This month’s theme for the Art Elements design challenge was seed pods.  Seed pods are especially fertile ground for my muse.  The diversity of shapes, textures, and colors in the vessels plants produce to protect and disperse their seeds is very inspiring.  There are so many ways to go with this theme that I could easily spend all year making nothing but seed pod-inspired art.

Mini botany lesson: a seed pod is a seed vessel or dehiscent fruit that splits when ripe.  Pods play a key role in encapsulating the developing seeds and protecting them as they mature.  In addition to protection, some pods also serve a seed dispersal function, such as by facilitating wind-borne transport (e.g., maple samaras) or animal-borne transport (e.g, they stick to animals’ fur, or animals eat them and then deposit them when they poop). (That’s right, I said “poop.”)

I’ve done seed pods as a design challenge once before.  It was about three years ago for one of the We’re All Ears earring design challenges.  I tried to mimic the shapes and colors of seed pods from actual plants, ranging from poppies, snapdragons and maple trees to mesquite and chile.  There were some more fanciful designs in there too. Because once you have looked at dozens of seed pod images, your brain is filled with jumbled up shapes and textures that you can’t help but play with.

I had a pair of snapdragon seed pod headpins left over from that previous challenge, complete with my best attempt at their little skull-like faces.  I didn’t use them back then because I didn’t like the color I painted them. For this new challenge, I gave them a rusted iron finish using Swellegant metal coatings, patinas, and dye oxides.  I really love that stuff. Not only can it give the most delicious aged metal finishes on pretty much any surface, it’s a great way to rescue beads you unintentionally painted fugly colors.

After the snapdragon pods were sufficiently rusted (I left them nestled in paper towel dampened with the patina solution for several days, and then let the dye oxides bloom for another couple of days) I put them on some ear wires for a simple pair of earrings.

Before I began making new seed pods for this challenge, I spent some time doing an image search on the interweb.  I discovered some pods I hadn’t known about when I did the last pod-themed challenge. Some, like the magnolia seed pod, were incredibly intriguing, but I didn’t allow myself enough time to explore how I would sculpt them. I have saved some images to my “maybe someday I will have time for this” files, a.k.a. a Pinterest board.

Since I made a batch of beads and headpins the last time I did a seed pod-themed challenge, I decided to go with a sculpture for this challenge.  Polymer clay is my medium of choice these days, which means I mostly make beads and occasionally small sculptures. I used to dabble in cross-stitch, embroidery, crochet, mosaics, and assorted other arts and crafts.  A few years ago I donated all of the supplies for those hobbies to an organization that redistributes them to school teachers. I still have an overflowing studio because there’s an almost endless variety of things you can combine with polymer clay.

One of the things I hoard as a byproduct of working with polymer clay is glass jars and bottles.  Because “maybe someday” I will cover them in polymer clay and create a masterpiece. LOL. I’ve been saving this one glass bottle shaped like an apple – complete with leaf details around the neck – for at least 5 years.  Meaning I liked it so much that I have packed it and unpacked for two moves, even as I have purged the rest of my “I can make something with this” bottle collection each time. It’s not rare or expensive. I can easily go to the local grocery store and buy another (filled with apple juice) for a couple dollars.  I cannot explain why I’ve kept it. But as it happens to be pod-ish shaped, I am glad I did.

My dilemma in making the covered bottle was: do I go surreal or whimsical?  I remained undecided even as I was sculpting. By the time I thought I had added enough organic detail and texture to the clay, it could still have gone either way with the painting. If I went with gray-greens on the background and dark maroons on the veins, it could evoke [creepy] alien organism.  If I used pure greens and violet or fuchsia tints instead of shaded hues, it could be a more magically fanciful creation.

In the end, I went with magical fanciful, imagining my pod could have contained the seeds from which faeries or nymphs grow.  But in my mind’s eye, I can still see a version of the pods from Alien: Covenant, which contained spores that grow in to neomorphs within some of the crew members.

I didn’t complete my pod bottle all in one go.  I had to let the raw sculpture sit for a week because I was so undecided about the final color scheme that I couldn’t commit to the first layer of color that had to be added before curing.  While I pondered that, I decided to make a few pod beads and headpins.

I contemplated revisiting some of the seed pod beads I made a few years ago, maybe improving on their designs.  But there are just too many types of seed pods to play with.  I didn’t manage to complete jewelry with all of the beads and headpins I made, because the design ideas were not to be forced.

Exploring the variety of pods on various species of mesquite bean trees alone could be enough to keep me busy for weeks, especially if you consider all the phases they go through as they ripen.  But I only had one weekend left before the reveal, so I just dabbled in a few prototypes.

Mesquite trees are a favorite of mine, because they remind me of my home in the desert southwest.  Their seed pods vary so much in color and shape. The burgundy pod beads on these earrings were inspired by the color and shape of ripe seed pods on the honey locust bean tree, Gleditsia triacanthos.

The beads on these loooong dangle earrings were inspired by the various colors of ripening cacao bean pods.  I didn’t plan to use all of them in the same pair of earrings when I was making the beads. However, as I sat at my table with all my pod beads in front of me waiting for jewelry design inspiration, this is what I kept coming back to.

I did not know there were blue seed pods anywhere other than my imagination until I came upon images of pods from the blue bean plant, Decaisnea spp.  They’re a flowering plant native to eastern Asia and in addition to being called blue sausage fruit, the pods are also referred to as dead man’s fingers.  But let’s refer them to them as blue beans for the purposes of these earrings, shall we?

Somehow all of my seed pod beads were modeled after closed pods, with no seeds visible.  There are some spectacular shape changes that happen when the ripe pods split to reveal the seeds.  That can be a little more challenging for a novice sculptor like me. The mechanics of putting the pieces together in a way that mimics real pods while being structurally sound would require a bit more trial and error for me.  And I’m perfectly willing to go there, someday, when I’m not distracted by some other idea.

This month went by far too quickly for exploring all things inspired by the rich diversity of seed pod shapes, textures, and colors.  I am pleased that Jennifer chose them as the theme for this month, giving me the excuse to explore the idea over the course of a few weeks.  This design challenge is also a blog hop, so please join the party by visiting the links to the other participating artists. You will be treated to seed pod inspired art in a wide array of media from paper and fiber to glass and clay.

Guest Artists:

Tammy <– You are here!
Raven
Alysen
Anita
Cat
Kimberly
Rozantia
Sarajo
Divya
Caroline
Catherine
Kathy
Jill
Norma

Art Elements Team:

Claire
Caroline
Lesley
Niky
Laney
Susan
Marsha
Jenny
Cathy
Jen