The Life and Times of the Plume — Page 241

Of Sea, Sky & Field

August 20, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Composed of sterling, 14 karat gold, chrysoprase, pearl, aquamarine and elk ivory.

100% handcrafted in every way.

Not a single prefabricated piece of metal was used to create this necklace (with the exception of the chain, of course).

Elk ivory jewelry is a big deal in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Whenever locals find out I’m a bench jeweler they nearly always ask if I work with elk ivory. Elk ivory is actually an elk molar! They are deliciously smooth to the touch and are creamy white in color. They have to be prepared before they are set — essentially they need to be “back cabbed” so that they’ll sit flat in a bezel setting. To prepare this elk ivory I had to saw the root off the molar and then sand the back of the ivory until it was perfectly flat. I’m not sure if that’s the ideal and most technical way to do it but I work intuitively when it comes to experimentation and it seemed right to me. This is my first elk ivory design and it’s VERY unconventional compared to other such designs I’ve seen.

What I really wanted to talk to you about is where this design came from!

I have doubted myself and my work so much in the past few weeks. I have doubted my voice — thought that it might be weak, frail, flaccid, unoriginal. I have wondered why I’m doing what I’m doing. I thought my creativity was broken, atrophied, dissolved.

I thought all of these things over and over again. I’ve been unproductive (or so it feels) and my productivity is tied tight to my self worth.

On top of this, I have been tired. Tired of being alone. Tired of holding the fort. Tired of carrying all of these things by myself with him so far away. Tired of mowing the lawn. Tired of cooking meals. Tired of being tired.

Yesterday I dropped those shackles, unwound them from my wrists, claimed my title as an artist once again. I stripped down to the bare essentials, I found my inspiration once more and I saw myself as:

of the sea

of the sky

of the field

Feet firmly planted.

Wings tasting wind.

Skin bathed in salt water.

This piece is hefty, organic, original, natural

and creating it today lifted me up and felt 100% right.

In other news, I was finally FINALLY able to talk with RW last night.

He’ll be heading back down from Canada to the North Cascades Base on Friday. On Saturday I will drive to Washington to spend time with him on his days off. The thought of a two day drive is torturous. It makes me want to cry. But I have to see him. I need to see him. So I’m going to make the trip — the last trip of summer and I’m going to make it a grand old adventure that’s worth regaling you with upon my return home.

I will try to have a shop update prepared for tomorrow but I can’t make any promises! I’m running on fumes and it may have to wait until my return from Winthrop.

Thank you all, so much, for supporting me this week. For your letters, for your emails, for….everything. If I could, I’d mail you all a golden egg laying baby chicken as a thank you.

Lovelove,

Jillian Sue

Filed Under: elk ivory, hunting, smokejumping

Breaking The Fast

August 19, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

For breakfast this morning, the fridge was looking barren, so I stepped outside and picked tomatoes, warm off the vine, and collected eggs, warm from the coop:

I medium boiled the eggs (as in not hard, not soft), cut the tomatoes in two and added a side of avocado.

A dash of salt!

A dash of pepper!

A perfectly fresh and awfully gorgeous little meal!

I washed it down with a cafe au lait and a glass of carrot juice.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

What did you have for breakfast?

If yours wasn’t quite this delicious, you’re welcome to join me tomorrow!

I’ll be doing this again except I think I’ll add some basil, for good measure!

Tra la la!

Filed Under: garden, plume gables, summer

Tithes and Offerings

August 19, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

This is what I have.

I give it to you.

Is it enough?

[sterling, 14 karat gold, pearls, labradorite]
100% handcrafted.
All things delicate and heavy.

Today when I finally fell into work in the studio I had to set all projects aside and simply create from my heart for a bit. This necklace is a result of 100% improvisation. I didn’t plan the design. I didn’t sketch anything. I didn’t take any measurements. I just wanted to pour myself into the metal, stone and flame and eventually see a result. I didn’t imagine this necklace would turn out this way, so ethereal, so heavy, so musical, so light, so SO so organic. When I look at it, I think to myself:

Of course this is the way it turned out.

This necklace is a direct representation of where you are at in this exact moment.

It was created without intention without a direct plan.

It was created with arbitrary movements, flames swinging in graceful arcs, hammer strikes, fusion, small welds…

It looks like the inside of your pockets.

It looks like the inside of your mind.

It looks like the inside of your heart.

Bric-a-brac, thumb tack, tithes, offerings, flight, discomfort, sadness, belief, truth, reactions, revelations,

stream of consciousness,

stream of sterling…

I love improvisational work, nothing feels freer or truer.

It can be hard to let go, to be free, to be true.

This kind of work is a purge, a release of all those things I’ve been squeezing tight in my fists.

Sometimes I fear what will show itself.

Occasionally I scare myself.

But it’s the purest offering I can give;

in the end it’s the best way I know how to say thanks;

a careful unveiling and and then

to stand

in the light.

Filed Under: inspired by the abstract expressionists, of course

McCall, Idaho

August 17, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

I made my way over and up to McCall this weekend.

I had a handful of reasons for going:

1. I had a delivery to make to Heidi.

2. I wanted to meet the McCall jumper base dispatch women (Oy vey, such amazing gals! More on them later!).

3. I wanted to check out this little mountain town because I’m trying to decide where I’d like to live next summer and this is a town RW can transfer into if he (we) decides he’d (we’d) like to transfer.

4. I really felt like swimming in a proper lake.

I departed for McCall on Saturday around noon. I had a South Dakotan house guest who left for the prairies on Saturday so when I finally hit the road I had a lot of summer in my hair and eventually a bunch of dust since the combines were ripping it up in the Snake River Valley between here and Boise.

Things started cooling off as soon as I started up into the mountains along the Payette River. The heat was filtered out first by clusters of ponderosa pines and then fir trees and the spray of whitewater on the rushing bends of that sweet mountain stream. I rolled into McCall exhausted and just in time for a glass of cold wine and some sushi at the local brew pub with a handful of lovely people.

The fire community in McCall is a tight one and it has me tied up in envious knots. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a tough little woman who gets to see her smokejumper man so often. It made me want to cry to watch them all dancing, holding hands, tasting each others beer, talking face to face, finding out who was working when; for this reason, my trip was horribly bittersweet. It was so wonderful to be with fire families and so sad to be without RW.

I want to live in the town where RW is based, so badly.

So badly do I want this that it really does honestly hurt.

A bit.

I didn’t realize it until a half hour ago when I ran out to the local grocery store for avocados but I’m a bit sad, I’m really quite a bit sad tonight.

I knew what I was getting myself into when I married that mountain man of mine. The fact is, life would be half the adventure it is if it was only half as torturous as it is! HA!

Anyway, Sunday was a full day. Heidi and I blitzed out to a meadow where the McCall boys were doing a practice jump and I nabbed a few shots for you just to solidify the fact, in your minds, that smokejumping really is the dead sexiest job a fellow (or a lady) could ever have (besides being a fire dispatcher or a lion tamer…). The sun was strong on my face while I watched the boys, one by one, appear magically into thin air, spit out by their orange and white plane, and then drift down like Kevlar suited dandelion seeds into the meadow below:

*round of applause*

Heidi and I spent the rest of the day driving about in the Landcruiser, hiking (she’s preggers, but she’s tough as nails and fit as a fiddle — former smokejumper you know), eating ice cream, swimming in the lake, talking and laughing.

The dogs frolicked about like wild things in the mountain streams and in the lake.

The sun felt so good.

The company was fantastic.

I don’t want to jinx my friendship with this girl but boy oh boy, it

would take a lot of something strange for me to grow weary of her presence.

This morning, after a tasty breakfast with Heidi, I popped over to the jumper base to say toodaloo to the dispatch gals and here’s where I’m going to talk about them for a second:

THOSE GIRLS!

Yeesh. I took a glimpse at some of their desks and it was so brilliant to see pieces of me pinned to their workstations. Photos of mine. Jewelry write ups! Bits of my heart and soul already mingling with theirs. I think this is one of the brightest reasons why I feel like I fit in so well in McCall. These beautiful, funny, talented, strong, independent girls are part of my life already and I can’t help but feel drawn, even more strongly, to the area because of them! Oh you dispatch ladies, you fire talkers, you tough cookies, you feisty huckleberries, you’re quite the bunch and you won my heart over. I’ll see you again, and soon, I’m sure of it.

Before leaving McCall today, I drove around the lake, swam at three different locations, squinted in the sun, splashed about with my dog and dreamed about living in McCall next summer. Then I drove down out of the mountains and swam in four different sections of the Payette River before descending into the heat of Boise and beyond.

Oh McCall.
McCall, I have a crush on you,

for serious,

and someday I’m going to make you mine, all mine.

In case you were wondering, I officially love this state more than I did the day before. It’s so diverse. It’s so sweepingly grand.

I hope your weekend was stuffed full of adventures!

…and watermelon.

The Noisy Plume