Creative challenges are a great way to nurture our creativity and take our artwork to another level. The Russian artist Alexandra Vaigi is the organizer of one such challenge, ClayVember, that we would like to introduce to you today.
Alexandra was inspired by several international polymer clay events that she attended in the past, such as Polymer Week or Fimo Forum, and – above all – the famous Inktober challenge. She really liked the format, the idea, the simplicity and complexity of the rules at the same time. Alexandra especially appreciated the fact that artists of various styles and trends could take part in this creative marathon.
She decided to arrange such a challenge for polymer clay artists and enthusiasts, an event that would be accessible for everyone, no matter their location or financial possibilities. So three years ago she started ClayVember (a combination of ‘clay’ and ‘November’). The rules are simple – choose a theme, create a piece of art on this theme every day in November, post a picture of each creation on your Instagram daily, and post a photo of the whole collection on the last day of the month.
Alexandra says that she is immediately grateful to all everyone who took part and finished the challenge in the past three years. In her words, they all contributed to the special atmosphere that is almost physically felt during all ClayVember challenges. And the creativity of the participants is not the only great thing about this virtual event.
It has become a tradition that the event is sponsored – anyone can become a sponsor, support their favourite runner and reward them with a prize. Alexandra says that last year they had 19 sponsors. Another positive feature of ClayVember is that it’s not competitive – there’s no winner, or, better yet, anyone who completes the challenge is a winner. This means that there were amazing 113 winners from all over the world last year.
The event keeps growing, so its organization is more and more time-consuming. That’s why Alexandra put together a small team that takes care of many different tasks. Alexandra says that it would be impossible to run the challenge without them. She really hopes that the ClayVember marathon will grow and develop. And how about you? Are you going to take part this year?
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