New Work: Progressions

I've begun a new series of mixed media bamboo bowl wall hangings. I'm calling them Progressions, and they're designed to hang alone or in groups. I've completed these two so far, shown on my chocolate brown kitchen wall.

I color-wash the 12-inch bamboo bowl, add hand-tinted watercolor paper strips, and position them in progressions of color under a polymer clay bar. Each clay bar is painted with iron oxide, then rubbed with PearlEx powders to give the luminous sheen of raku pottery.

This design came about only after throwing out a number of others....creativity eluded me late last month and briefly into this one. I wouldn't have ordinarily thought to throw out the unsuccessful ones, but my husband pointed out that keeping them would only frustrate me more, since I would look at them and see only what didn't work--not the best idea when trying to coax a creative spark into flame. He was right; as soon as I threw them away, I was able to clear my mind, and begin again. I also designed new, small clock...more on that, another day.