Wednesday, January 26, 2011

If at first you don't succeed.....


Try, try again!

A few posts back I shared the story of Phil's strange experience with burlap. It appears that burlap is not Phil's friend. He took my "Exploring Copper Clay" class a couple of Saturday's ago and used a burlap-like texture for one of his pieces. Guess what.....that one didn't turn out either. He made some copper paste and attached several pieces to the top. This was the area that he felt was weak and might break. What actually happened was that the bottom area cracked in three places and easily broke off but the top was very, very sturdy.

So.... back to the drawing board. Phil decided to do some cold connecting (with my new cold connection tool from Metal Clay Findings) and combine his first burlap fiasco with his second burlap disaster. The piece became an assemblage as he added polymer clay and fine silver. This wasn't what Phil had planned when he started these pieces, but one never knows.

Phil's wife Heidi is also an artist in the National Transit Studios. She and her sister Carol own "Two Sister's studio". What I find interesting is that Heidi does assemblages. Now Phil does too (on a smaller scale.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, but that's the thing about creativity, isn't it?

I mean, we shouldn't just think of it in relation to an initial design, should we? It seems essential all along the way: with workarounds, new opportunities that suddenly appear, and more.

I think this "end result" is delightful!

Alice Walkowski said...

Me too. Thanks for commenting.