It was a slow week last week. M was sick with ear infections and needed me nearby as nurse/mom. The week was a blur of hanging out with M, watching dvds, reading and wasting time online. Consequently, I didn’t get any studio time and I didn’t really feel like blogging.
For some reason today I started thinking about my “Aha!” moment. That was the moment when something clicked between my head, my hands and my heart and I realized polymer clay was “it” for me.
I started playing around with polymer clay some time in 2001. I’d get together with one of my crafty friends and we’d try different things, often sparked by something on the Carol Duvall Show. One day we covered pens with polymer clay. The we tried some simple caning. I had made a pile of Christmas ornaments with Fimo around 1992, but I put it away after that and barely thought about it.
Something clicked that one day with my friend. I started searching the internet for information on polymer clay and tried a ton of tutorials. Around that time I called my husband at work said “This is it! This is what I want to DO. This is the material that sings to me.”
I have often wondered why this material and why that particular moment? I grew up doing crafty things. I was the youngest of three children by a span of 7 years. I remember my mother giving me a craft project book and I spent a lot of time working on projects that appealed to me. I took pottery lessons for several years. During my junior high and high school years I explored batik, egg dying, soft sculpture, silk screening and calligraphy. Over the summers I took workshops at the Farmington Valley Art Center. I loved it all, but nothing ever clicked.
Then one day almost 25 years later, I had that “Aha!” momet. Anyone else have a moment like that?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Yep. Had the Aha! moment the fall I was pregnant. I had been making and selling my jewelry at shows for a few years and I had begun progressing to using fairly nice but expensive art beads. I picked up a beading book and in it was a section with making very simple millefiori beads.
I went out and bought some Fimo and made scads of beads! Over the next few years I found more complex caned beads online and my technique improved and developed. This fall marks my tenth year though the honeymoon is still on.
Yes…..most definitely. I had been a bench jeweler/designer for almost two decades, and craft as it were, was my life, though on a level that could not be considered hobbyist; it wasn’t so much fun as work; I learned to blow off the stress of setting diamonds by working in more forgiving materials….but none of them resonated.
Once I finally (and blessedly!!!!) became pregnant with my daughter, I kissed metalwork and other crafts goodbye; but just before doing so, I had purchased some Cernit from Rio Grande on an impulse.
Thirteen years later, I ran acoss some of it in a box–still good, don’t you just love polymer clay— and started playing with it; realized that there were other more colorful brands out there…..just in time to get a call from one of our neighborhood organizers that a girl from our school desperately needed fundraising help for a heart transplant. I looked at those bright blocks of clay, they looked back at me, and suddenly I started forming the most gorgeous eternity symbols in clay. They were truly what the ancient Greeks mean when they refer to inspiration, and another artist (Clare Pramuk) and I made and sold hundreds, donating every penny to the transplant fund (Which was a wonderful, wonderful success).
Working with that clay, watching it transform, blend, discovering every new and beautiful thing I could do with it…that transformed me.
To my eternal gratitude.
Elaine & Randee, thanks so much for sharing your stories. I love to hear how people get hooked on a specific material.