Transformations: Jewelry Design Evolution

Apologies to any of you who've come to my blog only to find that I haven't posted in almost a year.  So, I'll just start with the recent past:   In late June 2012, I attended the final ever PMC conference near Cincinnati.  I say the final conference, because the PMC guild is folding, much to the dismay of all of us who've relied on its information and biennial conferences that provided useful information and the opportunity for bonding with other PMC enthusiasts.  Fortunately, Rio Grande is taking over the guild's Website and fund of information.  Already, there are agitators pushing for a new organization.  Kudos to you!

In my own world of working with PMC and sheet metal, I sometimes finish what looked like a good design in the formative stages and see at the end of the process that I've birthed an ugly baby.  I've learned that there is challenge and opportunity in my ugly baby:  the challenge of figuring out the mechanics of making changes and the opportunity to make a better piece.  Sometimes a piece sits around for quite a while before the lights go on and I realize what my piece needs in order to be finished.

The first piece below I made in a Celie Fago workshop on combining polymer clay with PMC.   The resulting piece met all the qualifications but to my eye didn't look quite right.  Celie gave us templates and direction for working on the pieces, so they all turned out similarly.  Mine, however, didn't nearly approximate the beauty of Celie's original, and honestly, I didn't want to make a copy of Celie's work.  I needed to own the piece as mine - my design.  So I took out the polymer clay insert and was left with a hole that needed filling.


The piece went through five iterations but unfortunately, I didn't photograph the middle two.  My first attempt, which you can see below the original, was to attach a copper disk with a fine silver design screwed on top.  I didn't like it.  Something about the hangy down thingy of PMC and copper just wasn't doing it for me.  I got rid of that during another attempt to fill the void left by the polymer clay by loading it with tiny labradorite beads and then making a shadowbox (done by adding a lid with a center hole).  The only way to affix the beads was to use cyanoacrylate and the result looked blobby, like gooey caviar, so I burned out the adhesive (outdoors and using a mask to filter the fumes) and of course ruined the gemstones.

So, once again, I'm looking at a hole inside the lovely PMC "drum."  I think for days about how to fill it.  I decide, finally, to use pieces of a sea urchin shell that I'd saved for years.  I needed to figure out how to hang the pendant, since the original was hung from a sterling wire that went up through the polymer.  I decide on a simple bail and solder the bail I'd fashioned onto the PMC.   I patina some copper and cut out a donut, then solder it to the PMC back (not easy since the copper requires a higher temperature for soldering).  My little butane torch just can't do the job:  the top comes off, hanging by tiny solder thread.  So I affix it with cyanoacrylate adhesive.  Then I slip the sea urchin shell inside with some additional adhesive.  The last iteration has the organic look I was going for.  Here it is below the first two iterations.  I learned something through each stage of this pendant's transformation, so the time and effort was worth it.

Do you prefer one of the earlier iterations of the piece?  If so, why?  Or do you agree with me that the last transformation is the best? (The last photo is the back of the piece.)

Babies, Babies

I've been AWOL from the blogosphere since last fall.  Apologies to anyone who might have visited and come away disappointed (though that could happen even if there HAD been a blog entry). 

I've been making jewelry but less productively than usual.  And, disappointingly, the Chateau Dumas workshop did not fill up quite enough for me to give the week-long class this summer, along with veteran PMC teacher Janet Harriman.  We're hoping to make it happen next summer, maybe with a few twists to appeal to the French and British, as well as Americans.  We're going to add bronze clay for sure.  Stay tuned for Chateau adventures 2012.

My biggest news, and the event that has rendered everything else pale by comparison, is the birth of my first grandchild, my darling little Clara Jean Danser who is now more than two months old.  When I'm holding this newly minted human being with the silky skin and the sweet smell, the rest of my world falls away, and she completely fills the screen.  What can I say?  I've become another besotted, adoring grandmother who thinks her grandchild is the most beautiful and intelligent (yes, at about six weeks, Clara started smiling in response to our smiles) in the universe.

I'm working on a fingerprint pendant for Clara's mommy Shelley, my lovely daughter-in-law.  I'll design the PMC pendant and inscribe Clara's name with a new lettering kit I ordered from Cool Tools, and then I'll get a fingerprint on another piece of clay to add to the base pendant.  I'm still working out the design but I have the process down.  I'll post a photo when it's finished.

                                          Here is Clara at her two month birthday!
 

Curses, Foiled Again by HTML

Okay, so I thought I'd add Barbara Tyroler's beautiful photo to my Website home page.  Piece of cake, right?  Turns out to be a quagmire of code that I cannot bend to my will.  Even though I didn't make the change go live, it somehow got there on its own.  Now the home page banner is askew and not lined up with the rest of the page. What you see above is what I want, but Dreamweaver doesn't want it and has woven me a nightmare. Help!  After hours of trying, I cannot fix it, nor can I take it back to its original.  I need an HTML genie.  Really. 

An Eventful Summer

Where to start?  How about our trip to California in July, driving down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco, with various stops in between, to San Simeon.  I fell in love with the rugged coastline, the foggy beaches and the marine life.  The highlight was a whale watching trip out of Monterey on a research vessel with a marine biologist. The krill were abundant, and they drew the great blue whales and humpbacks.  Heading out into their feeding grounds, we could see their water spouts (blows) and were overwhelmed to see so many, everywhere we looked.  We could tell the difference between the blow of the great blue versus that of the humpback.  The great blue sends up a huge column of blow at least 30-40 feet; the humpback has a smaller blow that rains down in a heart shape. We saw the great blues surfacing but the most exciting part was seeing two humpbacks breach and having two curious humpbacks approach our boat, almost within touching distance.  I had my camera and all that came out of my mouth was "holy cow, holy cow."  It was a moment I'll never forget, a rare and touching gift to get that close to such a magnificent creature.  It changed me in ways I'm still coming to understand.  We joined Greenpeace while in CA.  How could I not if I value the majesty and intelligence of those whales?

To top off the California trip, I went to the International PMC conference at Purdue University and had the opportunity to meet my heroes in the jewelry world and learn tips and tricks from some of the best.  Robert Dancik's presentation on cold connections was inventive:  he used larger-than-life props made of cardboard and other objects so everyone in the room could see what he was talking about.  Way to go Robert!  I made new friends and felt connected to the world of PMC in a new way.  If you're a PMC artist who didn't make the conference, I'll be posting some of the tips I learned at the conference.

Then reality hit with my brother's out-of-the-blue diagnosis of a very aggressive form of cancer, so life turned inside out and we are rallying together as a family for his mega-surgery on September 29th. 

Also since my last post, I've discovered I'm going to be a grandma - and it's a girl.  I'm swooning over the first ultrasound photos, one with a clear profile.  She's adorable already!

In between all these family events, I have managed to eke out time in my studio and create some new work.  

Most exciting is that I have been juried into the Grovewood Gallery, on the grounds of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville.  They want to introduce my line of jewelry in April when there's more space becoming available in the gallery.  I've been wanting to branch out of the local area and this is a great start.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my connections with FRANK and the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts.  Sofia's in Carr Mill Mall also does well selling my jewelry, a different line I create for clothing boutiques. 

Alas, we couldn't get the France workshop this fall to fly.  We had several registrants but not quite enough to make it a go, so we're shooting for next June.  It turns out to have been a good thing for me personally with my brother's illness and wanting to be home to support and help out.  So watch out for details coming on next June's workshop in otherwordly Chateau Dumas.
I'll be bringing Janet Harriman as co-teacher - a talented artist and experience teacher.

 

Big Corporate Brother is Watching ME

From the annals of the far-fetched:  I have an etsy store (the online shopping free-for-all) and one of my postings is titled "Coco Chanel Revisited," because I made a quadruple strand necklace with some vintage chain and pearls.  It is not a copy of any Chanel product, but I thought it looked Chanel-ish, hence the title.  As it happens, etsy notified me that it had received notice from Chanel Inc. that my listing constituted copyright infringement, and so etsy removed the listing from my shop.  I had no idea I was such a huge threat to a multi-national corporation. That's life in the theater of the absurd.

Here's a photo of the offending necklace.  Bad necklace!

Asheville Gallery Hopping

My husband Vic and I spent a couple of nights at an Asheville B&B last week and two days of visiting galleries...Blue Spiral, Haen, Bender (the most luscious glass pieces ever), and the Grovewood Gallery near the Grove Park Inn.  It was an inspirational trip in every way.  I saw great jewelry designs, glass, sculpture, painting; it was my kind of playpen.  Though I'm generally not a huge fan of landscapes, I was taken with those of Lynn Boggess, whose work made landscape painting fresh and new for me.  

When I got home, I learned that my first encaustic collage sold at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, my co-op gallery.  Given that I, like a lot of artists, am  mortally insecure about my work, it was affirming and is goading me to launch into new work.  I just bought and watched video by Daniella Wolf on all aspects of encaustic art, so now I'm thoroughly primed.  But that doesn't mean I'm not also on fire about doing jewelry.  They will both have to coexist and one may inform and inspire the other, which is the best of all possible worlds. 

Tomorrow night is the opening of FRANK'S "BEE" show, so I'll be there to mingle and see how folks approach my work.  I entered a pendant with a fine silver bee sitting on honeycomb inside a hatbox shaped shadow box and it sold even before the show opening.  I also have an abstract encaustic collage in the show, which qualifies, because it's made of beeswax.

Busy All the Time and Having Way Too Much Fun

I got major inspiration from reading and re-reading Kate McKinnon's new book on sculptural metal clay.  The techniques she introduced inspired three new pieces, with many more residing in my head and waiting to materialize.

I've been working on bee-themed pieces, both encaustic mixed media and jewelry, for FRANK Gallery's "BEE Show" that opens in June.  Encaustic is eligible, because it is in large part beeswax.  The encaustic technique is one that dates back to ancient Greece where shipbuilders used beeswax to caulk joints and waterproof the hulls of their boats.  Pretty soon, the Greeks were painting the prows of their warships, sealed in wax I must presume, and scaring the beejezuz out of the Trojans. Jasper Johns was the only 20th century artist to use encaustic, but now it's enjoying a resurgence, and I can understand why.  I find it compelling and addictive, because I can layer just about anything in the wax. Multiple images, paints (oil only) and fabric, paper, etc. can be secured in multiple layers.

So, I move between my jewelry and painting/collage studios (both upstairs in my house) as I work on pieces.  It satisfies the ADD (or OCD) in me.  

Today was one of those interesting synchronicity (for lack of a more descriptive term) days.   I've had a necklace, made of sterling, large white freshwater pearls, and rutilated quartz briolettes, languishing in the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts for the past six months.  It's a gorgeous piece, and I couldn't understand why it hadn't sold.  Well, today, two women wanted the same piece.  Alas, the second woman came in after it was already bought by the first.  She had looked at it the day before and went home to think about it.  Any other time she would have had first dibs, but not today.  Interesting, huh?  Anyway, I promised to make a similar piece for her if I can find more of the large briolettes I used in the original.

It's a joy to be doing what I'm doing and to have the freedom to pursue my creative work, which isn't always lucrative but is always satisfying.