My Bronze Garden

A little while ago I talked about how the garden and all the green and growing things has rather captured my soul since we moved here to North Carolina. I've had little bits and bobs of drawings and doodles of those garden things that take my fancy. Things like new leaves on plants, tomato blossoms, and coreopsis seed heads. Just this last week some of those ideas have taken root and come out in the studio work. I'm rather pleased :-). I like it a lot when things come together in my little world.

Head pins and bead caps in bronze. Small things. Until very recently I wouldn't have thought to venture down this path. But it seemed right and a perfect way to express the tiny little wonders growing out there.

Some things won't make the cut. Others will stay. The head pins all have fired in bronze wire. I'm used to working with brass. Brass is  kind of a stiff and sometimes challenging metal to work with in wire wrapping. Bronze wire is all together different. Much softer and a much softer colour. I made really long wires because I really hate when you are working with a head pin and you have to work so hard to get that last bit of wrapping done. Oh and I love the size of the ball ends. I can't draw a bead with a torch that size and they stay bronze colour rather than coppery red.

Totally unrelated and very important is the happy dance we are doing about our old boy Bob. We just got news this evening that his congestive heart failure has been resolved. No evidence at all on his Xrays that he's got heart problems. This is the vey best news!

That look on his face is ecstacy. Peter is giving him a bit of a neck and shoulder massage. He's still got terrible arthritis down his spine but manages pretty well. Now please someone, nearly anyone, come give me a massage.

Iteration and Intersection

Recently, Deryn at Something Sublime, wrote a post, What Not to Do, something she had told herself she would never do. It's about copyright and making things your own and it is a wonderful post. It's a prickly topic which I think Deryn has done a lovely job of addressing. It's a very supportive and positive post and definitely worth reading and giving some thought.

As it turns out, I was in the middle of making drawings for a new design. I was definitely inspired by a zen tangle tile I had seen done by another artist. I thought it might be interesting to take you through my design process, at least the on paper part, and then show you where the inspiration came from.

Rarely, maybe never, does a design spring from my pen to paper to a model in one step. It's an interative process for me. I draw out what I see in my mind. Make little adjustments. Start over. Redraw, refine. Each time I put pen to paper it seems that I see something new. A little tweak that might feel better to me.

This is the final drawing from which I made my mold that I used in ceramic and metal clay.

This is the tile that I loved, drawn by Christina Vandervlist shown here on her blog. See there that flower pattern in her tile? I love that. I'd thought about doing something as a texture plate and then as I was working on that concept when the idea to just do a flower seemed to work for me.

The intersection part of this whole thing is that when I contacted Christina to ask if I could post her tile, I found out that she is a bead weaver. I only knew her from the zen tangle community. She's been a bead weaver for 37 years, taught at Bead & Button and Bead Fest. Her work is published and her Traveling Spirits have been featured on the cover of Beadwork. I love and admire all things bead weaving and seed beads. How extraordinary is it that I would be inspired to make a jewelry component by a drawing made by a jewelry maker that I've never met?

In Deryn's post she references a published letter by Heather Wheaton, editor of Art Jewelry magazine. Apparently, there are all sorts of rules of thumb for how much of an alteration makes something your own, 10%, 20%, 30%.....  One of Deryn's DO's is to "Allow that transformation to take place and release the original artistic voice within."  Good advice!

As visual people we aborb images from everywhere. I think it's important to recognize and acknowledge that . For me, iteration is a process that allows me to absorb those images and let them come out as my own. In that process, I have time to reflect on what I am saying, what resonates with me. And I'll tell you with absolute certainty, that with the bitter cold we've been having, flowers and blossoms definitely resonate with me.

Thanks Christina for your lovely field of flowers and the inspiration.

Thinking Upside Down

 These are new little plates and dishes that I designed last week. I have this wonderful Dover Coloring Book of traditional Japanese designs. I like looking through it and pulling out different elements from the drawings and rearranging them for pieces made in clay. Sometimes I make stamps, sometimes I create texture plates. This one was a little different because I wanted raised flowers. Hence the thinking upside down.

 I made a texture plate that I use to get the design onto a slab of clay that is then formed into a plate or dish. So the whole thing gets carved into a slab of clay. But while I'm doing this I have to think upside down. The parts that are carved in become raised in the final design and everything on the left becomes right when I pull the slab of clay off the pattern. It's a little tedious and I never know just exactly how it will turn out.

My thoughts go something like this. Will those flowers be too high? Too low? Will the leaves look like they are behind the flowers in the background. How will I glaze this? Is this a waste of time? Why am I designing new plates right now when I have a mountain of work to do? What shall we have for dinner? It's really quite a meditative process to go through. Full of deep thought and revelation.

 I am particularly pleased with how the glaze came out on this. It was a pleasant surprise because I used some glazes that look down right ugly on my porcelain. These plates are made out of stoneware and the darker clay muted the colours into nice earthy blends. I'm already thinking about pulling some of the pieces of this design into a series of pendants and beads. I think I might just bend my self imposed porcelain rule and make them out of stoneware. A leap for me. I like my porcelain. I like my routine. This is a little like living on the edge. Only without the risk.

Alice insisted that I show you a photo of her thinking upside down. She spends quite a lot of time in this position. But just between you and me, Alice isn't really thinking. She's not a very bright dog and doesn't spend a lot of time thinking. She gets by in life completely on her looks and sweet disposition.

Not a speck of porcelain in sight

This may be the very first piece of  jewelry I have ever made that didn't have any porcelain components. Not even a speck of wire work or chain either. Stringing is just not something I have ever had much talent at. I don't have too many inspired ways of putting together beads.  But here it is, a strung piece.

Not too long ago I ordered several stands of turquoise form Julianna on her detash  estsy site, Diet Beads. When I got these coin shaped beads I fell in love with them and the design in a bronze focal with coordinating lentils just sort of popped into my head.  I must say I am actually rather pleased with this and it felt OK to just follow up on what was in my mind at the time in a spontaneous way.

BTW, Juls has been cleaning out the studio, which I believe may be much like my situation, encompassing the whole house. She's got a lot of lovely things over in her detash shop. You should go over and have a look. They won't last long because this is a cleaning project and once they are gone.... well they are gone.

Butterflies and Pinks

One of the things I promised myself when I had finished the shows, was dedicated time to work on some designs that have been floating around in the back of my mind. Well, today I woke up feeling the best I have all week, looked at the dining room chaos, and said to myself, " no sense in wasting this positive good feeling on organizing." I love Japanese kimono textiles and the rich patterns that many of them are decorated with. I have this book of Japanese textile designs and several of them have been nagging me for years to translate them into bas relief ceramic design.


So I sat down and 'plucked' elements out of 3 textile patterns and arranged them in a way that felt right to me. Many of my designs start like the sketch above. No, I'm not going to make black butterflies. What I do is 'black' in the major elements, scan to my computer, reverse colour, and then add detail later. I am sure there are more efficient ways to do this but I like using my markers and mechanical pencils. It feels like my ancient days of drafting when I studied landscape architecture. I'm not entirely sure which parts of this particular design will be made into jewelry components. That will come later, days, maybe even weeks from now. Eventually, the design will be made into a model, probably several, and cast to make pendants. It may even be abandoned. Today it was just so very nice to sit down and sketch. The dining room can wait till tomorrow. In fact it is my experience that chaos will always patiently wait for you to attend to it.

Have a happy weekend all!

New Textures, New Things

Busy day playing with the new texture plates I made yesterday. Here's a little peak at what's coming up. There are lots of them. I have a vague and blurry notion of what these might look like finished. It's after 9 pm. I'm tired. Where did the day go?


Night all!

Ammonites

After more than a week of being under the weather, I managed to spend an entire day in the studio without having to nap. That felt good especially since I was able to move forward with some ideas I’ve been thinking about for a series of sculptural forms.

Last weekend I went to a rock and gem show. And just by chance I came across a table of fossils, including ammonites. Umm, maybe Peter is the one to first have spied them. But for now I’m taking credit. I have always had a fascination with ammonites. I think it’s the spiral form of them that I’ve been so attracted to.

A few weeks ago, when I was wandering the internet, ostensibly doing research, I ran across this representation of ammonites in Wikipedia. I did not know that they are thought to be more closely related to octopi and squid. But it does fuel my imagination when I think of the vast prehistoric inland sea that lies beneath my current near desert home. The glaze palette I've used for some of the earlier tests and pieces I've done, is directly inspired by this painting. I love the idea of a hidden world under my feet. One that was once alive, breathing, flourishing.

It is interesting to me that the name ammonite comes from Pliny the Elder who called them ammonis cornua (horns of Ammon) because the Egyptian oracle god, Ammon, is often depicted with ram’s horns. Ammon was the lord of good counsel, and the spelling, by the way, is the Greek version.

The ammonite fossil is widespread both in time it occurred in the fossil record and distribution across the world. In medieval Europe ammonites were thought to be petrified snakes and were considered to be evidence of the actions of Saint Hilda and Saint Patrick. Some Hindu believe that the ammonite is a manifestation of Vishnu.

I could get quite lost in researching the place of the ammonite in history. I find it quite a fascinating but it is time to move on to using this form in my work. Maybe I’ll come back to it later, some rainy day when I’ve no inspiration.

Isn't this pretty?

I found this beautiful ruffled neckwarmer by Janice Rosema on Etsy this morning (read procrastinating with random searching). Janice bought buttons from me earlier and this neckwarmer is sporting one of my royal blue dotty buttons. I’m just as pleased as can be. And I don’t often get to see my little creations in action.

Janice is a designer, spinner, knitter, crocheter, and all around fabulous fibre artist. She’s been creating wearable accessories and garments in natural fibres for more than 35 years. Her work is absolutely superb and she uses some of the most innovative techniques I’ve seen. For those of you who knit you should check her Etsy shop for her designs which she sells as PDF patterns. For those you who shop, and who doesn’t do that, she’s got a range of lovely knit items listed. You can even keep track of what she’s up to on her blog. Really, truly, I love this woman’s work!

Don't forget to check back Tuesday to find who wins the mystery prize from my give-away.