acquired, and taking sort of multiple, artily out of register monoprints from the stamp's impression on poly clay, which I coloured up in various ways. 

I used one of these images as the background for this piece called "Big Bear, Good Dog" ;-)

Moulds from the heads of various plastic figures I have had knocking around for years came into the equation also, to somewhat creepy effect. Only somewhat, as the absurd tends to trump the creepy; in the work I do at any rate. Here's a couple of spike beads and drops to emphasise my point.

The more observant amongst you will have clocked the strange image at the top of this post. This was me trying to mix and match heads and bodies ;-) The body is from a mould of an unpainted pottery dog blank that I acquired from who knows where, ages ago, and the head is from a plastic motorcyclist. the result is like some very odd artifact from an archaeological site somewhere. No idea idea where that 'somewhere' might be though. . .

So that's me for the moment. Other stuff will no doubt emerge from my fevered brain as this strange time of Covidiosyncratic Groundhog Days grinds on, and on.

Oh well, and talking of 'well', stay well!

best, 

Jon x

Stripes, Glitches, Multi Image Trans Veneers, Model Railway Figures and Fancy Lawn Mowers

Well, still in the throes of this lockdown thing though the situation has eased slightly. Shops are open again apparently, which makes no difference to me as I am not remotely interested in risking my life and that of others in order to 'shop'. To be fair I don't do 'shopping' at the best of times, I buy stuff as and when I need it, so I don't see shopping as a recreational activity in it's own right and can't understand why anyone does ;-) Especially in those hideous, charmless and soul destroying places known as Malls. . .

Of course being a hypocrite, I enjoy trawling through charity shops and the scruffier kind of antique shops and finding interesting things therein. . . That doesn't count as shopping though, obviously. . .

My wife went to the coast yesterday to scope out the seaside town for possible painting locations, she is part of a 'plein air' landscape group who intend to meet up on Sunday for the first time since lockdown began. The place was heaving with visitors, no masks, no social distancing, just crowds of idiots. So she came home pretty quick. What is wrong with people? Silly question, don't get me started. . So no plein air meeting on Sunday, or if there is, she won't be going.

While I am on the subject of domestic life, the two goslings are growing apace and are over half as big as mum and dad. They are growing white feathers to replace the downy yellow ones they had up to now. Big fat healthy buggers they are too. Good to see. The moorhens have several babies but are being quite shy about it all, very protective, so I'm not sure how many babies. At least three.

Anyway, I'm still making and selling stuff, so not a lot has changed for me really. I tend to move between obsessions, bead wise, and have been exploring striped tube type beads and 'spindles' for a while. Encouraged, it has to be said, by buyers being quite keen on them. I try to avoid the temptation to make things because I 'know' they will sell, but I fall prey to it from time to time. I usually find that when that happens it turns and bites me in the bum. The surefire sellers don't sell and I am left feeling suitable chastened for my presumption, and determined not to get caught again. Until next time ;-)

The stripey stuff is getting to the bum biting stage I think so I need to move on again.

Luckily, I still have my obsession with image transfer tiles on upcycled wire frames. I have been messing around with veneers. Not very much, but I have been having fun painting and distressing sheets of poly clay and using the results instead of image transfers on tile beads. I have also combined paint and multiple image transfers, distressing and overlaying them. All great fun. I shall try some more in due course.

I also made use of what would otherwise have been an annoying glitch. The laser printer decided to splatter and splurge ink on the back of the paper, while printing faded rubbish on the front. It hadn't been used for a while so I think it was getting back into the swing of things via a mistake or two. Anyway, the splurges on the back looked interesting so I used them as image transfers. 

I also have an ongoing obsession with model railway figures, the little people that model railway enthusiasts position on platforms etc. I have used them before on wire frames, but it occurred to me that I could embed them in a sheet of poly clay, with other suitable and unsuitable objects. That is how my most recent pendant things were born. 

I am reluctant to sell them, but am not sure what else I would do with them. I may see how difficult or otherwise it is to make brooches, or try to find a way of hanging them on some kind of string/thing/whatever to make a pendant necklace, I dunno. No hurry. I do need to source some more figures though. Ebay is the place by the look of it. They ain't cheap though.

That's all very well, but what about the fancy lawnmower? I hear you cry. . Well, my wife finally got so fed up with having to ask me to start the old lawnmower as she couldn't muster the physical oomph to do it herself, that she went out and bought a small, sit on lawn tractor type thing. One that starts with key. It's red and shiny. . . It also doesn't cut shorter than 3mm, which is a bit long for a lawn. The solution to this problem? Let the tyres down! Only a bit, but it brings the blades lower and makes a nice neat cut. . . Technology eh?

See you next time, 

Jon x

Pruning, which has no relation to Prunes, Swords, Mixing Wires and Getting Back into it All

Well, the weather got a bit wintery for a change! In a good way, it's been dismally dull and wet for weeks round here. Steady light rain and the kind of dull light that makes you feel like you never actually woke up fully, so you mooch around, squelching across the mud and moss that may revert to something like a lawn one day if it ever stops raining, grumbling, mumbling and tripping over the chickens, feeling like your battery failed to recharge properly and you left your 'oomph' in your other trousers. .

But a few days ago it was crisp and bright. Cold, (comparatively of course - this is the south eastern bit of the UK after all) but we had bright sunshine for two whole days, which meant it was actually pleasant to be outside. This was convenient as there was work to be done in the garden. 

The apple trees needed pruning and as it was the right time of year for such activity I got the ladder out and set to work. I might have been a bit too enthusiastic as when I looked up a Youtube vid or two  after the event, (I know!) it seems I cut some of the new growth back a bit too much. Still, I got rid of the millions of spindly vertical bits called 'watershoots', that produce neither fruit nor blossom, so if we get fewer apples this year than we potentially might it's no great loss as we usually get far too many anyway. . . 

It's the cooking apple tree up next, Bramleys, lovely great big buggers they are. We get shedloads of them, maybe I should start up an apple pie factory or something. 

Still I'm not really complaining, I am only doing a good impression of somebody complaining, I mean, we have an actual (small) orchard FFS! Not something I imagined I would be lucky enough to own years ago ;-) So I feel suitably blessed.

Anyway, pruning aside, I have been back in my workshop making stuff. I think people, including me in my capacity as a person, are a bit tired of the chunky rectangular image transfer stuff I've been making lately, so I will leave that alone for a while I think. 

I am busy making some spike related things. Spikes with a slight difference, as I am using upcycled wire instead of copper for the bails and loops. Something I have done before but not quite in this way. I have been making Swords. . . Cool huh?

Oh yeah, before I knocked the image trans stuff on the head temporarily I messed around with using thin copper wire wrapped round some of the upcycled wire I like to use as bails etc.

Note the copper leg warmers, very 80's

I liked the effect, so I have integrated it into the Sword thing. . .

 

Selling wise, things have been a bit slow but it's all going OK, with a few things actually selling on Etsy believe it or not. Maybe I have ceased to be invisible there for a brief time, who knows?
Anyway, onwards and upwards, or at least not backwards and downwards, the climate is taking that journey on it seems. . . ;-(
Until next time, whenever that might turn out to be,
be well,
cheers
Jon x

Blog Neglect, Cats and Woodpeckers, Old Doubts and Responding to The World

Well. . . I always start with that word! (Except every now and then when I don't of course). Somehow it makes it all a bit more conversational, as though I had just sat down with a cup of tea and was about to tell you about my day. An imposition of course, as you didn't actually ask, but as is the way with us bloggers, we just carry on as if you did. . . I know, "What are we like?".

Do they say that anywhere but the UK? I hope not as it should be said in a London accent, preferably South London. . . . Oh yeah, and the three dots thing, I do that a lot too. . . see? . . .
How much do you bet that I'm going to start the next paragraph with "Anyway"?

Scratched 'African' influence focal rectangle thing

Anyway, (Hah!) I have been neglecting this blog, not through choice, but through lack of opportunity, or at least a space of time that wouldn't be 'better spent' doing something else, and also through the paralysis brought on by guilt. It is ironic that the longer you leave something the louder the voice that tells you that you can't possibly do it now, as everyone will have given up and gone home.

I've got over that one. Mainly coz I have no shame but partly coz you are all nice people and weren't exactly waiting around for my verbal meanderings, but are quite happy to give them the once over when they decide to turn up. I assume anyway. . .

Different size grids

The other morning I got up early, ( I do this a lot, not through choice, but because I am awake and know I won't drift back into sleep however much I would like to. It's an age thing I think as I don't need to get up early anymore being retired and all.) As I was saying, or writing rather, I got up early and glanced out of the window into the back garden, where, in the early morning light, I discerned the cat, (Boudicca, the skinny, wriggly one) wrestling/sparring with something on the lawn. A flippn' Green Woodpecker no less! They aren't small birds, in fact, you may remember the photo of a woodpecker with a weasel seemingly riding on it's back, it was one of those. About three quarters of the size on the cat. . . Anyway, I rushed down and opened the back door ready to rescue the silly thing. Luckily that was enough of a distraction for Boudicca to look away and the bird to scarper, making indignant woodpecker noises. I admit I was also a bit worried for the cat, as those woodpeckers have serious beaks on them. They do frequent our lawn, as despite their name, they much prefer to eat ants out of the ground than indulge in any of this pecking wood business. I think it was an immature one, as I saw a couple of them with their parents on the lawn the other day.

"The Wildlife Diary of a Polymer Claying Man" eh?

Hollow Image Transfer and wire thingies 

My 'beads' thing has been going well ;-) I don't think 'beads' is quite the right word for what I am doing at present. I'm not sure what the correct term would be. Jewelry components' is a bit general maybe? 'Thingies' is kind of convenient but doesn't make it sound like I know what I am doing ;-)

Offset scratchy squares

I seem to sell most things I list on FB these days, which is great, but brings up the old doubts about what I should be making. It's the classic 'problem' that rears ugly head (maybe not so much ugly as unwelcome) when things start to sell. Vis - Should I make more of the things that I am pretty sure will sell, or should I continue the creative experimentation and follow wherever it leads, sales or not?

Not making things that people actually want seems a bit ungrateful somehow, but repeating yourself, and risking losing the spark that makes you You as it were is not such a good idea either. The real crunch comes when you realise that if do the arty thing rather than the more commercial thing, you are turning down an almost guaranteed chance to make a useful amount of money. . . Not easy for a lifelong freelancer to turn down. It's a good dilemma to have though I suppose.

I think the answer is to make enough time to do both.
I'm working on it.

I am also lucky in that I have a client base that seems to be interested and involved in my creative journey, and seem happy to come along with me so to speak. That is pretty special I think ;-)

Texture Squares, new poly clay beads for  change

My recent work has mainly been about upcycling things, beads I put aside for various reasons, and various bits of wire and wire mesh I found stored here and there dating from before this house was ours.
I am always alert to the possibility of reaching a kind of saturation point with particular techniques and concepts, and producing uninspiring work as a consequence. I was feeling like this point was approaching vis a vis wire and poly clay orphans. . .
Until I found some old 'pod' beads I made about three years ago, in one of my bead boxes, and got all inspired again!

Captive Pod, looks kind of Inuit maybe?

Pod Suspended, Organic form meets Geometric Grid

It did make me notice something very obvious, but that had failed to penetrate my thick head, namely, that my work is very much about responding to what is around me. I don't plan anything. I don't sketch or design, I find that it all works better if I let things occur to me and see what happens. I have a general idea, some techniques and an aesthetic worked out, but other than that it's fairly spontaneous. That said, I like to think I have a trained and finely tuned instinct for what 'works' and what doesn't. It's all totally subjective of course, all about me and my personal tastes and preferences, but for better or worse, love it or hate it, take it or leave it, at the end of the day I think I am quite good at being me ;-)

Jon x

The Curious Case of The Blue Soup - A Spike Spike - and the imminent rise of Mid Century Primitive. . .

Well, starting in a backwards direction, just to be awkward, with the Mid Century Primitive, the above pic should show you what I'm on about. . .

The primitive bit is easy to get your head round, pretty self explanatory, but the Mid Century might be a bit less so. Someone mentioned it in a comment on FB and it resonated. I think there is something about the shape and colours that is resonant of fifties and sixties interior design. Your mileage may vary.

Dunno. A bit of a tenuous correlation maybe, but it's a fun invented category to explore the inherent contradictions, or indeed the inherent similarities to be found within it. ;-) 

More about this further down the blog post.

The spike in spike sales may be an oh-so-witty pun but it is also a real life event. I had another good selling session on FB the other day. (Update - and again last night!) My spikes seem to hit the spot with quite a few people.
Hooray for quite a few people, is what I say. Though a spike does imply a sharp up followed by a sharp down, so maybe it's not such a feel good analogy. . .
Anyway, the beads below all sold, amongst others. Long may it continue ;-)

I'll get to the blue soup in my own good time thank you. The subject of Mid Century Primitive is more pressing a matter. Imho of course.

It's a mixture of artily crude and deliberately and sophisticatedly unsophisticated workmanship and simple, sculptural shapes (whatever that means, as any shape could be 'sculptural' really. . . but I think you know what I mean) reminiscent of shapes popular in the fifties and sixties, especially amongst ceramic artists. Who were no doubt influenced by such artists as Brancusi, Arp, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth etc. Well, that's my take on it.

Maybe because like such artists the shapes are defined by the process as much as by an imposed conscious decision. .  Discuss. . .

I'm not saying my work lives up that ideal, but it's what I am aiming for, without getting too precious about it all. It's fun to make this stuff.

Oh yeah, the ones below sold too ;-)

Blue what? . . Oh yeah, soup.

Well. . . It's all about red cabbage. I cooked a roast chicken with all sorts of veg in the pan below it, including red cabbage. The process turned the cabbage and consequently all the veg dark blackish blue. . . ooer. . .

When I made soup from the chicken carcass and bits (as I always do) I included the left over veg. I whizzed it up in the blender and got blue black, slightly frothy, due to the blending process, soup! Yay! My wife was appalled as it didn't look even vaguely appetising ;-) I ate it however.

It tasted great with a bit of yoghurt thrown in. Hah! Mid Century Primitive Soup. . .

Till next time,
Jon x