Pushing the Envelope

Le Jongleur by Mirinda Kossoff

For moi, the fall season (and Christmas will be here before we know it) is promising to be busy - both with jewelry and mixed media work.  I've been experimenting with combining the two; both are abiding passions without which I wouldn't be me.  I'm finding this new exploration to be both fun and fulfilling, regardless of the end product.  I try not to focus too much on outcome, because it's the process that's most important.  If the process is right and my heart is in it, the end product will be satisfying.  And I hope others will find it so as well.

Here's a new mixed media piece that resulted from just playing around with various gel mediums and acrylic paints.  As I worked, using some sgraffito, the colors and layers suggested shapes and forms, which then suggested the title:  Le Jongleur, which is French for "The Juggler."  Working intuitively allows stuff to bubble up from my unconscious, and I find there's playfulness in that place - as well as the darker stuff.  I suspect that the juggler image came up because I juggle jewelry along with my mixed media work, along with being an adoring grandmother, wife, reader, writer and traveler.  I love all the special people and activities in my life.  Working everything in sometimes is a challenge.  I need a 48-hour day.  The ones I have go by all too quickly.  When I'm absorbed in making a jewelry piece or other art, I have no concept of time, and when I come out of my state of flow, I find that time has fled.  That's a good space to be in.

I'm playing around with patinas on copper and finding other new materials for jewelry, since the price of silver is going back up again.  In the earrings shown here, I patinated copper donuts that I had cut out and then sandwiched a graphic ad from an old Ladies Home Journal between the two copper donuts.  I riveted the pieces together with brass rivets.  The vintage paper is preserved with resin.  I'm hoping to do more of this with my jewelry.  The prospect is intriguing, like visiting a new country.

Will a juggler reappear in my next mixed media piece, or abstracted in a piece of jewelry?  Maybe.