Jewel Carnival again! My Most Influential Historical Metalsmith.

Oh, my Gosh.... Ever since I was at the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in San Fransisco I have been in love with the art and beauty of Henry Dunay's jewelry designs.

And he is STILL creating.


Not only is his work MAJOR EYE CANDY, it is crafted by his skilled goldsmiths... working to create his designs. While I was learning the basics of becoming a goldsmith, I learned to appreciate the intricacies of the designs.

My work has always had a bent towards the abstract and 'edgy' as a friend says. But that doesn't mean I cannot enjoy and be impressed by the fluidity, grace and feminine essence of his work.

Now, one must wonder, " How are you influenced by his work, it is not at all like yours?"

Easy answer: Finish. Completion. Balance without being static. Love of gemstones, texture on metal and always keeping the wearer in mind.

Henry Dunay, you rock!

Don't forget to visit these other fine artists and see what THEY have to say on the subject.

Tonya Davidson
Angela Baudel-Crispin
Lora Hart
Tod Pardon
Tamra Gentry
Elaine Luther

Jewel Carnival Blog time... Again!

Who was my most influential metal artist or teacher?


Many MANY teachers and artists' have jump-started my art life. Many... far too many.

But far and away it is Carolyn Morris Bach.

I have loved her work since I saw my first Piece of
Art Jewelry in the late 1980's. What impressed me the most was the clean simplicity of her work, the balanced artistry and the whimsy she delectably adds to each piece.


She IS my hero of art jewelry.



Sadly, I have never purchased her work, nor I have ever met her or taken a workshop from her. I just have to clean the drool off of magazines with her work featured or in ads. Ornament is great place to see her artfulness.


Bach's work never ceases to amaze me, delight me and inspire the muse in me to create new work. To be a maker without a thought if it would be 'saleable' or not. Without talking to her or studying her words on her work, I have learned the most valuable lesson in my art life: To make what comes from my spirit without fear of criticism. To be able to show my soul in my work for the pure joy of the process. This is what I have cultured from studying her art. And it IS fine.

Take a walk through her web pages... but start here with a review of her work by the Patina Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. You will be so delighted... Don't be surprised if you to try and purchase one of her works of art.

Then browse through these other blogs on the same subject of teacher/artist. You will love this Carnival Friday and so have I.



Tonya Davidson
Angela Baudel-Crispin
Lora Hart
Tod Pardon
Tamra Gentry
Marco Fleseri

Jewel Carnival Blog for April

It is Jewel Carnival Time again!
What is my Favorite Technique?

Now, this is a very difficult topic to write about. I have SO MANY techniques that I absolutely love. Really. So instead of blogging on my FAVORITE technique, I will make it the plural.


TECHNIQUES.

• Keum Boo.


• Impressing stamps.


• Carving out negative space


• setting stones


• Making bails.

Okay and my fondness is not necessarily in the above order. I love Keum Boo because it adds not only a contrasting color of 24 karat gold to the design, but it brings a warmth to the work. Keum boo, simply put, is adding 24 or 23 karat gold FOIL, not leaf, to very hot fine silver. At that point a burnishing tool is rubbed over the gold to marry the metals. When the piece has cooled down the whole work can be burnished again or put into a tumbler with steel shot and a bit of soapy water to burnish the entire jewelry. If the Keum Boo process has been done properly, then the gold will not come off. Tumbling, by the way, is a very good test to make sure the bond is perfect.

I don't just impress commercially purchased stamps into the wet metal clay, I prefer to make my own stamps. I use a Photo Polymer plate to make my own stamps, or I carve into polymer clay, erasers, stamp blanks or I impress Castaldo(tm) molding compound with unusual textures.... such as leaves, rocks or even my grasses. The stamping process gives all of my work a one-of-a-kind essence.

Another technique that is a fav of mine is carving out negative space. The piece above was pierced in the greenware state. The stamp is called Bamboo and I got it from Donna Kato's site. Prairie Craft. I will gaze at the design and then mark the areas to be removed with a Sharpie pen(tm). Then a small drill bit is placed in a pin vise and carefully drilled out. Next I insert a jewelers saw blade through the hole and cut out that marked area. After that I love to file, carve and sand to my heart's content to make the area look perfect.

Setting stones is just a flat-out given. I even wrote a book on a lot of different ways to set stones. Click on my website and you can even see a page. Well, okay, click here to see a sample page.

Making bails is a joy to me because it is so easy. My preference is for a curved hollow addition to the top of my pendants. This is what the neck chain will pass through to hold the pendant. I first started out by pasting many layers of slip over small curved branches and after the kiln process was done, the wood burned out and an unusually textured bail was created. I wrote a tutorial for this technique in the April 2004 issue of Lapidary Journal. But now I use the Makin's Extruder with the Hollow Core Adaptors to push out a looooong hollow tubing. Then I cut them into differing lengths,. Then when dry I sand and burnish them and store them in to an Altoids(tm) tin that is lined. This way I have a bail ready at the moment of inspiration. I have a tutorial in my gem setting book on this process. These adaptors can be purchased on line with a lot of sellers. Just google for merchants.

So, I cannot say I have just one technique that is my fav. I have tons too for polymer clay

This Summer I will be giving a one hour seminar on each of the three days of the Metal Clay World Conference in Chicago. The topic will be Bench Tricks for Metal Clayers. This is going to be a great event with a lot of wonderful presentations, pre-conference workshops and meeting and greeting many artist friends. I will be there the days before for the International Polymer Clay Association's Retreat too.

Whew!

Go visit our other Jewel Carnival Bloggers below to find their favorite techniques.
Tonya Davidson
Elaine Luther
Angela Baudel-Crispin
Lora Hart
Tamra Gentry
Marco Fleseri

So you want to be in community theater....?

Click on images to enlarge

So, after a lot of my friends 'urged' me to get back into theater.... for therapy.... I auditioned last weekend.

Our local community group, Imagingation Theater!,had auditions for the musical Beauty and the Beast. And to get my self prepared - I hadn't tried out for a show in ??? years, I called on my dear friend and acting/vocal coach, Chrissie Addison. She had directed me in Fiddler... what, almost 30 years ago? All my recent shows with my drama mama's had been pretty much pre-cast, so this was going to be a 'new' adventure. We set up three one hour coaching sessions and she worked me gently but firmly.... " T's & D's at the end of words.... don't wrinkle your brows (when singing the higher notes)....find the purpose of each scene... why are you there?"... Oh I could go on. She gave me a gazillion discs to take home to listen to and practice to.... a lot. Well, I didn't do it a lot because of the redecorating I have been doing to my home. I am having new front and back doors installed as I write. So, I just practiced my audition song and Mrs. Pott's solo ... over and over. Over and over. And I remembered the final consonants, thank you very much.

By she way she is fabulous. I recommend her to all for general vocal and acting classes. She is doing it full time now. Also, she is one of the best directors I've had. She directed us drama mama's in "... A My Name is Always Alice".... go see that one if you get a chance. It is an incredible ensemble show about women...

So, Saturday morning I showed up at 8:45 in the morning for auditions... let me tell you it was a
cattle call. I was number 58 and I think there were over 70 people auditioning. It was freezing in the theater but I immensely enjoyed watching all the nervous Nellie's and Normans up on stage risking it all for the love of trodding the boards. There was a four year old... he was so cute I almost cried. Yours truly didn't get to sing until after 1 pm!!!! And then he didn't let me finish my song...Yikes! The director had me read the part of the Wardrobe a lot and it IS a funny role... We danced and read parts all afternoon and I didn't get home until after 4pm..... Sheesh! What a long day. I was so tired that I ate junk food and fell asleep in front of the TV... several times. I was so zonked that I was thinking about not doing this ... this silly thing called theater. Then, about 8 pm, I went online and read the call call backs... cool! My name was there. "Show up to call-backs at one pm on Sunday." I called Chrissie and we talked for a long time and she pretty much wanted me to sleep on it.

I did. Then my N.Y. friend, Debby Kirkwood wrote me the clincher.... basically she said that it shouldn't really matter what part I got. Just so I was busy during the Holidays next Winter. My dearest friend/therapist, Ellen Mechling agreed. She was more excited about the call backs than I was... Wow!

That was the clincher. I went to Call-Backs with an incredible attitude. That - what would be ... should be. And had so much fun reading the parts. The director, Peter Wolf, (no kidding!) was very inspiring and creative. Made me want to be in the show even more. So we worked our little tushes off for about three hours. Then they had us wait around to about 5pm for the cast list to be posted. Peter wanted to talk to the cast right away... so we stayed and hung out for about an hour.

You can call me Mrs. Potts! Huzzah! She has the lovely song, 'Beauty and the Beast' that is sung as the two young leads dance for the first time. Very romantic.... sigh. This was a very nice thing to take place yesterday. It was the four month anniversary of my sweet Phil's passing. I met another auditioner who lost her husband in December too.... we had some talk time. Click Here is the final cast list.

We have our read through on April 20th and rehearsals start in earnest in July. We were told that we had to be off book at the start of practice. This is going to be a new thing for me. I normally learn my lines best along with the blocking. My movement is the motivation for the lines and the lines are motivation for my movement. But, some actors do push the limit by not getting their lines down, so I can understand why he has this in the schedule.

o, with the Metal Clay World Conference coming up in July in Chicago and rehearsals right after... I am going to be pretty darn busy. Jackie Truty, the head woman, chief, top honcho, president,major inspirer-er at Art Clay World wants us to sing a duet together.... it WOULD be fun to do that at the conference. Hint - hint Jackie. She has done a ton of theater too. We'll see. Double dare you Jackie... lol!

I am going to use this blog to be a little journal of my theater journey. I will try and grab some images during rehearsal and post them. If you would like to get the updates... just sign on to receive the blogs as I write them.

Oh, don't forget to feed the fish and to tell me to 'break a leg'.

What was your biggest mistake or worst workbench disaster?

It is Jewel blog time again...

Hmmmm? “What was my biggest mistake or worst workbench disaster?”

Oh, that is easy. Way back in the early ‘90s we were struggling to make ends meet. The recession was in full force and I was doing custom and repair work, running the gallery, posting sales and inventory and trying to keep up with the paperwork. My sweet Phil was delivering the Sacramento Bee newspaper in the wee hours of the morning to help keep us in the black. At one point I broke my ankle… went back to work the same day. There was no one to work the gallery but moi.

We were a young business at only 3 to 4 years old and had a very small space to work. It is very hard to start a jewelry store/gallery. The jewelry is what brings in the rent money and most people are VERY loyal to the store they have been supporting for years. So, they need to be unhappy enough to search out a new place or have moved into the area and need a new brick and mortar to repair their jewelry or to purchase new.

We had a great client who brought in a ring to be sized. Oh my gosh it was beautiful. It was a 14k gold and hand fabricated. It was very ornate band with a bed of pansies carved and soldered into place. I have never seen one before or since. It was fabulous. I was thinking at the time that it was made in Germany or somewhere else in Europe. It was beyond beautiful and had a craftsmanship to die for.

I had a very cool system for bringing in repair work…. But that time it didn’t work. I was starting to get more business than I could handle and so the paperwork suffered too. I was to enter stuff on the computer and then file the work in chronological order for repair, custom or catalog sales. I sometimes slept overnight on the floor because I was working so late and we didn’t live in the community where the gallery was located.

You guessed it. I lost the ring. I spent more hours than I can imagine looking for it. Even when we moved into a larger space in ’94 I kept my eyes out for that amazing ring. So, I figured that, during one of my, “Let me get this paperwork cleaned up” stages that it inadvertently got into the garbage. My client was so understanding. I had put a huge value on the ring and she took the cost of the jewelry out in trade: more repair and many pieces of jewelry. I was so fortunate she didn’t want the cash.

My biggest lesson was to 1) have my garbage cans with covers 2) never have the latter near my office nor bench work area. Needless to say, it never happened again. But, wow, was I ever humiliated and embarrassed. Just thinking about telling her was pure agony.

Oh, yes, that was my biggest mistake EVER.

Do visit these other wonderful artists and read what their bench disaster was... they are very interesting.

Tonya Davidson
Elaine Luther
Kirsten Skiles
Angela Baudel-Crispin
Lora Hart

Marco Fleseri

Tamra Gentry

Chris Parry

Creativity, is it finite?

In my world it is. During the time when we had our gallery I was making jewelry and running the business. My sweet Phil was a major player in the business once we had started bringing in enough money to keep us alive. He was marvelous…. And he was too cute as a salesman. All the women and men just adored him. Sigh.

During this time I pretty much was the administrator of the gallery and the chief goldsmith and salesperson. We had an incredible staff and the store was a fun place to work and visit and play. We were in a new community and our gallery was kind of THE place in town. We had clients bring in their families during the holidays… as if we were Disneyland.

Click on the image to see my new head shot page for auditions.

My community theater adventures were limited to three in those eleven years of entrepreneur-ship. I did notice, however, that when I was in rehearsals, my creativity in jewelry went downhill fast. I really had to work on staying grounded when working with a client on custom orders. It was hard.

So, in my case I know it is finite.

That said, I haven’t made a new piece of jewelry since before Phil and I left for Europe last November. I have felt the creative juices flowing during my classes I have taught, but have made none. Right now I am painting the insides of our…my home and redecorating. Also, many of my friends have been urging, no insisting that I get involved with theater again. So, I have signed up for three audition/singing workshops with my good friend Chrissie Addison to prepare for an early April tryout. The show is “Beauty and the Beast” and I would like the part of Mrs. Potts – the teapot. Rehearsals do not start until summer and the show would take place during the holidays.

That will be a hard time for me without my darling Phil. So, I am hoping that I do get cast so Thanksgiving and Christmas won’t be so hard.

That said, I am keeping the option open that I might not audition, but if I do, I will be prepared.

So, yours truly is keeping my options open on the future. And will see if my jewelry/theater creativity can survive while not working 9 to 5. Here is hoping that it is not finite now.

Jewel Carnival again! Rituals!!

Some of rituals I do before starting work on any project is cleaning, organizing the tools of workspace and pulling together the parts of new design I have in mind. It goes without saying that I start with a sketch. That is the way I work. Now, that is not to say that during the creative process the design won't change.... no, no, I would never avow to that......

The cleaning is to rid the area of any metal filings, polymer bits and other material scrap that could ruin the integrity of the piece. It also cleans my mind and relaxes me. It is like wrapping a Christmas present... just getting it all ready to open my consciousness to creativity. No junk to distract the PROCESS. And I am distracted easily.

When I am organizing the tools for the new jewelry, I am assuring myself that all is at hand. Nothing can frustrate me more than watching the metal clay dry while I look for a tool..... now where did I put it. Also works with the polymer clay.... looking for a tool will distract me...

Pulling together the parts of the work will allow me to see if I need to order anything. Say, the stones, more clay.... anything. Wow, that is a distraction... walk to the office to get the order form, see the mess on the desk, start to clean up the desktop so I can write, pick up the phone to order and a dear friend is already on it.... two hours now gone.....! Did I say I was easily distracted?

With all in the ready, I put on my I pod with classical or new age music. I love to sing and if I know the words... well, you know the rest. So with out ANOTHER distraction, I can lose myself in the creative process and let the time and the art carry me away.

And that is the Best of All Possible Worlds.

Lorrene,

Go and visit our other wonderful bloggers:

Tonya Davidson

Elaine Luther

Kirsten Skiles

Angela Baudel-Crispin

Lora Hart
Marco Fleseri
Tamra Gentry