Smashing Color

with Maggie Maggio

Page 5 of 15

Academic Regalia

Its that time of year again. The strains of Pomp and Circumstance fill the air as commencement ceremonies all over the country open with the faculty filing into the field, or gymnasium, or stadium, or convention center. Tradition calls for the faculty and students to be dressed in academic regalia. Academic regalia, or academicals, refer to […]

Teaching in Victoria

Last month I spent a week in beautiful Victoria, B.C. teaching a Smashing Color retreat with a small group of friends from the Vancouver Island Polymer Clay Artists Guild. It was a new experience for me in many ways. First – I was able to walk around a little bit of the Victoria Harbor the […]

Worldwide Pasta Machine Survey

Last week Sage Bray, the editor of The Polymer Arts magazine, and I had a guest post on Polymer Clay Daily about measuring thicknesses on pasta machines. We asked the polymer community to follow measuring instructions and fill out a short survey.  We’ve heard from artists all over the world and so far we’ve collected more […]

Rothko’s Red

Portland Center Stage just finished a run of the play “RED” about Mark Rothko. Originally staged in London, the play opened on Broadway two years ago and won the 2010 Tony for Best Play. This two-person play by John Logan is set in Rothko’s studio in the late 1950’s.  He is working on paintings for the […]

Zooming In

Often  zooming in on an image can inspire new design and color combination ideas. Today I’m zooming in on chairs. These are three very different details from chairs made by artists for the Chair Affair fundraiser – the annual auction for the Portland Community Warehouse. Many Portland artists contribute pieces to the auction. Some make the […]

The Gift of Color for Valentines Day

Target aired a new commercial on the Grammies. It features the song ‘Alouette, Gentile Alouette’ by The Delta Rhythm Boys. If you haven’t seen this fun spin on color, check it out on YouTube. Happy Valentines Day! May all your days be filled with color!

Pasta Machine Standards 4.0

Since I alway start with the #1 setting, this version of the chart has the thick settings at the top. PDF Version: Pasta Machine Standards 4.0

Pasta Machine Standards Version 3.0

Here’s my latest draft of a chart based on input from many sources. The standard sheet thicknesses are now only in millimeters, plus I added a column for the size of the sheet (in mm and inches) that you will get from a regular sized block of clay at the THIN, MEDIUM and THICK sizes. […]

Thank You Elise

The Racine Art Museum’s Terra Nova: Polymer Art at the Crossroads closed on Sunday. The first major museum exhibit of polymer art in the country, this show could never have happened without the vision and intrepid determination of polymer artist and advocate Elise Winters. I first heard Elise’s dream for a museum show as we […]

Color Method’s Matching Game

This fun color matching game starts out easy- just move the open circle bullseye around the outside of the wheel until the two colors of the inside circle match. Then it gets a little more difficult – match the saturations, then match the complementary colored pieces of pie. Match analogous and triadic color schemes.  It ends […]

Polymer Exhibit at the Mingei Museum

The Mingei International Museum in San Diego is currently showing their collection of polymer beads and beaded jewelry in New Jewelry in a New Medium: The Art of Polymer Clay.   I visited the Mingei a few years ago when my friend Doshi had a one woman show of her fiber art. Its a beautiful […]

Saturday School: Albers 5 – Value Trick

Putting colors in order according to value can be tough. Here are the twelve colors from the post about value last month. I put them in the order I thought they should go and scanned the results in grayscale. They fall into three value ranges – dark, medium, and light but, as you can see, […]

De Kooning – The Beauty of Ugliness

“I’d like to get all the colors in the world into one painting.”    Willem de Kooning I grew up surrounded by paintings done by mom and dad. One of my favorites is a large canvas that still hangs over the mantle in the living room. It was painted by my dad in the late […]

MLK

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ” MLK Today we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My daughter sent this photograph via Facebook.  She knew […]

Saturday School: Metric Redux on Pasta Machine Settings

Addendum:  Sage Bray from The Polymer Arts Magazine and I are collaborating on a Pasta Machine Thickness Guide. To help us collect the data we need, measure your pasta machine settings using either the playing card method or the metric stacking method and send us the information by filling out the online survey.  – – […]

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