Modular Art Jewelry - Mixing it Up

One of the best ways to shake up your approach to design, and to make sure you're not "carpeting your rut", is to mix up your materials. Working with a totally different medium forces you to rethink other aspects of your usual designs. So, what about wire? Not as a connecting medium, but as a design, a focal element.

 

Now let's try out the Modular Art Connections:

Looking at this I see a wee bird inside (yes, the doors open up) sitting on a perch, one (or maybe 3) tiny eggs hanging from the bottom loop and a nest sitting on top. Or maybe the nest should hang from the bottom loop with the eggs inside. What do you think?

Going on a Dig - Want to Come Along?

I love excavations, especially really old excavations. I think it goes back to grade school when the King Tut exhibition came to the Montreal Museum and our school arranged a field trip to see it. It wasn't so much that I wanted to wear the gorgeous necklaces and armbands excavated from that Egyptian "dig", but I wanted the thrill of being the first one to brush carefully at the surface dirt and see the glimmer of treasure just beneath my hands. To hold my breath, steady my hand and exercise excruciating patience so that I could carefully uncover the artifacts and lift them, undamaged, to light. To study every detail of these ancient artistic works would have brought me great delight. I think those memories spur a great portion of my passion for creating neo-artifacts. Ok, I can't brush away the detritous of centuries of time, but I can do my best to make it look like I have!

Meet la Llàgrima Celeste. She was unearthed from an imaginary dig in Chichen Itza. From the wealth of the jewels and metals included nearby I have to conclude that she was an influential figure in her time, and from the art materials in the vicinity, I also imagine that she was an artist.

Her backdrop suggests the lush surroundings of her habitat, the linear architecture of the advanced culture at that time and the adornment of an opulent, peaceful era. With thought of Modular Art Jewelry, her attachments allow me to easily suspend her from one of several neckchains.

Designing with Modular Art Jewelry in Mind: Letting your Imagination Flow

The beauty of creating jewelry with Modular Art connections in mind is that a huge part of the design process is already taken care of, leaving you free to create the focal component uninhibited by potential design roadblocks. So dragons, bird skulls, sketches, surface designs, imitative techniques, primitive, abstract, art deco, wherever your creative process leads you that day can be easily incorporated into a piece of fine art jewelry. Here is another focal element used with the same attachment as the last two. This one evokes the New Mexico desert - bleached bird skull enhanced with metal and faux feathers, steampunked with watch gears.

 

Click on any image to see a larger picture.

Making Modular Art Jewelry - Another One

This one is so simple, yet looks so elegant. There are many different ways to make this piece - faux scrimshaw, tearaway technique, etc. and the designs can be planned ahead and transferred onto the clay so you know exactly what you're doing, but I love the "process" and this lets the process unfold gradually. It's basically like doodling, but with a v-gauge instead of pen and pencil. Just make a sheet of ivory (white + translucent +smidge brown +smidge yellow). Stack two thick pieces together. Cut a shape out. Bake flat. When cool, start carving out lines and patterns. Then antique with your favorite (acrylic/oil/shoe polish in burnt umber/black/raw umber/burnt sienna). When dry, sand to reveal clean ivory and the stained pattern. You now have a pendant that is your own unique work of art  Design the connections with Modular Art Jewelry in mind and you can switch it with the pendant shown in yesterday's blog.

Modular Art Jewelry - More Thoughts on Components

The whole idea is multi-function, convertible jewelry that simplifies and minimizes purchase expense. In other words, why pay for all kinds of neckwires when a few will do, as long as the "business" part of the necklace (pendant, artwork, etc.) is interchangeable. All that is required is to rethink the traditional clasp. Here is a short copper chain with two ornate clasps.

Now let's look at a pendant designed with components in mind.

Connected to the chain it looks like this:

Over the next few days I'll present more pieces with interchangeable connections.

I Lied - or, How to Begin the Process of Creating

No, Wendell didn't start the ball rolling, his talon did!!!

In exploring peyote stitch beading I made my first dragon's talon and that led to Wendell. Since everything I look at, touch, sniff, hear and smell somehow segues into modular art and connections, the Talon evoked the idea of grasping, grasping what? I have a passion for smokey quartz, so I'm thinking, hmmmmm, beads, gemstones, precious metal, hand sculpted fine art, original attachments - many of them! Many combinations! Many options! And so it began........ Modular - it has to be convertible - necklace to bracelet in different permutations and combinations. Here is one possibility:

Three smokey quartz bracelets, strung on wire, sterling silver Hill Tribe beads, sterling silver spacers, beaded loops, sterling hook clasp:

Hooked the other end they form a bracelet:

What else can they be?

Another strand of smokey quartz, crystal spacers, handmade sterling silver clasp - a beautiful choker, also, double wrapped around the wrist, another bracelet. What else?

Add one bracelet strand - a beautiful opera length necklace. Or.....

Add the second bracelet strand - a slightly different necklace. Or....

Add the third bracelet strand - again a different necklace. Or...



How about two bracelet strands? Or...

What about all three? Or...

Let's fit Wendell in there, and then.....

Let's balance it with his talon on the other side. A closer look at these two components:

The Talon holding the three bracelet strands

Wendell

Now let's move things around a bit:

The Talon on the same side with Wendell

A close-up

No bracelet strands or talon

Wendell dangling choker style

The Talon hanging from Wendell's precious sterling hoop

a close-up

I ran into some difficulties in this wonderfully convoluted process and I'll share these with you next time, detailing what changes had to be made and how it ended up.



Modular Art Jewelry: How to Create and Connect Unique Component Jewelry

I'm obsessed! I now know where the term "dumb blonde" came from. These days I fit the profile to a "T"! Anyone sitting across from me on the Metro, or at a cafe table would come to the same conclusion - vacuous stare, mouth slightly open, oblivious to noise and visual input, no visible "plugged-in" paraphernalia - yep, she must be a dumb blonde...........duh, not! I'm deep in my head, connecting and reconnecting components, creating focal elements, stringing, attaching, dangling, embellishing, engineering, designing and composing. I should be sketching these things out then people would know what's happening, but I don't have time - these ideas have been percolating, gestating for a long time and I can no more stop the flow than the tide!!!

Over the next couple of weeks I'll present individual components and connections and then we'll play around with variable arrangements and compositions. I'll give you a look into my "dumb blondeness", ie. the process that leads me to these ideas since this, to me, is the essence of creativity - the "process". I much prefer NOT knowing what I will end up with when I start. It can be very disconcerting, at times downright painful, but the reward comes as the piece evolves and you see your own creative process unfolding before you. My process working with polymer and metal is remarkably consistent with that inherent in my abstract paintings (see http://www.vickieturnerart.blogspot.com/). Input and comments are always welcomed.

Meet Wendell. I never thought I could be a sculptor, but Leslie Blackford showed me differently. Thanks to her, the name emerges first, becoming the structure upon which the personality grows, followed by the physical features. Wendell is shy, a bit geeky, like me, blinged-out with pearls and a swarovski crystal (tastefully, of course) clutching a precious find, a sterling hoop, a secret treasure to bring back to the lair to explore and delight in, to ponder, to create with. Christi Friesen's quirky dragons lay eggs that hatch in my imagination with curious regularity, testimony to the fact that part of me will always dream of mythical sagas, of adventure and mystery, imagined creatures and universes, more creative material. Wendell becomes the first creative part of this process. His hoop directing the next line of creative thought.

WENDELL - PART 1