The Making of "Float: Cirrus"

This is a slideshow illustrating the making of the Float: Cirrus necklace from February 2012. You may view the entire slideshow here, which includes explanatory captions. For those of you following my lessons, the crochet techniques used will be familiar.

Too Many Thoughts

There are times when the ideas in my head far outpace my ability to build the objects. The sketchbook makes a useful repository for the ideas; I can siphon off the ideas rapidly and store them for later exploration. These are a series of sketches for a new series fermenting in my head and on the pages of my sketchbook.

Having a Ball

Remember to play. This key idea behind the Doodle-a-Day project heavily influences my new line of investigation. This new series is growing out of the "what if I do this...?" game. It is an easy game to play with paper and pen (cheap and fast); the game is a little more challenging to play when I start working in silver and gemstones (expensive and time consuming). It is an essential and sometimes rewarding game.

The basic question here is ,"What if I try to crochet a ball in silver?". Did it. Did it again. Did it in two parts to get a ball that is more round. Added colored beads to the ball. Now I have a whole bunch of balls and half balls in varying states of completion. And I am having fun.

Playing the "what if I...?" game has brought new vitality and excitement to my work. Tomorrow is torch and anvil time and I can start playing with the support forms for the balls. It will be a whole new round of "what if I...?" and I can't wait to get started.

Remember: This is Fun

So, I just finished posting lucky 13 of the Doodle-a-Day drawings. I have actually managed to do one each day and it has turned out to be rather fun. It is a relief to just play and has gotten me back into sketching in my sketchbook. I definitely recommend that you try the exercise for yourself; it is much more fun than a diet.

I caught myself on the verge of reverting back to bad habits, though. As I stared at my little card for today, I began overthinking how I wanted it to turn out. I wanted to work with ovals and wanted them to be dimensional and all sorts of other stuff. The drawing needed to be perfect and convey a sense of depth and blah...blah...blah. That is not the point. I am all for integrity and controlling design and being thoughtful and planning and all sorts of other things. But, these values need to be kept in their place. The doodle is not, I repeat NOT, the place for this.

I took a deep breath and opened my marker and just played. And kept playing and stopped worrying. Sometimes you have to make yourself play; it is good for your soul.

Don't forget to play today.

40 Days of Doodles Project

A review of my sketchbook from the past year reveals a rather disconcerting shift in my process. At some point in the past, I abandoned drawing for fun. The only sketches in the book explore specific designs or are illustrations of patterns. My sketchbook has become all work and no play. I desperately need to recapture that sense of play within my work and my life.

I used to sit in a park downtown every morning and doodle in my sketchbook until it was time to go to the office. Since I left the architecture firm and committed myself to growing my jewelry business and teaching, I lost my "park time". I didn't even realize what a precious time I had lost until I began reflecting on the character of my sketchbook. Something was missing in the spirit of the book; more importantly, something was missing within me. I, too, have become all work and no play. Every moment of my day is spent producing, designing, planning and it has become work.

In an effort to recapture my "park time" and regain my sense of play, I have started my Doodle-a-Day Project. My goal is to create one doodle each day for forty days. I have cut 40 3 inch by 3 inch bristol cards and keep them with my black marker. I am letting go of all of the "rules" of good design and drawing. The only rule is to engage in the act of drawing. Every day I will doodle something and share it with you: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Tiny Steps

I finally made a Work Log Form today. This way, I can neatly track my hours for each project in one place. This seemingly tiny task has been haunting me for nearly a year. I find myself getting hung up on these tiny bits of business and they keep me from accomplishing much larger, more important things.

I think the whole hangup about the form stems from a larger fear. I want to think of myself as an artist and, somehow, doing things like efficiently tracking hours spent feels like "not art". In fact, it feels like business. And "business" feels less meaningful than art.

I am an artist and a businesswoman. I have to be both. I want to make art all of the time. I need to make money to live and buy materials to make more art. I refuse to perpetuate the notion that one either makes art or makes business. It is not a useful dichotomy and, given the large number of MFAs seeking an ever shrinking number of teaching positions, one that many fellow artists are going to have to reject.

Is it possible to make business and make art without "selling out"? I sure hope so. I am going to give it a try. I took a little step forward today.

Try, Try Again

I always tell my students to make models before diving in and cutting the metal. Many seem to believe that it is some obscure form of torture invented by professors to make their lives more difficult. It's not.

I am really glad I took my own advice today and made a model of my clasp before cutting up the silver. I am a bit of a pack-rat, so I grabbed some plastic I had pulled off of a day planner and cut out the first version (the plastic was handy because it was really close to the gauge of metal I would use, takes less time to cut, and was free). I wanted to check the scale and shape in relation to the overall piece. There was the added benefit of checking to see if the silk ribbon would fit through the hole.

So I made a drawing and cut out the first version of the clasp. The scale and shape were okay but the ribbon stuck in the hole too tightly and looked awful. I went back and made a new drawing and cut out another sample. Same problem. The scale looked wrong on the third piece, because I shifted the proportions. After five samples, I finally arrived at a good balance of proportion and hole size.

It would have been really expensive, if I had tried to cut it in silver first and encountered all these problems. Plus, I probably would have spent hours trying to file and adjust the size of the original before I gave up and cut a new one. And the moral of this story is... models, models, models!

Now it is time to cut some silver clasps. Woo-hoo!

P.S. The plastic dust is really itchy.

Tripping up on processes

I spent a good part of today sewing a silk ribbon to close a piece that I have been working on for well over a year. Given the rather limited demands that sewing a straight piece of fabric will put on the brain, mine was at liberty to muse extensively on the genesis of this piece and the reasons it has taken so very long to complete it.

The piece began, as many do, as a hazy image in my head that I sketched out in one of my books (mind you, this is so long ago that I can't even figure out in which book I made that original sketch). Then came the collecting of materials; hours digging through beads and stones and pearls searching for the right combination of size, color, and texture. Then I began fabricating samples for the main collar which involved resolving structure and getting loops and groupings just right. Finally, fabrication. I spent hours crocheting the silver into a long band of gem and pearl encrusted loops. All along, in my head, the piece closed at the nape of the neck with a giant silk bow.


I finished the silver collar and I was pretty well pleased with the look, weight and texture. But here, I faltered. A bow just was not a metalsmith's closure. A bow was certainly not a meaningful resolution of the issue of closing a piece. And so began the year of struggling and trying to come up with a proper jewelry solution.
I made more sketches and drawings. I purchased a handful of carefully selected citrine cabochons. I set to work making the fanciest, most complicated slide clasp with moving parts and all, like a proper metalsmith. There were sketches and storyboards and extensive soldering, fitting, and planning.

Unfortunately, the closer I got to finishing the clasp, the worse it looked with the piece. It just felt wrong. So I stuffed the clasp away in a drawer and went back to sketching. Nothing worked. Forged hooks, box clasps, various tricky catches and closures all fell short. Then the collar got tossed in a box and all but forgotten. I was never going to finish it. It was an utter failure.
A few weeks ago I was cleaning my bench and I found the unfinished clasp with the citrine still waiting to be set. It was still wrong for the piece but, as I looked at the clasp, with all its inane and overwrought complications, I realized that the simple answer had been the right one all along. The silk bow.

The piece had always been about the lusciousness and luxury of costly materials and rich textures. It desperately needed the sensual accent of the buttery, warm silk contrasting with the sparkling, crunching stones and metal. The soft swishing contrasts with the clink of citrines and pearls. The fabric becomes a focal point, given its scale in relation to the piece and the body. More importantly, it creates the sensual counterpoint to the metal and stones. The materiality of the piece gains depth through the contrast and the piece becomes a whole.
And so, today, I made a bow.

Cuttlefish Casting

The cuttlefish casting experiment is finally complete. This ring was cast as a flat strip and then formed into a circle after casting. By creating the band in this way, I was able to take full advantage of the cuttlebone texture as a central design element. If you are interested in seeing some of the process, please check out these links:
making a mold from cuttlebone
cleaning and forming a casting

What happens in my studio