This is part one of an interview I did last year with Emily Moon-
Q: How did you first become interested in and get involved in working with polymer clay?
I became interested in polymer clay in 1988, when a number of things serendipitously led me to take a workshop from Kathleen Dustin. At the time I had a large vegetable/herb garden and was experimenting with different colored inlays of herbs and vegetable purees into handcrafted pasta. One day I’d been tempted to buy FIMO after enjoying a display of miniature food at a local doll house store. I bought a piece of polymer clay jewelry at the Smithsonian Museum gift shop that had been made by Steven Ford and David Forlano (they called themselves CITY ZEN CANE-then). I had been taking courses at The Art League School at The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria VA for ten years and that fall Kathleen Dustin was offering a workshop on polymer clay bead making. At the time I had no interest in making beads I was fascinated by the material so I signed up (and ended up making about four hundred beads that first week!)
Q: Do you have an art background?
I have been an artist all of my life. Many of my earliest memories revolve around the creation of art projects- the challenges, the materials involved and the feelings of satisfaction as they were completed. I majored in art during college at Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh. Originally, I planned to become a metal smith. The actually construction process in metal was so labor intensive- my first necklace took over two hundred hours. For two semesters I designed (very colorful) jewelry on paper and then decided to switch to printmaking as it seemed more appropriate for exploring colorful repeated patterns.. For the next fifteen years (the pre-polymer days!) I continued to explore pattern and color with colored pencils, silk screening and water colors.
Q; How did the National Polymer Clay Guild get started?
