New!

New books in the paper shop!

Roll with It. . . .

 

So, I was supposed to teach a bookmaking workshop this weekend at the Craven County Arts Festival, in New Bern, NC. I was scheduled to teach two three hour workshops for up to eight students each and I've spent the past two weeks furiously preparing and trying to get the arts council to answer a few of my questions. Then just Thursday, I got an email saying that my workshops were both canceled due to only ONE person signing up. 

Needless to say, I was a bit bummed. I was really looking forward to this experience. I also wish that the arts council would have given me more than a two day notice. I needn't have stressed out so much and I could have used my time to do other things that needed to be done. Like all my grading. I literally spent HOURS tearing and cutting paper. Not to mention the money I put out for supplies.

 

But, on the up side, I now have materials to work with, and materials prepped that I can hopefully use to teach another workshop somewhere else. It was still a learning experience, and a good lesson on rolling with whatever comes your way. It also kinda forced me to go through my paper stash and clean out some stuff that I'll most likely never use. I put together a few mix bags of papers, that I intended offering to my workshop students, but now they're listed in the "Destash" section of my shop.

In the end, I opted not to go to the arts festival at all. Mainly because I drive an hour to New Bern four days a week already to teach and gas is nearly $4 a gallon. Instead, I stayed home all day, and split my time between working in my metals studio and making books. (I built up such a book momentum getting ready for this workshop, I'm having a hard time switching gears. I decided to just run with it. ) All in all, it was a pleasant and restoring day. I get so much out of my weekends, I'm always disappointed to see Monday come around again. This week is sure to be busy too, with the grading I put off last week, subbing for friend's design class and a repair commission. I'm going to make a concentrated effort to get back to blogging on a more regular basis though.

Happy weekend!

Etsy Adds

Some recent additions to the jewelry shop! Check them out here!

Considering. . .

Pacific
Pacifist
Pax= Peace

 Atlantic
"Of Atlas"

 Interstitial=
Spaces and gaps between substantial matter

New Work

 Belembullet

 Charm

 Protector

 Tidal Range

Shoreline


Some new pieces I made this summer while at PV.

Photo Credits: Jeremy Hyland

Thinking About

Summer Re-Cap Pt 2.

I was very fortunate at Peters Valley to have nearly all my workshops run. Even after I left, there were still four workshops to go in my studio. Every week was a something different, a completely new adventure.With a few exceptions, all of my workshops were 5 days each, so there was very little time for a break in between. Here's what went down:

Introduction to Jewelry Making, Raychel Wengenroth
Cold Connections and Non-Traditional Materials, Sarah Doremus
Cloisonne: Vibrant Glass on Metal, Jennifer Jordan Park
The Reactive Metals Alternative, Bill Seely
Chasing and Repousse: Tools and Techniques, Miel Margarita Peredes
Intermediate Jewelry and Silversmithing, Raychel Wengenroth
Cold Connections for Stone Setting, Nanz Aalund
Beginning Jewelry, Jenn Parnell
Un Hinged: Create Hinges and Moving Parts, Chris Darway
Cloisonne Enameling, Harlan Butt
Soldering and Fabrication, Leslie Hartwell
Ordinary Materials- Extraordinary Jewelry, Marlene True
Casting Runs Rampant, Preston Jones
Amulets and Talismans, Robert Dancik

It doesn't look like much, all typed out, but it sure felt like a jammed packed summer. And this was just the fine metals studio!

Happy Tuesday!

Summer Re-Cap Pt 1.

 

So here we are, at the end of summer. I've been back in NC for two weeks, teaching classes at Craven Community College and trying to get caught up on all the little things that fell by the way side while I was at Peters Valley this summer. It was such an incredible experience, and I'm still sad that I had to leave almost a month before the end of season to start at CCC. I'm also bummed that I wasn't able to blog about this summer as it was happening. We barely had wi fi on campus and only in a certain area. And if you downloaded or uploaded too much stuff, it would freeze for 24 hours. To get any real work done on the computer, you had to go to the public library, almost 20 min away. So that explains my near total absence from the blogosphere.

 Back to the beginning then, I arrived at PV in early May to be their Artist Fellow in Fine Metals. My job was running the metals studio, making sure we had all the tools and materials for each workshop, and that my instructor was happy and that the students were happy with the studio and the instructor and that they had enough time to work in the studio in the evenings. I lived on campus in a nice but sparse little apartment and ate nearly all my meals in the dining hall. PV is in the Deleware Water Gap, right across the PA border in New Jersey. The nearest "town" was about 20-30 minutes away. So I spent the summer living in a National Park. Not big on creature comforts, but big on creatures. In fact, I hit a deer with my car about 20 min. before I got there.

 This was my first critter sighting after the deer I hit. Well, and after the small snake that was living by my porch.

 I spent the first couple weeks getting the studio cleaned and organized, de-spiderizing and clearing out the mouse poo. Did I mention that this place is in the middle of the woods? I threw out a bunch of junk, put all the anvils and vises in one room, along with a cabinet full of forming equipment, and asked the blacksmiths to fix the jump shearer, WHICH THEY DID! I set up a little space for myself in the back room, and spent a lot of time there, while classes were running.

 

All in all, I made a lot of things, learned a bunch of stuff and met a ton of really great people. 

And saw a million bugs. 

Next Post: Instructors and the workshops they taught!