Wine Country Tessellated Necklace and Bracelet

The Wine Country necklace is finished. It proved a challenge since I wanted the kaleidoscope beads to not rotate and therefore made two channels for stringing. The round beads only have one hole, so the challenge was to find appropriate accent beads that would gradually channel into the one hole beads. A close-up view is below:

click on images to see larger versions

The clasp is also handmade, from coated brass wire:

The co-ordinating bracelet will be auctioned off in the ARCAC fund-raiser tonight and is pictured below:

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below. 

The Sand Sweeper - Completed

The Sand Sweeper, version #1

The Sand Sweeper, version #2

As an abstract artist, one thing I sometimes struggle with is getting too literal. This unfolding saga has exacerbated this problem, especially if I name a piece before it is completed. I then agonize over making the piece fit the title. With this one I had partially built the vessel and hung a "tassel" from the keel, including the "brush" and the quartz crystal, and this had led to the name.

Now, how to complete it! I got stuck until I got frustrated and angry (ok, I got mad!!) and that's when I'm able to throw caution to the wind and just play "what if?"

I find I tend to set problems for myself, simply because I get a lot of satisfaction from solving problems. In this piece I had created a very strong asymmetry. With jewelry one has to establish not just visual balance but also physical balance - you don't want this thing swinging around as you walk and hanging on an angle, especially since I had restrained the asymmetry with very symmetrical links going up to the neck. The kinetic (yes, it spins) polymer clay "wheel" sitting at the stern of the vessel increased the "weight" on the left side, but continued the visual line up from the tassel, so it "felt" good there. 

I needed considerable physical weight to balance the right, also I needed something relatively dark and not too small to balance the visual weight. I chose a large fossilized shark's tooth, discovered on a beach in Ponte Vedra, Florida, during one of many times my family exiled me to the beach to dispel my depressive episodes (I have over 6,000 shark's teeth! Maybe that says a lot about my state of mind at that time! See, I need the beach - it keeps me sane!)

The effect was that of an anchor, but it created a problem - it visually takes your eye down rather than up to the face, and that's not good in jewelry.

Furthermore, the piece hung too low for such a relatively large focal point, so I enlisted the eye of a fellow artist (my younger daughter - I knew all the difficulties of raising children would pay off someday!) and the decision was made that the piece had to hang higher, which meant the two mokume gane beads had to go. 

The shark's tooth "anchor" was exchanged for a heavy, dark glass bead bracketed by two heavy copper endcaps to bring the eye up on the right.

The three white seaworm casings  with swarovski crystals at the tips are very kinetic and also move along the black wire, creating a strong, light focal area as well as eye-catching movement. They also add a feeling of fragility to an otherwise substantial piece.

Detailed images follow:

 

Gamla : The Saga Continues

Back home, house is listed for sale, you could definitely say my trip to the beach was eventful! We're moving - to the ocean. I guess you can only keep a Norwegian away from salt water, seaweed, wind, sand and smoked mackerel for so long before she starts to shrivel and become nasty!!! So, the excellent adventure continues. It probably explains the sea-related sagas that have taken up room and board in my head.

The Troll from the Tre Bukkene Bruse Book Bracelet 

thatch-roofed house

the complete bracelet with the oldest Billy Goat Gruff

The bridge under which the troll lives

the book

More characters have appeared and I'll introduce them as they develop.

Gamla (The Olden One): More feared than the Krakken, more terrifying than Surt, the Fire Giant, Gamla sits in her rocking chair, wizened and shrunken. A mountain of pillows add nothing to her diminutive size and the heavy blankets do little to keep the cold from chilling her bones. No one is sure of just how deep her knowledge of the olden ways goes, or of how far reaching her inner sight. None call her kin, yet none dare to send her away.

Gamla stretched out a gnarled hand, gripping my arm with surprising strength. Her skin like thin parchment stretched over a bony frame with veins dancing beneath the surface like swollen worms pulsing with life. Her years stretched thin: her body a frail 4 stone, her will - iron! Fierce determination gleamed in her eye. She had lost none of her passion. "You must tell the story, Anne-Brit!" she rasped. "It cannot end with me, for then there will be no escaping the fjaerning! " Gamla coughed and wiped some spittle from her lip, "Someone must keep watching" she hissed. "Call The Gatherer." Closing her eyes she seemed to shrink into the blankets, dismissing Anne-Brit with a deep sigh.

Liv tugged urgently at her mother's skirt. Anne-Brit was white as the lace on her blouse. "Mama, what was she talking about?" she asked, fearful as much for the look on her mother's face as for the words she had just heard. "I don't know, child...... I don't know." Her mother's voice was low. "Is she a troll?" Liv's words drew a quick glance from her mother. "Don't be rude, child." she admonished. Liv couldn't stop, "But she looks just like a troll with that one big eye glaring at me like that," she muttered.

to be continued.......

The Sand Sweeper

As is so often the case these days, I'm obsessed. This time it's The Sand Sweeper. Perhaps it's this time in my life that has me dreaming and imagining - no, I guess I've been doing that since the day I could put together two coherent thoughts. The storyteller has been awakened. The one who thought she could only say it visually, through her paintings, is now streaming words. These vignettes seem to end in cliff-hanging anticipation and I realize, finally, that it is because they are related. They are all fragments of a larger picture, an epic Edda/Rune/Skald that has been percolating for quite a while. I look forward to each segment revealing itself, and then, to the angst of bringing them all together.

Here is the beginning of the next character - The Sand Sweeper:

The Sand Sweeper walks the beach in the grey of the early morning, as the spray from the roiling surf shrouds the driftwood in glittering capes of moisture. She studies the sand, looking for disturbances in the patterns traced by the sea nymphs. These she sweeps urgently back into the relentless waves, doing her part to ensure that the balance between sea and land is maintained, that Gjettling won't be disturbed.

"I saw her this morning, Mama!"
"Who did you see, child?"
"The Sand Sweeper! I saw her but she didn't know I was watching."
"How do you know she didn't see you, child?"
"Because she was making strange motions with her hands and singing and then she started sweeping very hard". Liv's voice dropped to a whisper, "and, besides, I was hiding" she breathed. Mama smiled, "Maybe your were dreaming. The sunsprites often play games with young children in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze helps lull then to sleep."
"No Mama, it was real! I know it was her! She looked just the way you told me when you read me the poems from the Northern Skalds. She was tall with long, silver hair. Wisps of foam clung to the strands and crystals were twined in between, crystals that made song!"
Her mother turned sharply towards Liv, "what do you mean: the crystals made song?"
Startled, Liv looked at her mother, "I don't know how to explain it, Mama. There was a beautiful sound in my head and I knew it came from the crystals and I knew the melody and I knew the words and I was singing the song - I just knew it...... somehow."
Anne-Brit's breath caught in her throat. "She saw you," she whispered. "She knew you were watching!"
Grabbing her daughter's arms and pulling her close, Anne-Brit demanded, "This is important, Liv. Tell me everything you remember."
Liv's beautiful, hazel eyes grew large with fear as she looked at her mother..........

Unfinished

Burlesque Blend - More Color Variations

In preparation for the final workshop this coming weekend, here are a few more color variations. These are less dramatic, but very elegant. When exploring a particular technique, keeping certain design elements similar, really helps you to see the impact of the elements that you are experimenting with. In this case, the shape of the bead and the shape of the "path" are similar and this makes it easier to concentrate on color.

Pretty in Pink

More Burlesque Blend pieces as I prepare to teach these upcoming workshops (yes, I'm anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive!) The interesting thing about this particular colour combination is how beautiful it looks on all types of skin. Pasty-white or deeply-tanned, this just glows.

The design in this piece works well for me. The asymmetry of the pattern in the focal piece keeps the necklace from becoming boringly symmetrical; the large amount of pink in the two pieces flanking either side of the focal element draw the eye away from the middle and up towards the face; the next two flanking pieces, with the diagonal patterning moving diagonally down and out stop the eye from leaving and pulls it back to the central elements.

The finishing details often get neglected because one gets so focused on the clay technique. In this case, although the pink is very cool, suggesting silver would be a good accompaniment, the metallic sparkle in the 3 central pieces is more muted and casts a bit of a gold tint, which knocks back the colour intensity in the polymer and also allows me to choose spacer crystals that are metallic gold-tone with a hint of pink interference. These crystals are flanked on each side by an oblong, faceted black crystal and this combination really enhances the sparkling feel of this piece.

To finish off the necklace, round black agates are used instead of crystals, keeping the focus in the main polymer area and providing a very comfortable feel on the neck. Notice, though, that it is not just a bland, monotonous strand of beads. These agates are broken up periodically with a pink/gold interference tube seed bead, again adding interest, but not detracting from the main attraction.





I'm working out more colour combinations for variety for the students. It's not logistically feasible to structure a workshop so every student can choose every element, but colour is very personal, and where possible, I like to provide that choice while maintaining limits on size, shape, pattern, etc., as seen here:

Mokume Gane

I just finished my babysitting gig and I must admit - 3 young boys (my grandsons) wear you out!!! I had 2 girls and they were emotionally draining, but boys - let's just say I need about a week's bedrest!

My last post detailed the cane I made from the scrap left over from my first attempts at mokume gane, 18 years ago. The slices from the mokume gane stack that I demoed turned out so well I made some beads from them. As you can see, even this primitive form of mokume gane yields some nice results.

The key with mokume gane is CONTRAST. That's a very important design principle. To me it's one of the most important. If I show you a sheet of white paper what would you see? Probably not much. However, if I put two black dots and a larger black triangle between and below them, you could see that it obviously is a picture of a polar bear in a snowstorm :-)

The point is that the white defines the black and the black defines (or "informs" as some purists put it) the white. There are many design elements that can be manipulated to provide contrast: shape (organic vs geometric), line (thick vs thin), texture (smooth vs rough), colour (hue, saturation (pure vs dull), temperature (warm vs cool), value (light vs dark), just to mention a few.

Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing my experimentation with mokume gane and give a few tips on my way of doing this amazing technique.

The Wind Whisperer

The Wind Whisperer

No more Mr. Nice Guy, or should I say, no more "pretty" stuff. I'm caught up in imagery and story-telling and that's going to be the focus for the foreseeable future. It's like with my paintings - I'm drawn to old (no, not I AM old, I'm DRAWN to old!!!), slightly grungy, stuff with history or herstory or, at the least, a story. The more illusory, the better - more like sagas and runes and eddas - stories with lots of word-of-mouth distortions that may or may not be true, yet spin emotional realities in the unfolding. "Unfolding", "enfolding"... yummy words that keep me awake at night spinning verbal visuals that I find enthralling. So... jumping in with both feet, hairy and grungy, but excited to take the next steps.

The first birth: The Wind Whisperer. She sits quietly on the rocky outcrop, gazing raptly through the fir boughs for glimpses of star-strewn sky, the black velvet of night like a warm caress. Can't let the moment enfold her - there are stirrings by the bridge! The wind teases wisps of hair across her forehead. "I hear her", she whispers, "She's awake!" The soughing rises and branches punctuate the symphony with their brittle talk.
"Hush," the Wind Whisperer cautions, "The time is not right, not yet!"

This piece will walk with you through the moss-coated trees and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear the breath of a soft whisper.

The important thing for me in these pieces is that most of it be of my imagination. Except for the odd glass or stone bead, when that bright bit of glimmer becomes essential, the remaining oddments and fragments and antiquities and relics are made by me from polymer clay, metal, and an assortment of mixed media. The shapes are important, as is their arrangement. I'm still figuring out what's gestating here. I'll say more when more unfolds.

A few close-ups:

 

Planning Ahead

When designing a specific piece, such as the commissioned necklace for a wedding last summer, consider making more beads than you need. That way, if a couple don't look that great, you can choose the best ones, or you have left-over beads for making matching earrings, or, for designing a totally different piece, as you see here. The two side beads were left over from the original necklace, and the focal spiral lentil bead was made from the left-over scrap.

Finished Scrap Clay Lentil Beads

Here is the final product, sanded 1,000, 1,200 and 1,500, then buffed on the foredom. You can see how beautifully the edges retain their colour and contribute to the spiral pattern.