Other Artists' Influence on My Work

As mentioned in a previous post, work I have seen in books/magazines influences work I do years later. That is why I love looking at as many jewelry pieces as possible. Those images hide in the nooks and crannies of my brain and pop out years later. Here are some examples of my work and a little about where I saw the artist's work.

Convertible pendant/brooch (left) and Chinese coin pendant (right), were created 11/2008. Definitely influenced by Donna Kato. Her latest book, The Art of Polymer Clay Creative Surface Techniques, is full of examples of her simple and elegant asian designs. I love her sense of design.

I remember seeing photos of brooches by Kaz Yamashita in Nan Roche's book The New Clay and absolutely loving them. They were collages made of sheets of unbaked clay forming beautiful, slightly 3-D, abstract wearable works of art. Until today when I looked at the book again to write my review of it, I didn't realize how much of an influence those pieces of jewelry were. Here are two of my pieces made of unbaked scraps of clay. The necklace at left was made in October 2008. The brooch on the right was made in 2006 or 2007. Yamashita used a lot of foiled clay sheets. I haven't used foil on clay for a long time. I think I need to work with that again.