Metal Etching

Last Sunday Cris and I taught a metal etching class to the guild here in Cleveland.  It went really well.  It was a warm-up...at least for me....for our B&B class.  We had a room full...which is good because our first class at B&B is almost sold out. 

 

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Butin de Guerre from Bead Paradise

That's actually "spoils of war"...which might apply if you have to wrestle beads out of the hands of the woman next to you :))  Don't put it past me!! 
Last Saturday Cris and I went to see Ruth at Bead Paradise....absolutely the most fabulous bead store I have ever visited.  I keep asking Ruth if I can have a slumber party there.  If you ever get anywhere even close to Ohio you need to go to this store.  And if you can't make it you can always shop on-line. 

So here's the butin de guerre....

A bevy of Buddha's in bezels just ready to hang

A really cool old brass necklace with pods.  This is very dangerous looking.  Don't hug anyone when you are wearing this.  Someone's gonna get hurt.

Vintage Czech glass

Ethiopian brass pendants and beads

Monkeys....I couldn't help myself

Loving the design on the lid of this box.   

Ebony inlaid with silver from Mali

Ethiopian prayer boxes

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My weekend with Cris

Cris was here last weekend.  We had a great time.  We went to the art museum, we shopped at Bead Paradise, and we taught a metal etching class to the local metal clay guild on Sunday.  We stayed up all hours of the night and I am still exhausted.  We talk and talk and act like 12 year olds when we are together. 

On Friday we went to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  We went through the Rembrandt in America exhibit.  It was amazing just to see his work...let alone see them close up.  Rembrandt was a master at capturing light and detail.  The jewelry on his subjects glows and the lace on the clothing is so delicate it hard not to reach out and touch it....and I was approached to keep my hands back from the painting.  Not that I wold ever touch one...that would be sacrilege.  But there were sensors that would go off should you get too close. And I have been know to set those off.

This is Portrait of a Woman from the CMA website.  This piece is owned by the art museum.  They showed how they examined this piece with various methods and wavelenghts of light to see what was under the surface and where it had been repaired. 

We went through the African collection.  The picture below is a bow harp from the Northern Congo. 

This is a close-up of a repair area of the harp.  They used some type of cord or leather to patch the damaged area.  Sound familiar??  I use it in my jewelry.  I didn't invent it.  This and many other repair techniques have been around since the beginning to time.  BTW...I did invent pants (inside joke).

Another piece from the collection.  A Female Face Mask from the Ivory Coast.



Modigliani (one of my favorite artists) was influenced by African masks.  You can see this in Portrait of a Woman below.

  

We walked around the Egyptian and Near East collections and wanted to mold just about everything.  I had this idea of creating a distraction with the docents while Cris slapped molding material all over the room.  I don't think they would mind...much.

One really cool piece is this huge Assyrian piece called Saluting Protective Spirit. It's  from the 9th century.  It is about 9" tall and weights 900 lbs.  So much texture on this piece.  Below are some close-ups.

There is more to come...after I get some sleep.  I have a 7AM meeting tomorrow.  UGH.
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Kitty Pattycake

Book Review: Torch Fired Enamel Jewelry

Torch-Fired Enamel Jewelry: A Workshop in Painting with Fire

I've only taken one class in torch fired enameling and it was nothing short of a disaster.  A sub-set of students were some of the most misbehaved group of adults (and I use that term loosely) that I have ever experienced.  They hogged the materials, the torches, and the teachers time.  By the end of the class the table with the enamels looked like a bomb went off.  The powder was everywhere and the colors were all contaminated. 

I enjoyed what little I did manage to do in class.  I liked the technique.  I loved the colors and it's something I've always wanted to get back to.  So I picked up this book by Barbara Lewis.  She teaches you to enameling in a different way.  You place your bead or piece on a stainless steel mandrel, heat it until it glows, and then dip the piece into the enamel.  You repeat this process a couple times until you get the effect that you want. 

Barbara shows you how to set up a workstation and goes over basic tools and then jumps right into projects. The projects include necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings and they all have that very funky, layered, organic look that I like. A number of them include ribbon, fiber, and wire wrapping.  One project I found particularly interesting involves copper pipe...both etching and enameling it. 

Amazon lets you take a peek inside the book if you are curious.

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Shadows in Santa Fe

The first picture is outside the Bill Worrell gallery.  We've always loved his work and bought a piece when we were there two year ago.  I couldn't help noticing the shadow it was casting.  The sunlight was just right.

The next picture is from Santa Cafe.  We had a wonderful meal there and the piece over the mantel and it's shadow was amazing.

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Back from Santa Fe....

I had a great time in Santa Fe.  I came back a little run down...well maybe a lot run down.  I had a cold but that didn't stop me from going...but I felt the effects when I got home.  I went to work for three days then stayed home on Friday and slept.  And I slept alot today too.  I'm finally getting rid of the cold I've had for 2 weeks. 

Besides having fun with the girls and eating fabulous food.....I bought lots of beads to go with the bronze.

 Lapis

  Etched Agate

Carnelian

 Onyx

  Turquoise

 Bauxite and shell

  Clay beads from Mali

And no bead shopping trip is complete without something from Gary Wilson.  I think Cris was the first one to say...."I wish I could quit you Gary Wilson".  Except for the trilobite...these are all beads or pendants.

 Trilobite

 Petrified Palmwood

 Fossilized Turtle Shell...I love the texture on this.  I'm going to roll out a sheet of polymer clay and impress this into it for a texture sheet. 

 Petrified starfish and fossilized tree fern

 Pima Canyon conglomerate, petrified wood, and more tree fern

Fossilized sea urchin and more tree fern



 A few artifacts... a small brass bead from Ghanna and a double chameleon from Burkina Faso

And a few of my most favorite things.......

Viking beads from Karen Elmquist.  She hide these in my coat pocket and I didn't find them until I got the airport.  What a great surprise!!  These beads go great with the bronze.

Twisted bronze bracelets from Cris Leonard.  I'm into bracelets right now.  I love stacking multiple bracelets.  These are so cool!!  She slipped these on my wirst and I didn't even notice :))  LOL.

And a new messenger bag from Susan Dilger and Taos Edge.  This is so cool.  The dragonflly has a skull head and the latin reads..."The unknow is maginificent".  I was able to put everything in this bag for the flight home. 



Here in Santa Fe

I'm here in Santa Fe having fun with Cris and Karen!!! Talk to you when I get back....if I come back :)

Tuesdsay Ramblings

I feel like I've been in a fog...since...well...for a long time.  I can't seem to get organized and moving.  I get one task done and 5 others crop up.  I get one room cleaned up and the others all go to hell.  HA...and it's not going to get better any time soon.

Next Tuesday I'm heading to Santa Fe for Beadfest.  My favorite town...having fun with my girlfriends...fantastic New Mexican food.  I won't get anything done or get more organized but I will recharge my batteries and laugh non-stop.  I thought about exhibiting but didn't really have enough pieces put together and I guess I didn't want to put myself through the stress of doing an out-of-state show that I can't drive to.

I am going to take two classes and I don't have to bring a single tool.  YAY!!  One is a photography class.  I don't think I can ever take too many photography classes.  Every little tip helps.  The other class is Art Glass Clay with Paula Radke.  I want to use it to make flat disc beads to go with the bronze.

I picked up a book this week.  Folk Designs from India.  The only unfortunate thing is that I had to find it from a used book vendor.  I found someone in Canada that had it.  It's full of line drawings of various folk designs.  Great as a jumping off point to make new texture plates.



I also found a new iPad app that I like....Zinio.  It's an on-line newstand.  You can buy on-line subscriptions or just single issues of various magazines.  They also have free articles from select magazines.  This is another great app to have when you are traveling and don't want to weight yourself down with magazines.  I'm getting the digital version of Art Jewelry this way.  I've also been able to find Marie Claire Idees which is a French craft magazine.  I picked up one a couple years ago when we were in Paris.  Finding it in the US wasn't easy.  Borders used to carry it but the issue would be at least 2 months old.  Now I can get it hot off the press...virtual press. I can't understand a word of it but the pictures are wonderful.  I need to get a really good french-english dictionary and work my way through it.  Maybe I could learn more French that way. 

Goodies from the kiln

Just a few fired pieces...

I like this one.  The texture is so deep that the color remained on the inset areas even after polishing.   I am going to mold the fired piece so I can make smaller versions. 

This is a Tibetan Calendar Pendant.  A calendar on one side and smooth on the other.  I've read that the smooth side is rubbed in a circular motion on a baby's belly when they are fussy to sooth them.

 I haven't polished this one up yet.  The colors are amazing.  It goes from green to purple to red to orange. 

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I've ranted enough about politics...for now.  It's a topic that can turn people against one another so quickly. Time to focus on something that brings people together....art.  

I've spent the last few days cleaning the studio.  Most of it is clean except for the desk...which is where I've piled everything.  Now I have to attack the pile.  I promised a co-worker a pair of little hoop earrings so I stopped the cleaning to work in bronze.  I have a few other interesting pieces going into the kiln besides the hoops. 

I've been playing around with carved wooden stamps from India.  I made a silicone mold of the stamp below so I could make bronze hearts.  When this bronze heart comes out of the kiln I think I will make a mold of that so I can have a smaller version. 

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Tuesday Ramblings....again

Maybe I'll make this a regular feature...Tuesday Ramblings.   A little of this...a little of that. 

Last week I was on a roll....being angry at our politicians and news people.  The first thing that set me off was a House Oversight committee on religious freedom and contraceptives.  The panel that was assembled was all men.  My reaction...quite bluntly was....WTF???  Where are the women??  If we are going to have a discussion of contraceptives....there must be women.  I'm getting the impression that some of our politicians want to take women back more than a few decades.  They behave as if it's their duty to speak for us rather than engaged us in the conversation. I'm old enough to know the frustration that comes with not being listened to or believed because I'm a woman.  I've never reacted well to this type of treatment.  I'm an "in your face" kind of girl and it's gets worse when I see things like this happening. 

The other thing that set me off was Fox News commentator Liz Trotta.  I don't watch Fox...I like objectivity in my news reporting.  What left me speechless was the phrase "raped too much".  It still has me speechless.  My mind just can't grasp the ignorance of this statement.  But you have to see/hear it yourself to believe it. 

 

There was another journalist I was angry with....Richard Florida.  Back in November I read his on-line article about how people in the Midwest are stuck.  His theory was that the only reason people live in the Midwest is that they don't have the resources to move to either the east or west coast.  So I commented on the article.  Something to the effect that we have good jobs, a good standard of living and are close to family and friends...in other words....we live here because we we choose to live here.  I found out later that my comment was referenced by Julie Irwin Zimmerman, a journalist from Cincinnati, who also disagreed with Florida and wrote an article about it.  Zimmerman's story was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sunday.  I had no idea it would show up in the local paper. It's a little disconcerting to see a comment made on-line end up in the local newspaper.   It's a good reminder that anythng you put on-line is out there for the world to see.

I'll get back to jewelry in the next few days.  I still need to finish cleaning the studio.  I have a few seedling ideas that I want to grow and some texture plates I want to make.  OHH....and I have some jewelry that is winging it's way to Scotland.  More about that later.

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