Creative Process: Birth of the Flamenco Collection - Mining a Vein

As mentioned before, the seeds of future work often lie in what you've just done. Having finished the Urban Urchin necklace, patterns and shapes keep my mind ablaze.

The beginning of the new Flamenco Collection, born from this little element in the Urban Urchin necklace.

This red ruffle is like the skirt of a beautiful flamenco dancer set against the black of her hair and her lace shawl - you can almost feel the movement. Problems have arisen that push forward, uninvited, demanding to be pushed further. The strength of polymer, properly supported - how thin and delicate can it go?

This prototype is the beginning of the new line. I'll be exploring this concept over the next while. You're welcome to eavesdrop on my thoughts and add some of your own.

Step by Step Assembly of Urban Urchin Beads

This is a slightly different way of wiring beads and assembling them into a pair of earrings. It goes along with my views on "the mark of the artist", i.e. not being perfect.

These beads are hollow and there is no "top" to them, so they can slide around a bit on the wire. I have pattern around the entire surface of some of them, but others are fairly plain in back and I would like them to sit relatively deliberately positioned. A little ingenuity is required to wire them. Follow me:

I'm using 20 gauge blackened steel and brass wires.

Shape the blackened steel wire as per the upper image and the following close-ups, making sure to put the curve into the shorter end as shown,

 Loosely wrap the brass wire around the neck of the blackened steel as shown below:

Carefully tuck the end into the wrapping:

Insert the wire assembly into the bead and slowly push it in. The curved piece should be fairly tight as it creates tension and holds the bead in place. If it is too big a curve, snip a bit off the end until it goes in without distorting the bead yet holding it in place. The loosely woven brass wire will sit slightly into the hollow top.

Add the brass spacer bead and coil up the wire from the bottom, as shown. Consider how the beads will hang at the end. If from a necklace, I place the coil at right angles to the bail end so the coil faces to the side. If from earrings, with no jump ring between, I place the coil on the same plane as the bail. Make sure the image you want facing forward is in the right position when you are pushing the tension wire down into the bead.

If you are concerned about the blackened steel rusting at all down the road you can put some Renaissance wax on the exposed wire.

Urban Urchins - Graffiti

Some of you have noticed that the ivory beads included in the Urban Urchins beads did not show up in the Urban Urchins necklace. That was a choice. I felt the ivory was so strong that it dominated the other beads. It's like painting or writing - sometimes there are more paintings or stories in your idea than just one! So I narrowed down the selection in the Urban Urchins necklace, thereby simplifying a very busy design somewhat, and leaving me with more beads to add to the collection, and here it is:

Urban Urchins - Graffiti

This design brings us back to designing jewelry with Modular Art Jewelry connections in mind, so this piece is detachable, and can be worn at any length, just by changing the Modular chain. Not only that, the entire look of the piece can be affected just by the choice of metal in the chain or material, using buna, leather, cotton, even ribbon.

I also love how kinetic these pieces are, moving in all directions freely. The art on these beads is original, my linework, carving these beads as I carve stamps to use in my paintings, having no preconceived ideas about what will appear, just letting the process flow - gestural - one stroke leading to another.



Designing the Urban Urchin Necklace

Much as I love the bunched up "urchin" look of the beads posted on the buna cord last week, I'm not sure if I'm ready to present something that avant garde to the buyer. It's trendy, but would have a more limited customer base. This is still different and trendy, but is more traditional and thus more commercial. I think this will be an interesting design to play with, especially in line with the Modular Art Jewelry we worked with last month. The main difference here is that I've placed spacer beads between the Urchin beads so they don't bunch up. This could be designed so the individual beads could be slipped off, the spacer beads removed, and the more dimensional and "bunched up" look could be an alternative.

I'd love to get your input.

The Mark of the Artist

Urban Urchins: obsession continues:

Associated Sketch Book Pages - more stream of consciousness: visual and verbal

The Mark of the Artist:



The following are the views and opinions of this artist. They do not claim to reflect the philosophies of anyone else, past, present, or future, although there may be others of the same ilk.

There is a constant struggle between the right brain and the left brain (no politics intended - overtly or covertly!) in artistic endeavors. One overanalyses, oversimplifies and overasserts itself while the other walks merrily into the rabbit hole, oblivious to anything other than the rabbit hole. Feed into that mix the desire of an artist to be accepted, approved of, even championed plus the fact that many of those who play the role of acceptor, approver and champion are unaware that the rabbit hole even exists and you have more cause for creative angst. I'm speaking about perfection vs imperfection in art.

Volumes have been written on this and there is still no consensus on which has more merit, so I'm voicing my personal opinion. I like to see the mark of the artist in any given work of art. Although technical skill of great degree is required to produce perfection, such as photoreal paintings or perfect sculptures, etc., it does not intrique me. It does not draw me in. It does not make me wonder about the artist who created it. It does not get me thinking about possibilities or potentials or reasons or.........in other words, it does not engage me, and to me, art is a collaborative endeavor - the artist creates it and the viewer responds in some way, thus completing the act of creation. Otherwise why ever present a work of art? Why not just put it in a back room to be seen only by its creator?

Because of this I make a point of slapping my wrist when I labour over a piece trying to make it perfect. I have to literally remind myself that I LIKE to see imperfection. I LOVE to see the mark of the artist, whether a piece of hair, a partial fingerprint, an uneven seam or whatever. Stepford wives don't interest me at all, but our culture and our era is obsessed with obliterating our individualism. Many of the younger generation rebel against this and, in adopting some form of societally unacceptable behavior end up spawning a group of neoclones all sporting the same "difference". The flaw in a work of art connects me with the artist who created the piece, and so my question to myself while creating is, "could this be made by a machine that would produce 10,000 just like it?"

I'd love to get your comments.

Urban Urchins - The Creative Process Unfolds

I've been exploring different surface designs and now I have enough to see how they look together.

Close-ups of the individual pieces.

I'll do a total of 50 and see what effect it gives.

Urban Urchins - Designing Interesting Beads

Creative process - one concept leads to another....and to another........
These hollow beads offer a wonderful exercise in surface design..... not getting any sleep!

The Creative Process - Visual Stream of Consciousness

So often the seeds of future creations lie in current work. One of the best ways of revealing that seed is to go as deep as you can into the current process. Often verbal cues can stimulate visual creativity, but so can visual cues. Stream of consciousness - the act of letting one word lead to another word, rapidly, uncensored, undirected, can reveal very interesting clues to connections between thoughts. The same can work with visual stream of consciousness. Starting from your current visual focus, let your mind wander and draw/sketch the first thing that comes to mind. Responding to that sketch, sketch the next visual and so on. Work quickly and try to not direct your thoughts but rather focus on responding.
Here is how it happens for me:
In working out more ideas from the Pegasus necklace:

After surface design ideas come shape ideas:

Then come ideas for connections:

And now I'm zeroing in on a shape and a connection:

Add surface design ideas and the mind is ablaze!
(please ignore the blue cast to the photo - image was taken outside in north light, early this am, so, lots of blue. I'll take  better photos as this journey continues)

Urban Urchin Collection

The new Urban Urchin Collection is created and I have so many ideas exploding in my brain I literally can't sleep!