[sterling, garnet & Utah variscite]
April 8, 2011 by
Good evening, dear meadow larks.
I’m just in from the studio and have a few baubles to show you before I whip up a mean dinner with RW and fluff the nest for a lovely evening at home.
I cast this pendant from a eucalyptus seed pod I found on a rugged beach in Mendocino County, Northern California last summer. It’s solid and has a rich, forget-me-not-weight as it hangs around a neck.
A Lycanidae Necklace built of sterling, 14 carat gold, chalcedony, iolite, garnet and silk worm cocoons. This piece is quirky and elegant.
The wheat stalk in this necklace was cast from wheat I gleaned last summer in the Idaho valley between here and City of Rocks. This necklace also features a bezel set aqua, a HUGE aqua briolette, ruby and labradorite beads. It’s a drop choker and wears weighty and beautifully as it trails down through the lady topographies.
In a few scant hours my wee sister, Toby Beth Georgia, will arrive at The Gables.
I’m going to kiss her face and RW will tease her mercilessly. It’s going to be grand!
Have a beautiful night, one and all!
Catch You Up
April 5, 2011 by
Let me catch you up on some of the ditties I’ve been working on out in the studio. I finished both neck pieces last week. I didn’t have plans for them when I sat down at my work bench but I had some life details that needed expressing, an urge in my metacarpals to push and pull metal and there was a voice rising up in my throat like steam from a winter river.
Born Unlucky Neck Piece
[sterling, rough apatite, pink coral, red coral, 14 carat gold, sari silk, silk]
I just wanted to work, to flow, to not adhere myself to the notion of a project, the lines of a design or any materials selected and carefully laid out on a table top. I detached my mind from my work while making this piece. I thought about everything but a design plan. I suppose this is stream of consciousness work, on my part. I expect this neck piece was destined to flow out of me on the day I sat down to form it. The general form of the metal work here suggests a horseshoe.
Luck.
I don’t really believe in luck.
I suppose that means I was born unlucky.
How about you?
Cocoon Neck Piece No.2
[sterling, copper, enamel, pink coral, silk, sari silk]
This is the second installment in the Cocoon Series. I’ve been spending hours on these neck pieces, humming and hawing over where to connect tear panels, where to hang other components from, how I want the tear cages to sit on the breast bone…I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. I don’t rush myself. I slowly work through a piece, not finishing quickly, not quitting before the design feels finished…sometimes I simply sit and turn components over and over in my hands. I wanted this cocoon to hang from brambles, as the first did, but this time, I wanted a three dimensional bramble form. I made the three tear panels you see here, forged and formed them into curves and then connected them into the quasi-sphere that hangs the cocoon. The actual tear panels suggest, to me, wing bones — if butterflies actually had a bone structure to their wings instead of overlapping layers of chitin.
It rides high and light on the chest,
like a good secret,
like a second set of lungs in tune with all the rising and falling of the body that wears it.
There is only absence of the hatched butterfly in this piece, the hole in the cocoon where one might imagine the butterfly crawled out, the suggestion of existence reflected in the airy structure the cocoon hangs from.
Suggestions.
Suggestions.
Suggestions of freedom, flight and a second life stage.
It’s currently displayed on one of the walls in the house. It makes gorgeous small sculpture wall art.
I also made these for you:
Glitz Ring
[imperial jasper & sterling]
Glitz Ring
[Queensland agate & sterling]
I never tire of this design….not ever.
I mentioned on Flickr, the other day, that I’ve been making Glitz Rings since February 16, 2010
and I still love this design and feel like these rings are such apt reflections of my life lived and my life loved.
I’m going to keep making them until the sun permanently sets.
Good Tuesday (woah, I had to research what day it is) to you all!
Strong wings today, my sisters and brothers.
Catch the updrafts.
Let the wind do the work.
x
The Big Cocoon
April 1, 2011 by
I know. That’s probably too many images of this necklace around my neck but it’s rather difficult to photograph this piece on a white board because it just winds up looking like a pile of beautiful insanity.
This is The Big Cocoon. I’ve been working on it every day this week. It’s built of recycled sari silk, sterling, copper, enamel, resin, coral, silk, and wild rose twigs off the side of my mountain — the copper pods that hang from the cocoon actually slide open to reveal the resin set twigs.
I roughly sketched this idea out and then once I started to make it, I wound up drifting into a huge departure from the original plan. That large departure drifted into many smaller departures until I wound up with this finished piece. It’s large and elaborate with my standard textures riding the surfaces of nearly all the components.
It is, of course, inspired by spring, renewal, rebirth, rejuvenation…the fresh unfolding of new wings.
Transformation.
It bears hope for:
the world, my friendships, my summer, my garden
This afternoon whilst working in my open doored studio, two bees blasted through the door and then flirted with each other in the tendrils of hair that framed my face before zipping back outside into Idaho blue skies. There’s a shadow of green on all I see, even the fields of my soul.
Lions and Lambs
March 30, 2011 by
It’s windy as bee knees here today,
glorious springtime weather with the fleecy white bleat of lambs and fierce tawny roars of lions blended together into a hair raising melody.
Plum and I are just down from the mountain and besides being thoroughly buffeted by wind, we were misted on, swooped on and nearly mud bathed (I managed to keep my feet though).
What a beautiful day.
Have you seen it?
I know it might seem perplexing to you to know that I am an avid sci-fi fan as well as a feverishly devoted supporter of period drama, but it’s the truth.
North and South is one of those classic BBC period dramas wherein the romance is so drawn out, so practically painful in every way, so annoying and relieving simultaneously — she thinks she knows everything about him and he thinks he knows everything about her and so they deeply loathe each other and then find each other to be rather pleasant and then there’s FINALLY that kiss in the last five minutes of the film……exhale…...
I love that kind of love.
you’ll love North and South…if not for the story, than for that gorgeous Richard Armitage and his hawkish glare.
The cuckoo clock chimed twelve some time ago and I’m headed out to the studio to finish this bizarrely beautiful cocoon necklace I started two days ago. It’s one of those pieces that I’m just not entirely sure about whilst I’m building it — as in, I’m not sure how it will turn out. I have the image of the finished piece on the tip of my mind but I don’t yet believe, wholly, that it will exactly match the image in my mind when it’s finished…I suppose we’ll just have to see how it turns out!
Good Wednesday to you all!
Smooch.
The Plume