Susan Lenart Kazmer - Resin Alchemy: Innovative Techniques for Mixed-Media and Jewelry Artists

Someone asked me recently how I would describe myself as an artist. I answered that I consider myself first and foremost an explorer. I search for visual clues, found objects, stories, history, and media that allow me to create meaningful art objects. As a mixed-media artist, Im always looking for materials I can incorporate that will push my work to the next level. At this point in my artistic journey, resin really excites me. When I choose a medium, I cant help but immerse myself in it. With resin, Ive mixed it with my metalwork, carved it, cast it, applied it to fabric and paper, colored it with mica to create cold enamel, and more.

Like most people, I was fascinated early on with natural resins, such as turtle shell and amber. Seeing an ancient bug preserved in a piece of amber was amazing and beautiful to me. While my passion for resin was in full force, I attended a popularand controversial museum exhibit, Body Works. I was both mesmerized and repulsed as I viewed the exhibits human bodies, cadavers that had been preserved with a resinous plastic. Here, the bodys musculature, bones, ligaments, and more were revealed in all their raw nakedness. Many of the once-live bodies were posed in dance and sports positions and body parts were bisected, revealing some of the beneath-the-skin mysteries of the human body. I learned that resin can encapsulate anything and even preserve an object for eternity.

My award-winning Key to Freedom sculpture incorporates ordinary objects such as locks, hardware, and twigs with wire and resin. Photo by Michelle Monet.

In Resin Alchemy, I hope to inspire you to explore the many dimensions of resin. Why alchemy? Because, when combined with other materials, resin is a substance that transforms them by making them more than they were. Its magical. It can strengthen fragile organic matter that would otherwise deteriorate, such as dried leaves. It can turn ordinary paper into a mysterious and translucent material. It can be layered to create dimension: pour some over a piece of fabric nestled in a bezel, let it set; then sprinkle glitter and pour in more resin. Resin can create a beautiful time capsule with words, objects, and other elements suspended within it. Transformation!

Actual resin techniques are easy to master. The art of working with resin, discovering its limits, and achieving beauty requires time and patience. It also requires learning how to see. Found objects are a central ingredient in my designs. Ive used such unlikely finds as broken pencil stubs, cigarette butts, poker cards, a $100 bill, sticks, the bones of birds, sand from a Caribbean beach, seashells, peacock feathers, and eggshells. (See for a more in-depth discussion of how found objects can be incorporated in resin art.) For me, seeing is imagining. What story can this object tell? I ask myself. Sometimes, I only know that I need to collect an object and keep it around me until it speaks to me. Once I feel the story emerge, I know that I have achieved the first 5 percent of my work. The remaining 95 percent comes from applying all the skill and craft I have to make it my own. Thats another kind of alchemy.

This is my Poker Game necklace. Cut-up dollar bills, pencil stubs, miniature playing cardsanything goes when you work in mixed media. Photo by Michelle Monet.

To see these dynamic and unusual possibilities in ordinary objects, you have to relax into freedom and flow. You knew this freedom when you were a child. You could create wild, make-believe stories using anything you found in your surroundingsfor example, sticks, string, stones, feathers, cardboard boxes, buckets, nests. You can recapture this freedom when you combine resin and mixed-media material with found objects. But its not all about inspiration. To go deeper into a piece, building layers of intricacy to make it memorable, you need to master some jewelry-making skills. Whether you intend your creations to be elegant, whimsical, or fun, they wont be fully realized unless theyre put together well structurally and make sense.

When you combine the skill of seeing with good craftsmanship to achieve beautiful depth, youre engaged in the ritual of building art. Its a two-part ritual that Ive witnessed many times in my workshops. First, you communicate a feeling, an experience, a story to others. And second, youre making sense of your own life. Sounds big. It is. I tell my students that building pieces is all about solving problems. Another way to approach it is to say that its about revealing mysteries. Its both.

Jewelry with charms that showcase resins endless possibilities.

Its so important to keep a collection of your ideas. A sketchbook or journal is truly the best way to do this. My own drawings are very sketchy, not pretty, just simple lines. This allows me to go at the speed of my imagination, so that ideas dont just fly away and evaporate. In addition, I use text, arrows, and symbols to add emphasis to the ideas I record. Whats a great surprise is that once youve sketched your ideas, you have automatically sharpened your ability to see found objects that connect to those ideas.

The truth is, you will often reach what you think are dead ends when you are creating. I do that all the time. About 50 percent of people give up at this point, feeling defeated and ready to give up. I encourage you to be part of the other 50 percent.

Yes, you can walk away. And when you get to this point, it is time to walk away temporarily. Get some distance so you can start fresh and imagine new possibilities. You have to move past imperfections, real or imagined, so you can enter the discovery zone. Heres where youll find surprises, solutions you hadnt expected to find. And here, too, is where youll start to trust yourself, knowing that youre going to find a way past that dead end.

One of the most satisfying results of pushing forward is that you will discover your artistic voice in the process. Youll also start drawing from the unique content of your life to do your real work, rather than trying to imitate someone elses art (which most of us do in the beginning). In the end, what we are all striving for is to express our own distinct work and voice. When I finished art school, I definitely wanted to get experiences to gain some rich content for my work. Instead of looking at the work of other contemporary artists, I immersed myself in historical research, digging around like an anthropologist to find a timeless array of jewelry-making techniques and designs. I also traveled a lot to places throughout Mexico, Thailand, and South America, where I documented what amulets were all about.