Alchemy

Sometimes when I work with metal clay I feel a little like an alchemist. I do love this process of taking a lump of moist clay, shaping it, then putting it into the magical black box and coming out with a solid metal.

I've been making a lot of drawings lately. I haven't turned all of them into molds yet. Some of them aren't really ready and some of them just aren't go to make the cut. But, there is just something so satisfying about taking a drawing and turning it into metal.

Those little bronze snowflakes are a new design. I had a snowflake pattern in the past but I was never satisfied with it. That particular pair of snowflakes is going some place special next week.

This stage before I fire the pieces is one of favorites in the process. Not in this picture, but in person you can see tiny bright specks of metal. It's so fragile that it's hard to believe that it will become solid and substantial.

Then there is that moment of truth stage after the pieces have been fired. I packed this last load a little differently and wasn't sure if the pieces would survive. Bronze can be a bit finicky when it comes to firing. But I think I've got it down for most pieces now. It's pretty ugly fresh out of it's charcoal bed. All kind of crusty and rough.

But the tumbler takes care of the ugly part. It's like another black box. I put those pieces in there and let them go for an hour, sometimes more. If something is going to break it's probably going to be in that stage of the process. It's always exciting to dump those pieces out and dig for the shiny treasure among the steel shot.

Then there is the next ugly stage. These bright shiny pieces get bathed in chemicals and made all sort of black and nasty looking. This is actually my least favorite part of the process. It's kind of smelly. It makes a mess on my work bench. If I don't wear gloves then my hand turn orange. And I don't like wearing the gloves. Don't know why. Just don't like it.

Alchemy! Transformation complete. Now if I could only figure out how to transform bronze into gold. Heck, I'd be happy with silver given today's market prices.

Have a great weekend, all!

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.

Swimming in a sea of boxes

The studio is up and running but not necessarily tidy. There is a plan in place but I keep getting distracted by the things I find in boxes. Like that fish. I haven't seen that fish in a long time. I made her eons ago in a time before the creation of dirt. And then packed it up in one of the seemingly endless moves we've made.





I've got oodles of space in this new studio. A full 16 feet of table top. Woo Hoo! And light, glorious light.

I wonder how long it will take to cover those tables in projects (err untidness)?  Actually, there is a fair bit of untidyness happening already. It feels like home that way. I think maybe I will just adhere to the motto that "a messy desk is the sign of an uncluttered mind." I love rationalisation.

This is my secret weapon for coralling the mess. I've got one big tall utility shelf. I've got tubs and containers that each contain the things I need to do a particular type of thing. Like etchant and stamps and stuff for etching all neatly organised in one container that can be pulled out, used, packed up and put away when done. I started this plan in my old studio. It didn't work there either. But ever the optimist, I just know that I can make it work here.

Then there is this. This is the office end of the studio. Rather sad looking, isn't it? It's the boring stuff to unpack and organise. It has the left over furniture, the table that I wish was something else. The packing boxes, paper, bubble mailers, printer.

And this. A totally unrelated to studio work enterprise. They are little news print seed starter pots filled with my very own special blend of seed starter soil. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and brussels sprouts. Yes, brussel sprouts. I know it's a very unpopular vegetable. I know that Peter doesn't like brussel sprouts. But he will once he's tasted it home grown in autumn, picked after the first light frost, cooked and smothered in butter.

So how do you do it? How do you create order out of chaos? Or do you just close the door and hope the fairies will come in and sprinkle a bit of magic organising dust during the night?

Progress in the Studio

Just so you know. I have not become a peculiar old lady, wearing a stylish but out dated straw sunbonnet and floral patterned garden gloves while muttering to her flowers and sipping mint julips. I do like the idea of becoming a peculiar old lady and I do have garden gloves (practical not stylish).

The new studio is in progress. It's a big project. I'm pretty danged excited about it. But there's a hurdle to overcome. Two actually, but one is done.

That big boy up there is Bob. He's patroling for squirrels. He may be old, somewhat deaf, with not quite perfect vision, but he can still spot a squirrel. We will never, ever, be overun by a marauding band of squirrels. He's at the back door of the new house which also happens to be my studio door. See what he's standing on?

Carpet. The bane of my studio existence. I am messy. What I do is messy. I need to mop things up, even though I do not like to mop. We were really hoping that under this brand new carpet was old lino. Just like we were hoping that the water heater would heat water and that the fridge would not sigh its last breathe on the day we moved here.

 But nope. Under that carpet was old adhesive, really, really old adhesive from the lino floor we were hoping might be buried under the new carpet.

Looks kinda like a wood floor, eh? We took out all the carpet strips and 2, 438 staples (seriously, I counted them) and put down our faux wood floor. Actually, this is a 'deluxe vinyl plank' floor and almost all of the 260 square feet of it are done. It was the least expensive flooring we could put in ourselves and I think the 'deluxe' descriptor was put there just so we wouldn't feel bad about being thrifty. We'll finish it off this morning and then head off to the home improvement store for some finishing bits. Even if we didn't need to go, we'd need to check in. It's been a few days since we've made a major purchase and I'm sure the staff are worrying about us.

BTW, Alice and Bob are not posing on the new floor to provide interest and scale. Peter is behind me somewhere with treats. Treats are such a great motivator. I'm pretty motivated by treats. In fact, this whole flooring adventure has been motivated by treats, like, iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk. Yum.

Home Sweet Home

This is it. The new house. We got word this week that our offer was accepted. I fell in love with this house the moment I walked up the front walk. On the left there is a dog wood blooming and in front of the house is a red bud tree. My absolute favourite trees because they are among the first signs that spring is here.  It was like they were welcoming us home.

This is the newest house we'll have ever lived in. She was built in 1939 and is on the historic regester in a street of houses all in a historic district.  She started life as a parsonage and is pretty good sized with 4 bedrooms. I rather like that the cultural significance of the district is that it was built as a middle class housing alternative. Most of the homes in this street were built in the 1920's and 1930's and they are all different from each other. Some rather grand and others more modest, like ours.

Let me show you around. The front door opens into a small foyer with an original light fixture overhead. You can see the fourth bedroom at the back. The rest are upstairs. I'm not sure how well the dogs will like the stairs but I love having the bedrooms upstairs. The carpet on the stairs is going. It is ugly, worn out, and just too hard to clean. Those shelves you see in the fourth bedroom are going too. Have pry bar, will wreck.

At last, another working fireplace in the living room. I've missed the fireplace in our Melbourne house. We spent so many cold winter nights gathered around the open fire. It's nice to think that we'll be able to that again.

Yes, those are powder blue bench tops in the kitchen. They have got to go. But for now we have made a promise to each other that there will be no renovation for a year. Except for those shelves in the bedroom. They have to go right now because they are in the way of anything we might put in that room.

We are serial renovators and we are tired. We'll live with the house for a while. Get to know her a little better and let her tell us what she needs. I know that sounds weird but I do think that houses can speak to you if you open up to listening.

This is probably my favourite part of the house. The studio! I walked into this room and said, 'this is mine.' It's a great huge back porch that's been enclosed and had heating and cooling added to it. There are windows on three sides. So much light. The carpet will go. We have no idea what's under there but carpet just isn't going to work for me.

I'm not sure how I will deal with the distraction of the view from the studio. This is the back garden. It's so green out there. If you've ever been to West Texas, you'll know just how distracting all that green might be. It's calling to me. Come plant flowers here. Why not some tomatoes here?

Have a great weekend! I'll be dreaming of the new studio while I start to pack up the old one.

BTW - A nearly clean slate!

Heather Powers of Humble Beads, created this wonderful idea of showing what's on your bead table on Wednesdays.  These are bronze pieces I just pulled out of the kiln late last night. They've been tumbled and are patiently waiting for me to come in and put patina and other goodness on them to make them all shiny and pretty.

Often late to the party, this is my first time posting my bead table. But I have a very good excuse. Until Sunday night I couldn't actually see my bead table because it was shockingly buried in piles of things that the chaos creator in me refused to acknowledge as an unsightly disgraceful mess.

I spent much of Saturday and all day Sunday sorting, organizing, cleaning and generally grumbling to myself that I should do this more often. Like clean up after myself every day. Look at that would you. Vast expanses of useable space! A virtual paradise of tidiness. It's a clean slate and I vow to keep it this way. I've even picked up after myself 2 days in a row. Mum would be so proud.

This is the piece that came out of the kiln that I am most pleased about. (Never mind the carbon buried under my thumb nail) It's a bead that did not collapse. Yeah! Now if I could just get the shot from the tumbler out of it so it's more of bead than a rattle, life would be nearly complete.

Happy Wednesday!

What's on your bead table?

Sneak Peek

I've been busy working on a project that I've wanted to do for a long long time. Actually I have three ideas going simultaneously and that makes my head spin just a tiny bit. So anyway, I thought I'd give you just a wee little peek at what's happening here at Summers Studio.

I'm not quite finished. I need a key ingredient. And to get that key ingredient I have to go leave my nice warm house. It was 22F this morning when I got up. Brrrrr, that is just too cold for me to brave the great outdoors.

I do hope all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving have recovered from the feasting. We had a very non-traditional Thanksgiving. Just the two of us, books, naps. Grateful to have each other and our family. Grateful to welcome each new day and all that it brings.

Have a lovely week!

(PS, I know it's Tuesday and that many people might wish you a happy week on Monday. But it feels kind of like Sunday, or even, Wednesday. My sense of day of the week is all messed up with the holidays. Does that happen to you?)

Almost like a plan

A flower here

 A bird there

Look a butterfly!

I am in the final days of getting ready for my biggest show of the year. My mind is a little like it is filled with butterflies flitting here and there.  I am a little on auto pilot when it comes to design right now. Just kind of doing what feels right at the moment.

You know, I never think of myself as nature inspired. But I looked around at the things I've made and by golly, virtually every piece has some sort of nature theme. It's almost like I planned it that way. This show is either going to look like I had a concept or it's going to look really really boring. But it will be done and over and I will clean up the mess next week.

This is what the mess looks like. This isn't even my studio. This is a folding table set up in the dining room. I am not sure where the dining room table is. I haven't really seen much of it for a month. And the studio? Well it's bad, very bad.

Guess what? That little piece in the center up there, it's a dragonfly. Yep, I am definitely nature girl this autumn.

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.

The Lazy Blogger

I've got my feet up right now and Alice is helping me to relax.  I make myself a little deal. You will blog on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Or least that's the plan. Well I woke up this morning and realized it was Thursday. How did that happen? And I look back and see that last week wasn't so hot for blogging either.

Truth is, it's been a bit hectic around here. I love autumn but along with it comes this frenzy of getting ready for studio tour which happens in three weeks or so. Not in my studio, thank heavens, but just down the street from me at a print maker's studio. Oh and it just so happens to coincide with my monthly art market. So I set up for two shows on the same day and my sweetie takes on one of them. So long story short, I think I lost a day this week because I'm cranking out a ton of stuff and just completly lost track of time.

Let me give you a little tour of the last couple of days.

I etched a big pile of brass and copper. All of the pounding on the dapping block was quite therapeutic. I got to use these very cool, perfectly sized eyelets that I found over at Volcano Arts. Love that extra special little touch. These are all waiting for me to get motivated to put some patina on them.

At some point I got motivated to organize my clay/glaze area. It was time. Did you know that if you make an organized system you can actually put things away when you are done? Yes, Mom, I get it now. It may have taken me decades but you were right. A place for everything and everything in its place. But I have no gaurantees to just how long this will last. But the four feet of clear workspace was awfully nice to sit down and glaze on today.

I spent some time pampering old Bob. Doesn't he look like an ambulance chaser should be talking him into a huge law suit? What you can't see is the big shaved spot on his bum. He's got allergies and when that happens he gets a shot of steroid, a round of antibiotics, and benadryl. Miserable old boy and he just can't leave the itches alone.

Alice loves to have her photo taken. She is such a princess. She heard the camera come on when I was taking photos of Bob (who hates the camera). You can see her in the background in Bob's photo running up to make sure she doesn't miss a photo shoot.

OK, off my bum to make chili and then head back to the studio. No rest for the wicked, idle hands are the devil's play ground and all of that other wisdom Mom passed on.

Procrastination

This little bangle was born yesterday in a fit of procrastination. I was cleaning up my work bench when I ran across a little etched piece that I never used because I didn't like it. Well the patina solutions were all sitting there, and then there was the wire that was spilling out of drawers, all the tools were out. I just kind of shoved things to one side and that mess really didn't seem so bad if I was actually making something.

But seriously, my studio looked like those episodes of hoarders. You know the ones, where things are packed nearly to the ceiling. Where it looks dangerous. Well this is what my metal/jewelry table looked like. We're not even getting into what the clay and glaze area looks like.

Disgusting! I was wasting so much time looking for things. So even though it wasn't on my list, this mess just had to get cleaned up, at least a wee bit. Enter Sweet Pete, who I think mostly was tired of hearing foul words coming from here. I was really quite beside myself with trying to figure out where to start. It had just gotten so bad and I had so many excuses for doing other things. Not much later we had the workbench sorted! It's much easier to do this with a little support and encouragement.

Look at that! Six feet of organized space. There are a few things to sort through. I'll get to them. Really! But now I've got a patina/hot work station, an area to do cold metal work like wiring. My tools are handy and easy to put away. I even cleaned up after myself today.

It feels so much better and peaceful. And it was so easy to ignore the rest of the studio since I had my back to it all day.

Room for one more acorn?

I first made acorns last year as little charms to celebrate my Texas red oak tree blessing me with the first acorn in my five years in this home. It’s a gorgeous tree and so healthy now, but wasn’t always. You can read about that here. A lot of my design inspiration occurs rather spontaneously from the life around me.

This year I decided to make little acorn beads. Just because that tree is still alive and beautiful. Another tribute to the tree that graces my front garden. But can the world really embrace another acorn bead?

Lately, as I read blogs, and I read a lot of blogs, I’ve been reading about other artist’s experience with copyright and copying. I don’t tend to get into that sort of thing on my blog. But it makes me quite sad to see people trying to capitalize on the hard work of others by blatantly lifting design and selling it as their own. Tisk, tisk…bad…. and shame on you.


In this day and age of instant communication over the internet we are bombarded with images and ideas. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether what you are doing is in the least bit original, something that comes from you. So I started to question myself and my little acorn beads. Did I unconsciously make beads that were someone else’s idea? It horrifies me to think that I may have. But those images that are so readily available sink into my subconscious mind and just might come out in my own design. And after all, there really is only so many ways to make an acorn.

So I did a quick Etsy search on handmade acorn beads and charms. This wasn’t as easy as I imagined! To my absolute delight, interpretation of the acorn is wonderfully diverse. Here’s just a small sample.

From left to right and top to bottom:

Kylie Parry

Humble Beads

Spirited Earth

Arty Becca

Wooly Fabulous

Hint

Wool, polymer, silver, clay! All beautiful, all unique.

Please, join me tomorrow on the Beads of Clay blog, where I’m looking at how Mary Harding made a museum trip and turned that into her own inspiration for design.