I Love Your Soul
[Tintinnabulation Necklace: Ring the Warren Bells — sterling silver, copper, enamel]
[Empty Open Necklace — sterling silver, copper, enamel, trade beads, seed beads]
Everything is coming up color. It’s so good to have the fire box cooking up beauty again.
:::WINNER:::
Thank you to everyone who left a comment on this giveaway post! As usual, your comments were kind, lovely, intelligent, generous and even scholarly at times! Out of 243 original comments, my random number generator selected commenter number 21.
Congratulations to Ms Caren!
Thanks again, to everyone who entered the giveaway! It’s such a pleasure to have you in my world.
XX
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[Tintinnabulation Necklace: sterling silver, copper, enamel & rubber]
I’ve been tinkering about in the studio, trying to get my kiln working properly again, singing aloud as my hammers ping away at sterling and steel. This is such a miraculously different winter for me. I’m shedding those old habits of stress and pressured productivity in the studio (thanks to Robbie’s hard work this summer, and a good fire season), taking each day as it comes, as best as I can, spaciously, calmly, joyfully…and loving it.
This necklace is a result of prototype work I did yesterday. It’s like a wind chime for your sternum and perhaps a continuation of this work that began last winter — some of the same stories are beginning to be retold in my design efforts. It feels really good to have a rooted feeling at times, when I’m out there creating. With this piece, the way the enameled layers jingle, dance and sing is really quite magnificent. I’m pretty pleased with it but would love to develop a more sophisticated connection style for the enameled components. I’ll keep working on it. There will be more! The original sketch of this piece was named “Tintinnabulation: Ring the Warren Bells” and it has an enameled rabbit as a “dinger” in the smallest enameled layer! Tres mignon! I’m going to attempt the creation of the original idea today when I finally make it out to the studio. That said, this piece is really lovely and rather the perfect piece to wear whenever your soul needs a musical lift.
I thought I’d give it away.
Something about it seems like it was meant for the people. As always, I give things away simply to say thank you, to all of you, for being in my world. All you need to do is let me know you were here by leaving a comment on this post and I’ll count you in the drawing for this piece.
If you need a bit of prompting for your comment, feel free to tell me what you think about this quote a friend shared with me the other day! If you’re a shy one, feel free to simply say ‘hi’. Anything goes.
I was up in a high place with a friend for afternoon tea today. I am head over heels in love with this big piece of wild country. Do you ever find yourself falling in love with the land around you? I mean, really falling in love, badly, terribly, righteously — like the love for the land might crush you into pieces and you can’t really tell where you begin and end when you are walking across it, threading a tight path around aspens and sagebrush, and squinting at the douglas fir as they glimmer in the sun and wind…because the very dirt and root and tooth of it all has become you? Maybe you feel there’s a seamless nature to the interface between you and the stone and the air and the mountain slopes? Maybe this is what animals feel: simply and truly a part of it all, born into belonging with their claws, feathers and fur. I love this land like I’m going to be lost if I lose it. And I suppose, in a way, I would be. For right now, I have to be out in it, every day. Being here makes everything in life so rich and good. Food tastes better. Sleep is deeper. Comforts are pure luxury. I think this is the way it’s meant to be, the way it was always meant to be.
I took these photos a couple of days ago, when the greyness and weather gloom had reached a sort of zenith in these parts. On this day, it felt as though the sun failed to rise. What a terrible, glum slog it was. It had been gloomy for the better part of a week and I was starting to feel rather drab, thin, prickly. Does the weather affect you that way? I admit, I am rather turnsole at the core of things — always bending towards the light. I don’t mind a little weather now and then, I like variance, change, the drift of stacked clouds on a horizon line, the flicker of shadow running long and wide over mountainscape as they come between earth and sun. I like that, the movement of it, the kinetic shuffle of systems is so apparent to me then..when light is involved.
Today, the sun is out and broadly shining and the hills beckon! I have about ten million beautiful emails I am looking very forward to responding to but first, oh, but merry first, the mountain beckons. I shall pack a thermos of something hot, toss my camera in my bag, tie shoes on my feet and squelch around in the mud up there for a spell. Sounds like sheer magic, doesn’t it? I need a dash of wind in my feathers. You probably do too. Go outside. Tether yourself to the land. Set yourself adrift in the skies.
More soon.
X
[sterling silver, copper, enamel, Idaho douglas fir]
Each time I think I’ve finished working with lichen, the series seems to accidentally extrapolate itself. I don’t mind. It’s been fun to see this stuff continually unfold into and out of itself. I started working on these little guys when I was living at the Little Cabin In The Woods this fall. My kiln was in storage down at the base so I couldn’t do any enameling at the time but I patiently and careful thought about these pieces (only one shown here), sketched various versions of the enameled forms, daydreamed about the different natural objects to be used in conjunction with enameled components…I worked on those details for so long that falling into the actual work, the actual fabrication, feels like a gloriously beautiful and tidy exhalation of wild little spirits from my lung chambers. Additionally, it’s feeling awesome to use a bit of tree in a jewelry design. I’m tickled!