A new appreciation

I had the great privilege of spending the better part of my week last week with award-winning artist Barbara Becker Simon.

Barbara is loads of fun. She is an engaging, knowledgable, and patient teacher and she takes great care to ensure that every student in the room is successful, regardless of his or her experience level. We hosted two workshops with her at Roadhouse Arts, and I was able to multi-task so that in addition to serving as a co-hostess, I got to be a student!

Although I dabbled in polymer clay years ago, I was never very good at it. The first workshop last week was all about creating faces in polymer clay so we could create molds to use with metal clay. Since I have never been good at literalism - seriously, I can't draw a round circle to save my life - the idea of creating anything resembling a face seemed a little far-fetched to me. To my great surprise, Barbara's expert tutelage walked me through a process resulting in a little polymer creation that actually looked a lot like a face!

I have to tell you I have a whole new appreciation for the work of the clay and polymer artists who are part of the AJE team. The careful, painstaking effort required to make the polymer model clean and crisp enough to cast a mold was maddening - my friend Gail literally had to make me stop or I would have worked that poor little man to death! I take my hat off to all of you ladies - there's an extraordinary amount of finely detailed work that goes into what you do.

In the end, I wound up using my second mold to cast a PMC silver face (it's supposed to be Don Quixote), which I then modified and recarved to create a partial mask for a ring. It has yet to be fired, so I don't even really know if it's going to turn out, but I like how it's coming along. I also carved a bronze bangle in the second workshop last week, but again: waaaay more work that I was prepared for. It too still needs to be fired but as I was setting up to take the photo above, I noticed there's a whole section that needs to be "groomed" and fine-tuned - my heart just sank. There's already an entire day in that piece!

Last week was wonderful - I loved Barbara, and I loved her take on art and life and teaching. But I also learned there's a reason why I am so drawn to metal and hammers and torches, and why I merely dabbled in polymer and metal clay all those years ago. It's because they aren't my love... but I am deeply grateful all over again for the artists who make them such amazing mediums in the first place and for the ladies on this team who elevate them to art.

So that's what I'm learning these days - what about you?

Until next time -

Francesca