Process Shot of the Week: Feeling Bookish

I'm finally on spring break this week, and trying to strike a balance between productivity and relaxation. I spent the first few days focusing on bookmaking. There's something meditative and soothing about making books, something I don't get in the metals studio. March was crazy and full of anxious moments, so the break, and extended book making were both needed. I tried several new structures: a tea bag book, sewing over paper tabs, a flower fold book, circle envelopes, stick binding and two signatures sewn as one.

Break is going fast, but I'm hoping to get some more book time in.

Process Shots of the Week

 Getting back into the bookmaking.

And finished a few jewelry pieces. Really loving the colors on the pearl and sea urchin charm!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Process Shot of the Week

 Work space

 Pendant waiting for a chain

Two new Shelter Me brooches and a pendant waiting for pearls.

Process Shot of the Week

Night River layout.

Process Shot of the Week

Process Shot of the Week

Process Shot of the Week

Trunk Show Prep

I'm failing spectacularly at making something everyday, but I'm still trying. I do think about making everyday, and I know I should be making, which gives me hope that I'll keep striving for a lifestyle that will allow that. I'm just still in the beginning stages, piecing everything together. And from most everyone I've talked to, what I'm going through seems to be par for the course.
However, I'm participating in the trunk show at the SNAG conference in Phoenix this year, and I'm beginning to panic about having enough work! I'm trying to work up some new mica pieces as well as improve upon the older designs. I know late May seems very far away from early March, but when you only get one or two solid days in which to work in the studio on top of teaching and working, and coordinating an exhibition. . . well. . . I've just been feeling very overwhelmed lately. But, I'm pretty pleased with where these earrings are heading.

I've also been doing some enameling, which is good for my soul. These will be slate black cloisonne brooches for the trunk show.

Back to work! Thanks for reading!

Process Shot of the Week

Process Shot of the Week

I've been trying to brush up on my basic bench skills a bit, and also trying to use the materials I have at hand, including my large collection of cabachons. It's not much, but here's a couple rings I've made lately.

I also got asked to cover a class for a friend and teach loop in loop chains with fused fine silver jump rings. I'd never made that kind of chain before. I guess I was taught to solder jump rings, and focused more on linked chains as opposed to loop in loop . But I'm game for almost anything so I agreed. I decided to practice chain making in general and made up this little sampler, just so the students could see a variety of things they could do.

Happy weekend! Thanks for reading!

November Rosaries

I finally finished up all the rosaries I had on deck for the Day of All Souls. Over all, I'm pretty pleased with them, except maybe the carnelian one (the orange one) I may restring it with closer spacing so that it feels more like a rosary and less like a string of beads. This was a good exercise for me, since I feel like I had to push to come up with components. I also tried several stringing variations, and I think I came up with the one I like the best.

Boo. . . .

As a Halloween bonus, here's the horror show of enamels I've made in the past few weeks. Muddy china paints, sinking cloisonne wires, base coats coming up through the top layer, accidentally grabbing an opaque when I thought it was a transparent, dropping things in the kiln or on the screen or on the floor or in the sink. October was one of the crappiest months I've had in the studio EVER.

I was going to add that blue atrocity from this post to the pile, but now I can't find it. Maybe one of the cats ate it.

Process Shot of the Week

Well it was a bit of a crazy week getting stuff together for an exhibition, and sending out applications, and a misplaced package at the post office so I didn't get in a whole lot so studio time, but here's some stuff from the past couple weeks.

The prints may look familiar: I made them in my Stencil Madness: Monoprint Gone Crazy class at Arrowmont this summer. At our final mini crit, another student in the class said how she would love to see these translated into jewelry, which I thought was interesting, so I tucked that in the back of my head. Then, a few weeks ago, I saw a fantastic piece by Kathryn Osgood (always a favorite of mine) at the Greenville Museum of Art. It was a pretty sizable piece, and it was framed. I'm not sure if it was wearable or not, but it got me thinking about making really beautiful enamels just for the sake a making really beautiful enamels, and not necessarily worrying about making them wearable. I know, I know, getting away from the idea of making these images into jewelry, but I thought maybe there's room for both.

So, I went back to the imagery from the prints I made this summer, and pressed some die forms and tried to make that translation. Well, the first one, the dark red color scheme, was so bad. It just came out looking like mud. So I decided to do some watercolor "sketches" first, to lay out compositions. I find these watercolors immensely satisfying, but I tried another enamel anyways. Still not so great. I've been using the under glazes and over glazes on these, but I think they would translate better with the acrylics, so I might try one more with those. Or maybe I'll just go buy some water color paper.

Happy weekend.

Process Shot of the Week

Mica brooches and necklaces to go with the earrings.

Process Shot of the Week

I'm super excited about all the paint enamel techniques I learned this summer with Jessica Caulderwood. I had purchased myself a set of acrylic painting enamels from Thompson. We didn't cover acrylics in Jessica's class, focusing instead on underglazes and overglazes, and I didn't get a chance to try these out until just last week.

I had a specific idea in mind when I bought these. I'd played around with them before a little and discovered they are similar to gouache. As an undergrad I learned traditional jewelry rendering with gouache, which I enjoy and would like to become more proficient at. So I decided I wanted to to some traditional rendering in enamel. I know the whole "jewelry as jewelry" has been done, and I don't really intend for these to make any kind of statement. I see them as just a way for me to pick up a new technique, and experiment with something other than rocks. (No worries though, I've got more rock works in the works!)

The paint is a little hard to control and rendering is something I feel like I have to do a dozen times before I get it right. The firing on these is a little tricky also; they burn out really easily. Plus, even though I got the soft flux, I still had problems with the white base coat coming up through. I deliberately overfired the example on the far right, to see if I could get a more "sketchy" quality.

I'm not super happy with these, but it's a start.

Process Shot of the Week

Homesick II: Maritime Forest

Progress Report

I'm having one of those rare moments today where I actually feel ok about where I'm at in terms of the work. After I finished my first two pieces the other week, I immediately stuck them in a box and didn't look at them again until yesterday when I had a conversation with Bob about them. I always enjoy talking with Bob, and he definitely said some things that I needed to hear. He confirmed my own feelings that there's something not quite right with Sacra Sancta, and we talked about some possible solutions. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, and I'm going to talk to Ken about it later this week, but it won't be anything too drastic.

I'm stripped all the salt off my pieces for Salt in the Soul, and also realized that I need to drill some holes in my forms if I have any hope of stringing them. So I'm not so upset about the back tracking. Since I kind of have to conform to the salt's time line, I'm not real worried about finishing this piece right away, but it should be done by the end of the semester.

I've made a lot of progress on the wall brooches, up to 93 now, and I've made a little progress on Flow Like Water, which is going to be my main focus next. I finished the Upanishads, started the first book of Rumi's Masnavi, and a different translation of the Baghavad Gita. But, I think my reading is going to shift towards the resources for my geology paper until I get that done. Back to a more art and science flavor and less theology/philosophy/spirituality.

I also decided that Gray Prayer and Lightness of Being are going to go in the show. At first I wasn't going to use any old work, because I wanted to prove some kind of point. I'm not exactly sure what point, but I'm pretty sure it's something I thought I had to prove to myself. But I woke up Sunday morning and decided that these two pieces should be in the show, and it feels right.

Anyways, that's where I'm at on this gray Wednesday. Thanks for reading.

Progress Report

So I think my "Process Shots of the Week" are morphing into "Progress Reports of the Week." Or maybe every other week, depending on how much I have to report.

So, I'm getting close to finishing my first thesis piece, Sacra Sancta. Like I mentioned before, one of the original rocks I made for this piece was too small, and I had to make another. The smaller rock has found a home in a different piece. The second rock came out of the bath this morning, and oh my god, it's surface is PERFECT. I'm a little sad that it's going to get covered up with enamel.

I've got another little detail of the piece to nail down, and then I'll be ready to string it up. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do this yet, since even my longest needle is too short and I'm almost positive I'm going to have to splice threads together. This is one of those pieces that's going to be trickier to pull off than the final product will look.

I made ten more wall brooches last night, and added the "Brooch Counter" off to the right this morning. This is just a rough estimate, I need to go through and nail down my exact numbers.

Have I mentioned that my thesis title is Lithic Fragments?

Process Shots of the Week

Electroforming guide wire annealed, cleaned and put through the rolling mill.


Rocks, in various state of undress, for Sacra Sancta.

Process Shot of the Week

So this week rigged up some new anodes in the bath and got back to electroforming. Over two days I reduced this:

Down to this:
Happy weekend!