Fresh from France

I adore Flickr! It's a wonderful tool for those who have an interest in photography or artwork of any kind. I've "met" so many talented artists through this site. One of my newest contacts is Marie Guiderdoni of Paris, France. I had never seen her work until just a couple of days ago and I'm very impressed. Marie has been working with clay for only about three years but I can see that she has already developed a style and voice all her own. She's chosen to concentrate on color exploration and the use of metals and other media in conjunction with polymer clay.

Her work with rubber tubing is innovative and very nicely done. She also incorporates copper spheres into many of her pieces and oxidizes the copper with a blow-torch.

Her rings are a wonderful representation of her skill in combining different metals with the clay. I love the rich color and texture she's achieved with these. Her website is packed with wonderful images of her work and there's lots available on Flickr, as well.

On a completely different note, I decided it was time for a change and got about 7 inches cut off my hair last week. And, after years of begging from my youngest son, I caved in and allowed him to get a mohawk. His style is all about being different and I never thought I'd say this about a mohawk but, he looks really cute! Personally, I'm not feeling all that cute but, I love having short hair. So, in the spirit of change, I decided to add a translator to my blog and also clickable links to different subjects I've blogged about in the past. I'm not sure if this is the best translator available so I hope my tech-savvy readers will let me know if there's anything better out there. If all the labels are distracting or if you find them useful, I'd like to know that, too.