Art field trip: the ACC Show in Baltimore ( Part 1)

Each year, the ACC (American Crafts Council) show in Baltimore is a treat; a chance to meet and talk with leading artists working in clay, metal, wood, fabric... any and all mediums.  The ACC hosts shows across the nation (Atlanta, St Paul, San Francisco) and its an opportunity I try to take advantage of annually as I am so close geographically. 

My post this year does focus on jewelry artists. I was struck - and hugely inspired - by the artists combining materials in fresh innovative ways. I gravitate to the fusion of traditional jewelry techniques and non-traditional materials. (No gold and diamond bling for me!)  I like pieces that are made with content, intention, narrative. So let the work speak to you as it did to me... 

Claudia Fajardo: 

"Nature is my inspiration, every detail of it leads me to create unique pieces, where color and texture become the protagonists of my creations.

A feature of my work us a touch of color that is provived by glass beads of varying of sizes, which are used in combination with metal to create a unique design. The concept is focused on silver pieces with a contemporary look, 100% handmade artistry with a variety of goldsmith techniques that distinguish industrial processes.

I loved the integration of sead beads and metal. To add color in a piece via the seed beads AND to combine bead weaving and metal smithing. The pieces were stunning - with such attention to detail the back of many pieces were imprinted with leaf textures. 

all images: (c) Claudia Fajardo

Kirsten Denbow:
"I have studied, practiced, played and dreamed. My work is unique, wearable, sophisticated but approachable, and I always try to add an element of fun.
My current body of work, focusing on traditional metalwork and enameling techniques, is a reflection of my passion for metalworking and my love of nature."

You KNOW I am going to rave about a sugar skull... but Kirsten's enable work was so fine! The delicate swan silhouettes, riveted to backings... I was drawn to the detail and the layering in these pieces.

All images (c) Kirsten Denbow

Luana Coonen:
"..Realizing her strong affiliation with nature and organic growth patterns, she now finds even the smallest flower or blade of grass more precious than ever. She expresses her deep and abiding love of nature’s tiniest wonders through her artwork, finding ways within her work as a jeweler to amplify the beauty of simple natural objects and to bring attention to our emotions. This is reinforced by her passion to use found objects and renewable materials..."

Luana's work may have been my favorite of the day. The intricacy of the sawing, interaction with the piece as it concealed and revealed treasures to the viewer and the wearer. I was drawn to her use of natural - and sustainable - organic material. 

All images (c) Luana Coonen

Strongfelt:
"I am inspired by humanity’s age-old relationship with traditional craft materials and how these materials have been transformed over time and in different cultures. In particular, the renewable resources of plant and animal fiber, the community and time involved fiber processes of antiquity, the utilization of fabrics for sheltering and comforting the body and the historical predominance of women working these materials motivated my decision to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Fiber Arts. Over the past two decades pursuing these subjects, I have developed a keen interest in the use of natural dyes from minerals, plants and insects, the versatility of the felting process employed to create non-woven fabrics from animal fibers, the use of free-motion machine embroidery to “draw” on and manipulate the structure of the fabric and international travel in order to explore the diversity of textiles and the human experience. This primary use of natural fibers and dyes represents a fight for the threatened values of community responsibility, patience, physical activity, and an intimate relationship with our natural world."

These pictures do not do justice. hand dyed natural fibers. felted onto forms, enveloping objects. And then sewn, sculpted with stitches. Lightweight, layers, mysterious... Some neckpieces had sea glass stitched in, and were translucent when held to light. Exquisite!

All images (C) Strongfelt/Lisa Klakulak

And there is more! Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow. It was a great show this year - it made me think, and plan, and dream. I also like to share the work of other artists - done respectfully - I hope it informs and inspires!

Beading with JC Herrell!

During the crazy last month of summer, I was able to fit in an intensive class at the Pittsburgh Glass Center.  I won a juried partial scholarship to take a class of my choice - I had already signed up to take the intensive class JC Herrell was teaching, so yay!

JC making a demo bead

Intensive classes at the Pittsburgh Glass Center mean 5 full days, 9-5, of learning and making beads with an awesome lampworker.  Most people also stay later, up until 10pm if they wish.  I, however, can never do that.  By 5pm I am pretty much done!  I never (get to) make beads for an 8 hour day, and that's just too much for me!

JC's class was called Color, Form and Line.  If you don't know JC's beads, here's some examples:

These are the beads in my own personal collection; they were purchased quite a long time ago:

The class was about enamels, how to use them, how to form a great bead, and how to do that awesome stringer work! We learned how to make some of her signature beads, including a poppy bead, a waterlillies bead, a tree bead.  How to use the enamel sifter the correct way, how to make those lines. 

Our very first exercise was - make a bead that's in your head using enamels, lines etc.  Then at the end of the week, the last exercise was to make that bead again, using the skills that we've learned throughout the week.  Here are my first "head beads"!

What was I going for?  The symbol is a Japanese Torii gate.  The colors to me were Asian, and the form was to look like a Japanese lantern.  Unfortunately, I had to miss the very last class because I was going to Scotland, but I'll make a bead soon, in my new interpretation, and show you when I finish it!

Here are some examples of JC's beads and mine - wonder if you can tell the difference???

JC's Tree Bead and Starry Night Bead 

My tree bead - not too bad!

My Starry Night Bead - more starry than night...

 My fade beads - fading the enamel from light to dark/dark to light.  Trying to get the form.

My waterlillies bead - not great, but pretty good.  I'd use it for a fan pull!

All in all, I very much enjoyed this class. I almost never do stringer work, because I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, and if I can't finish my line without getting that "dot" at the end, I don't like it! But I think with the skills I learned from JC, I will try again. I very much enjoyed using the enamel sifter and some of the tips and tricks she gave us regarding making enamel stringer and how to get that fade or ombre look. I also very much appreciate the time it takes to get that perfectly formed bead - I learned a lot about taking my time and how to finish the ends of beads! I hope when I get time in the near future to put these skills to use!

Here's a bead I purchased for my daughter:

And how lucky am I?  I WON this bead in the raffle at the end of the class!

I haven't taken an intensive class at the Pittsburgh Glass Center for well over 6 years, and I'm glad I did.  In my next post, I'll be able to show you my work from a Polymer Clay class I am taking with Heather Powers at Andrew Thornton's place, Allegory Gallery!  I look forward to even more fun!

Susan Kennedy

Creating for Cosplay

It's no secret.  I love cosplay.  This weekend I'll be heading out to The Steampunk World's Fair for three days of creative cosplay fun!  I don't sew but I do enjoy making the jewelry for my costumes.  For this years SPWF, I've made the jewelry for two of my three outfits.

Necklace for the butterfly collector cosplay

I've been hanging on to this fabulous metal and resin butterfly pendant by Lynn Davis for several years.  Well, I'm bringing back and revamping my butterfly collector costume this year so I finally had the inspiration to work with this piece.  I added some citrine, coral, carnelian and Vintaj charms and chain to complete this necklace.  It will also look great paired with the leather butterfly cuff that Lindsay posted about yesterday!

Fit for a mermaid

The other outfit I needed jewelry for was my ocean/mermaid-inspired steampunk cosplay.  

Fabulous enamel focal by Gardanne Beads

I knew when I saw this enameled seashell in Anne's booth that I had to have it.  It matched portions of my costume perfectly!  I paired it with some porcelain Suburban Girl seashell charms, Swarovski pearls, faux coral branches and aquamarine rondelles.  

In addition to using art beads for my cosplay, I also like to spread the love by introducing art beads to people who might not know about them.  In 2013, I started hosting the trinket swap at SPWF.  Participants create steampunk-inspired wearable trinkets that we swap with one another.  The first year I created wearable porcelain gears.  Last year I made stoneware keyhole pendants.

Stoneware Keyhole Pendants

This year I decided that mustaches would be my theme.  

Porcelain greenware mustache charms

I found a 3-D printing service and had them create some mustache cutters in an assortment of sizes.  I thought the tiny size was the best fit for my trinkets so I made about 25 in porcelain.

Glazed but un-fired porcelain mustaches

These charms were glazed but un-fired at the time I wrote this post but I should be unloading them from the kiln sometime today.  After I inspect them, I'll add a jump ring and put them on a ball chain.  

I'm looking forward to swapping them on Saturday AND to introducing more people to the wonderful world of art beads!

Happy Beading!

Hot Glass Happenings....

 

So fifteen months ago I took delivery of an enameling to go on my Paragon Caldera kiln. I was off my feet with a broken ankle at the time so it got dumped in a corner in its box and ignored for an eternity. It's been out of the box for a while but still hasn't been used so this week I decided it was time to christen it. Since all kilns behave differently and because it I haven't done any enameling for well over two year a little test session seemed in order.

So I made myself some copper blanks and gave them a good scrub with an abrasive cleaner to make sure there were no traces of dirt or grease.

 

Then I counter enameled the backs of all the pieces - counter enameling balances out the stress on the enamel to stop it cracking or flaking and makes it stronger.

 

When I apply the enamel I raise the blanks off the bench using skewers which allows me to slip a palette knife underneath and transfer them to a firing trivet without having to touch them.

With curved or domed pieces I apply a holding agent (very dilute wallpaper paste) to stop the enamel sliding off and leave it to dry on top of the kiln.

These could have done with a slightly thicker application but that's what testing is all about,

With that done I moved onto the fun bit and started adding some colour to my pieces...lapiz blue for the bird and a blended red/orange.

Unfortunately, at this point I got engrossed and forgot to keep taking photo's at each stage - oops, sorry! After I fired the blue bird I added a layer of green enamel and used a sgraffito tool to create a wing pattern in the powdered enamel which shows up when the second layer melts,

I really like the abstract effect that came from laying multiple colours and firing together.

To add an  extra dimension I played with some other elements such as frit (crush mixed glass), stringer and pieces of cut glass.

With this piece a darker blue enamel was sieved lightly over the paler base coat and glass squares sat on top. The glass pieces melt more slowly than the enamel and slumps but leaves an interesting raised finish.

Here I used a transparent cinnamon enamel over a hammered blank and added frit and like th eglass pieces, the frit doesn't melt fully leaving a nice texture. I think perhaps the colours I chose were a bit too subtle and a stronger contrast between enamel and frit would have been better.

This last technique takes a bit of practice since it involves melting the glass stringers into the enamel and dragging a sgraffito tool across them while it's still molten and without cooking you hand! Since the door on the enameling collar is quite small I found this harder than in my old kiln with a full size door but a bit of practice will help that.

You can also see from the thick dark edges and the black flecks that this piece has been over-fired a bit. This is not necessarily a problem as it can produce interesting effects and as with ceramic glazes red and orange enamels are more prone to this.

So now I know how the new kiln performs and I've got may hand back in again I'm looking forward to developing this skill more. There are lots of other techniques for using enamel that I'd like to try and I will of course share them with you when I do.

Experimental Saturday - Enameling on Copper Metal Clay

If you know my work or read my posts, you know I love metal...especially copper...and enameling!  You also know I like to try new things.  A few months ago, after really, really, really wanting to give metal clay a go, I played a bit and then dove in head first and bought a kiln. At the time, I wanted to add an enameling collar to the kiln so that I could expand my repertoire even more with cloissonne and other kiln-enameling techniques, but it just wasn't in my budget then.

Fast forward...my birthday is in a couple weeks (Happy Birthday to me!!) and hubby asked me what I wanted...can you guess what I answered?  Exactly - that enameling collar!  Sadly, I don't have it yet...should be here by my birthday though and just be warned that I will be inundating you with more progress because I have been researching a lot of different enameling techniques.

But you know I am impatient, right?  I want to enamel metal clay now!  My only option right now is my beloved immersion method torch-firing, a la the lovely and talented Barbara Lewis.  Maybe that would be do-able.  I queried over on the Facebook Inspired Enameling group and got some advice.  Barbara shared that she had tried it on a finished bronze clay piece that a student brought to class and was unsuccessful. Hmm...I decided to see for myself!

Here are a few of my 1st copper clay babies...one must sacrifice for the greater good, right?

I won't bore you with the details.  Here are the after photos...

It started doing this as soon as I took it out of the flame.  The smaller one I tried a 2nd time with the same results.

This sad one lasted a  little bit longer :(

Just look at those gorgeous color combos...in flakes on the paper!  I do have to admit that they are still sort of cool...perhaps salvageable!

So, in hindsight, I think one of the biggest factors in why this was an epic fail was that metal clay is more porous than actual metal sheet.  I also fired these pieces in the most straight-ahead program included in the clay's instruction packet.  I now know that there is a special firing program for enameling pieces in the kiln, so it would follow that maybe that would also apply to torch-firing them...maybe!

As for kiln enameling on metal clay...there are artists out there making gorgeous art.  I thought I would share a few with you...

Robbin Bowler is an artist/designer who creates sweet birds and other whimsical jewelry designs from CopperClay that has been enameled in a kiln.  Love these!

Pam East is a prolific artist who has written several books and tutorials  on enameling metal clay.

Gorgeous copper clay and enamel pendant.

Hadar Jacobson is well known in the metal clay world, not only as an artist, designer, and author, but the inventor of  Hadar's Clay.

Last on today's list, but definitely one of my favorites and one of the artists whose work really inspired me to want to work in metal clay, is Wanaree Tanner.  She breaks down creating this gorgeous piece, as well as many others, step-by-step on her blog.

Obviously not copper, but, HELLO? Gorgeous!

So, get ready for more metal clay and enamel from me...not going to let my little failures get me down! Now, off to bed with me since I will be getting out bright and early to drive over to BeadFest to do some shopping and visit with some of my team members here and other online friends...maybe you?!

Melissa Meman

Melismatic Art Jewelry

Art. Life. Love.