Two Aren't Enough

Why make one armadillo when two will do?  Why make two when you can make a herd of them?

You've seen my bulletin board, how about one of my favorite shelf spots?

Those little skulls do get used sometimes. This (the moon shape) was one of my first attempts at sawing into metal stuff.  Susan had to physically restrain me from polishing it up and sure enough, she was right - the patina it has developed is perfect.

Student Holiday Art Sale

Tomorrow is the Austin Community College Student Holiday Art Sale.  I'll be selling lots of birdies and pots - over 70 pieces.  Stop by if you are in Austin:  Rio Grande Student Lounge, 1212 Rio Grande Ave, Austin, TX, Thursday, December 3, from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

I'll also be selling some of the jewelry pendants I've made.

No, I'm Still Not Kidding

Austin likes to claim its city motto as "Keep Austin Weird".  Thanks to Buzz Lightyear the motto stays in place.

Moving along, I made a "guy" bracelet and some chain stuff at AdornMe earlier this year.

I don't know what this piece is for but I sure had fun making it.

When I go to jewelry classes I have to bring a lot of my own tools. I carefully made sure all my tools would never get mixed up with anyone else's.  Susan just scribbles her initials on her stuff but hey, I'm a artist.

AdornMe

 

Catching up, I went to AdornMe in Houston.  Consequently I have been fiddling with jewelry stuff instead of working with clay. Or as we call it in Texas in my classes, "mud daubing".

I make lots of pieces that I envision as wall sculpture because Susan doesn't wear jewelry -- too many years of hearing her mother say "Be sure you don't lose that if you wear it!" Sad because I'd like to see some of my pieces on her but good because she doesn't spend money on jewelry. Or shoes. Or clothes. How did I get so lucky? But books....

 

The piece below needs some alcohol ink on the white wrapping to change its color. I have no idea why I used white (it was a class freebie) but I do know I specifically wanted that eye in the middle.

 

This last piece isn't mine - it's EJ Brown's, a fellow student. Way cool skull necklace (made from spoons).

ArtUnraveled - April Bower's Class

 

I'd like to claim all of these as mine but noooo, they are all made by April Bower.  The class I took from her was "Reticulated Bi-Metal Bracelet" - the bi-metal was sterling bonded to copper or to brass so it's different on each side. The lower right bracelet in the picture above is an example of the edges folded and formed over so you see the contrast in the material.  But first we practiced on just plain copper -- shaping and forming and then applying patina.

 

Here's one of my bracelets, start to finish, marking, texturing, folding, shaping, patina:

 

 

 

 

And the final product:

 

 

Here's another bracelet I made in her class:

 

 

And finally, here's the bi-metal bracelet that I finished up the day with.  We move fast at ArtUnraveled and April makes sure we get our money's worth.  She'll be teaching at Art Retreat in the Desert next year and I might be going to that.

 

 

There will be more to come from our ArtUnraveled classes but I can't make the Blog Wrangler move any faster -- she insists she has library books to read and return and that we have 2 Netflix DVDs that have been waiting for us for nearly a month. We did watch "The Company You Keep" with Robert Redford. (Susan speaks: Time has not been kind to that man and he probably should have used more sunscreen when he was younger.) Only 3 stars for that one. Last night we watched "21 Jump Street" - silly and improbable and just easy watching - 4 stars for not being overdone with ponderous themes and special effects.

 

We don't get to our Netflix DVDs as fast as we used to because I'm hooked on too many TV shows: The Last Ship, The Strain (gross!), Major Crimes, Legends, and my favorite, The Tyrant. 



Adorn Me

I went to AdornMe in Houston a few weeks ago. When I first heard about it I thought it was called "Adore Me" and couldn't figure out how that went with jewelry making but thought I could probably get a lot of attention there since it's mostly women attending.

Unfortunately, most of the attention I get is because
1) I need a lot of help and
2) I bring a lot of tools to share.

I've taken great classes from people like Richard Salley and Thomas Mann and for the first time, from Mary Hettmansperger.  The piece above is from one of Mary's classes, a small copper pendant made with a technique using black gesso and silver embossing powder.

 

 

 

I'm not sure what will happen to all these class samples but I'm thinking they will get incorporated into larger pieces that will become small wall sculptures. Or become jewelry for the Little Dudes.
Or become Give-Aways, hung with invisible fishing line from a tree or bush. Or, given my tendency to schedule too much for myself, will just get tossed in a drawer.  Susan tells me that when I die she's going to pay for my funeral by advertising a big "Stuff Sale" where people will pay a fee to pick through all the drawers of my stuff. She figures she'll make enough to put me in the ground and then do her grieving in Tahiti. Cold woman!

Still mapping.

AdornMe and Rudie

I was supposed to take doo-dad stuff to AdornMe to make into jewelry. I never know what that means but usually what happens is that I never use my stuff because I learn how to make new and different doo-dads.  Above is what I took.  Below is part of what I actually learned how to make.  Eventually I'll have more to show you.

One of my classmates was very talented Liz from Chicago.

And of course my good buddy Janis was there. She concentrates very hard. She also raises chickens when she isn't making jewelry.

Just to keep my life really scrambled I do both jewelry and ceramics.  Rudie has gone to the gallery.

Amulet for Peace

Let's make a bullet into something beautiful and take away its destructive ability. When I was at ArtUnraveled I took Melissa Manley's Amulet for Peace class and my effort (almost finished) is shown above.  This is what Melissa's piece looked like:

An old friend, Jeanie Thorn, wound up sitting next to me in class. I always like going back to ArtUnraveled and connecting with other artists and crafters and just relaxing and making stuff.

Susan speaks: He has waaaaay too much fun. Sometimes I watch him interact with other people and I wonder "Who IS this person?"

Adorn Me: Resin Paper and Carol and The End

You might be tired of seeing my Adorn Me stuff but I keep having people tell me "Why don't you show what you did?". So I am. And this is the end of it. For another year, anyway.

The picture above is of me, Carol Wingfield Myers and Richard Salley, our instructor. Carol is the pretty one, I'm the amazingly handsome one and Richard is just in there trying to suck up our glory.  Below is another picture of Carol and below that a picture of her repoussé piece (she's a fast worker!). Carol sent me these pictures for my blog, which I appreciate immensely. She also gave me a beautiful card that shows her Facebook address (her full name).

My final class was a short workshop with Jane Salley, Resin Papers.  Go back here and scroll to the last photo and you'll see how Rene used pieces of the resined paper. The resin makes them stiff and shiny, almost like thin pieces of mica. Susan has already appropriated most of the ones I made.

P.S. I'm not in Facebook and therefore don't have a Facebook account so I am not able to see 99% of the Facebook pages people tell me about as they require a Login to Facebook. I appreciate the need to keep Facebook viewing limited to "Friends" and I'd like to think I'm your Friend but I can't be your Facebook Friend and see what you do since I don't have a Facebook account and I don't really want one, thank you. How about if I'm just your Friend in the real world?

Adorn Me - Repoussé Without Pitch

These pictures are from Richard Salley's Repoussé Without Pitch class. We didn't use pitch and I have no idea what pitch is and why you would use it anyway -- I guess Ignorance is Bliss for me. Repoussé means you shape the metal from the backside to make raised areas on the front side. We then could assemble the shaped pieces into pendants but most of us just kept working on our small pieces to get the technique down. The bright colors came from the torching of the copper and most of us were using the tools we had made in his previous toolmaking class.

The picture above is one of my pieces and so is this one right below, which Susan calls "Man with Creative Atomic Fart". 

 

The following pictures are from just a few of my classmates and I took the pictures early in the day so they don't really show the finished product. But at least you can get an idea of how good we all were!

 

 Julia Morrison, using silver mesh on her piece

 Brenda McCoy

 Kelly Schroeder

 Martina Stein

 Laura Henry

 Rob McDonald

Sally Turlington

 

This last photo shows one of Richard's pieces so you can get an idea of how the finishing of the piece could go.