Here is my third entry for the Four a Month Flickr group. This butterfly is less naturalistic, with a floral pattern. The last butterfly piece is a pair or earrings. The photo for those will be posted tomorrow. Then I will begin posting photos of the 4 seasons pieces. It does feel strange today to post photos of summertime creatures with snow on the ground here. We have had a very mild winter and I am thankful for that. Happy Valentine’s day everyone!
Here is my second entry for the Flickr Four a Month group. The photo above shows my fine silver butterfly. This butterfly, which could be a moth if you like, was inspired by the way butterfly wings reflect the light when you look at them at just the right angle. I used a crushed silk textured wallpaper sample to create the wings. I love the way the wings stand out from the body on this one. It feels as if the creature is fanning his wings and is about to take off.
Near the end of the year in 2011 sterling silver metal clay was introduced. I have been working with fine silver metal clay for some time now and love it. I wondered how the sterling version would behave so I purchased some. I have made just one piece with sterling PMC. The photo above shows the new ring “Zen Gazing Disc Ring”. The design was somewhat inspired by a ring I made a long time ago entitled “Portable Zen Rock Garden”. The differences between the two rings are vast. This new ring has a larger focal element. Sterling is stronger when work hardened than fine silver so I was able to make this ring shank quite thin. The original ring has a pleasing weighty feel however and there are certainly pros and cons to both fine silver and sterling. The sterling clay behaved for me the way I hoped it would, a lot like fine silver clay does. The only challenge I encountered making this ring regards shrinkage of the piece during firing. The stated shrinkage is higher than that of PMC3 and others have reported that rings lost about 3 sizes. I made this ring 3 sizes too large for my middle finger. After firing it does not fit on my middle or ring finger and it measures almost 4 sizes smaller than the dry piece had prior to firing. I will have to take this into account when I design future rings.
On another subject, I have joined a group on Flickr this year entitled Four a Month and it is moderated by the fantastic and creative Lora Hart. I am posting my first four pieces starting today and continuing over the next few days. The idea behind the group is that the four pieces we make and post each month will all have a theme or unifying element about them. Lora has allowed for a great deal of freedom regarding what can qualify as a foursome. For my first set I chose butterflies. Below you will find a monarch inspired butterfly in fine silver with a necklace bail in the body of the butterfly. I have made a couple of other butterflies like it in the last year and they have been extremely warmly received. I do adore everything butterflies stand for, metamorphosis, grace, beauty, flight, rising above ones limitations to name a few. One woman told me she believes butterflies are the embodiment of the spirits of our lost loved ones. All four of the butterflies are made and finished at this point. I am working with some new photography equipment and software and two of the four will require me to spend more time with this new equipment so that I can produce nice photos. The next four pieces will be based on the four seasons theme and I have already made those as well. After those I will be presenting a series of four pieces based on box structures. I have made three of the four and the remaining piece, a ring with a stone set in it, remains as greenware tidbits on my bench.
Luthy Botanical Gardens is having an auction tomorrow. A variety of artists have entered works in this event including me. I delivered a dozen pieces today and spoke at some length with Ann Kizer who is organizing this event. The auction is tomorrow (Saturday January 28th) and begins at 1pm. There is an announced auction first and then later on there will be a silent auction. She placed two of my pieces in the announced portion of the auction. It looks to be a great auction with some stunning work in a wide variety of media. You local folks should check it out!
I have spent the last two weeks doing a combination of “spring cleaning” and working through a stack of commissions. I have needed to do the cleaning for a while. It has been a hectic summer. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel with the commissions. I have all of them out of the kiln and most are now done. All that remains is a stone or two to set. Then it is on to preparing for the holidays. Angie Stiles-Richardson and I spoke about me joining the CIAO folks at the first friday in November and I am jazzed. The cornerstone building is a lovely location and last month when I visited there they had a fellow playing acoustic guitar. It is like a wine and cheese party that happens to have art vendors!
I just completed two new rings. The one pictured above is entitled Double Blossom and is part hand sculpted and part cut out and domed. The ring is entirely fine silver with a wire shank and all of the floral component made from metal clay. The original design was to use the domed element to nestle a pearl. As I was assembling the ring it did not look the way I wanted sitting on top of the little pad the wire shank was embedded in, the flower was too small on top of the pad. Perhaps I mean that the pad had too much visual weight. I also felt that embedding wire for the pearl to mount on was going to make the cupped flower sit high in an unattractive way and perhaps add further visual weight to the pad underneath. So, on the fly I sculpted the little pointed petals and eliminated the pearl from the design, giving the flower a simple and much smaller ball center. I love this ring a lot and would not be considering selling it except the shank is about a whole size too large for my index finger.
The ring below was begun in march. The shank was fired flat and shaped and then I got busy with other things and set it aside. I had at that time no firm design for the top of the ring and a long list of things I did know exactly how I wanted to make. So, in preparing for this Park Forest Art Fair I determined that making some rings would be warranted. I looked at my small pile of started projects and saw this shank. It had started to take on some patina from sitting in my studio unprotected and unloved while I made batch after batch of liver of sulfur solution. The shank looked lovely to be truthful! So as I prepared for this upcoming fair I let the idea of this shank and its unknown top element roll around in my head for a few days. I had just ordered some small nephrite jade stones and felt one would not be out of place in a chinese inspired work and that really got the the ideas flowing. I found a photo of some chinese dogwood blossoms and felt strongly attracted to them. As many of you know, I make a number of pieces with american dogwood blossoms as focal elements, in part because they were my Mother’s favorite flower. This blossom is very abstracted as it is all of one piece and has chinese calligraphy over its surface. The piece turned out well in my opinion. I got to use a little tip I saw Lora Hart mention recently when setting the stone. After I had used my bezel pusher I felt the very top edge of the bezel still had a tiny gap around the stone. She had mentioned using a chop stick to push very hard on the wire. This technique decreases the chance of harming a stone while finishing up the setting. It worked like a charm. Thank you Lora!
I recently ran out of silver metal clay. It seemed like a catastrophe when my order was delayed. I did some deep breathing exercises and sat down to think about what I could work on with my jewelry making time. I remembered that back in the spring I had taken a class with Hadar Jacobson and I had been so excited to work with base metals to do some wood grain pieces. I had to put that to the side due to the fact that summer is my busy time for art fairs and so far I have sold overwhelmingly silver jewelry. An opportunity presents itself and you can seize it or let it pass by. I was thinking I could pout about my delayed order and my half finished pieces of silver or I could make something else while I waited for the silver to arrive. I love the results! There are of course some photography challenges but I expected that. I knew that there was zero chance I could photograph them on my mother’s seaman’s chest because of the fact that wood grain in shades of brown will just never show up against dark brown wood. I am still very much an amateur photographer. So here they are and please don’t criticize my lack of uniformity.
I am also going to include a shot that is an inlay project I had done ages ago but never put them onto ear wires. I quite adore them. I am teetering on the verge of not selling them. We will see if I do or if I don’t by tomorrow morning!
I will be at the Bishop Hill Clay and Fiber Fest from 10 to 5 both days this weekend so come on out. There is an ice cream social with pies in the afternoon on Saturday and a soup dinner. The soup dinner is served in bowls you pick out that were made by the potters exhibiting at this fair. There is so much more going on at this fair. There will be loads of demonstrating. I will be doing viking knit, weavers, potters, broom makers, all creating and answering questions. It is definitely a unique fair.
Here are two pieces out of many that I have finished recently. I am busy as a bee getting ready for the Washington Fine Arts Fair this weekend. Above is a smaller diameter viking knit bracelet I have been developing. I make quite a number of these in copper due to the very low cost of the copper wire and then when I am certain how many feet of what gauge wire I want to use I make them in silver. This bracelet has metal clay based caps and toggle clasp. The hand lampworked glass bead is by Ellen Dooley and includes fine silver dots strung on the surface. Below is a butterfly pendant I made a couple of weeks ago or so and had not had time to photograph until now. It came out with a lovely patina very reminiscent of a monarch butterfly and I am so pleased. A few people have seen it and the response has been very positive. Butterflies really capture people’s imagination. I hope to get time to work on more butterfly related projects. Still on my bench today are a floral and leaf pendant and an Egyptian hieroglyphics pendant entitled Cracked Tablet. There is a decent chance that both of those could be with me at Washington. I hope to see many of you there!
I took some nicer pictures of the Open Box with Flower Necklace today. The previous shot that I posted was done in a rush and I was not completely satisfied with the quality of the photo. Today I took this necklace down to the Peoria Art Guild to submit it for the member’s show they will be having starting next week. The show has an opening reception on the 8th and runs through sometime in August.
I have been doing quite a bit with viking knit over the past few days and I am almost ready to order a whole lot of sterling wire to make a new style of viking knit bracelet and possibly a larger piece.
This weekend I will be at Luthy Botanical Garden from 10am to 5pm Saturday and from 12pm to 5pm on Sunday. Please come out and see all the lovely art on display there. The earrings above have the most beautiful patina.
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