Hammer Organiztion

It is a gorgeous morning here in Eastern North Carolina and I am loving my new studio space which I am still in the process of organizing.  Most important to me is keeping tools accessible and one of my favorite new organizers isn’t new at all – it is an antique milk crate turned upside down to keep my hammers within reach and it works great!  I love this studio, it has lots of natural light and has great flow.  Still making work for my Tributaries show at the Metal Museum and loving it all the more in my new digs!

A Shrine for Elsie

Teaching at Haystack July 31 – August 12!

I am super excited to be teaching for the first time at Haystack, and in this class students will create jewelry and a shrine/display infused with personal meaning.  The shrine will serve as a home for the jewelry to reside in while not being worn.  I expect amazing things to happen in this two-week session. http://www.haystack-mtn.org/

This past September I currated a show, ‘Tin: The Element of Surprise’ for the Edwardsville Art Center.   As the name suggests, the unifying element connecting the artists in the show is the use of repurposed tin cans in their work.  This was an exciting project for me because ever since I laid eyes on Bobby Hansson’s book, ‘The Fine Art of the Tin Can’ I thought it would be amazing to see a show dedicated to artists working with this material.

Tin cans are covered with color, images and text designed to lure and entice us to purchase the products they contain.  However, once the product is consumed, the can has served its intended purpose and it is considered refuse.   For the artists in this exhibition tin containers are an irresistible material and besides their decorative exteriors, they are appealing because of what they say about us as consumers referencing culture, time, politics and taste.  These references can be manipulated in an infinite number of ways to create new meaning in relationship to form and while recycling is not the focus of this exhibition it does illuminate what can be done when creative and intelligent thinking are applied to post-consumer materials.

If you didn’t get a chance to see this show at the Edwardsville Arts Center in Edwardsville, Illinois, it will travel to three additional venues:  Montana State University, in Bozeman, Montana where it will be on display in the Helen Copeland Gallery through December 2010.  Next it will travel to East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina and will run concurrently with their annual metals symposium through January 2011. http://ecusymposium.wordpress.com/ The next stop is at the College of the Albemarle in Manteo, North Carolina and will be the inaugural show in their new gallery space set to run from mid February through March 2011.

Artists include:  Bobby Hansson, J. Fred Woell, Robert Ebendorf, Robert Villamagna, Kathryn Cole, Teri Blond, Ted McDonah, Kim Overstreet and Robin Kranitzky, Harriete Estel Berman, Robbie Barber, Tim Lazure, Leonard Streckfus, Judith Hoyt, Ellen Wieske, Marissa Saneholtz, Daniel Anderson, Bryan Petersen, Stephen Yusko, Kelly Robinson, Donna McCullough, Margaret Couch Cogswell, and Jane Wells Harrison.

Columbia, North Carolina Sunset.

a four-day workshop at ‘The Ranch’ in Snohomish Washington and then a weekend workshop for the Wisconsin designer Craft Council.  I also managed the first ever online auction for the Society of North American Goldsmiths, and I started an new job in September at Pocosin Arts Folk School in Columbia, North Carolina where I am currently the Metals Program Director for their brand new metals and business program.  It has been an amazing summer and I will spend some time in the weeks to come talking about it all and more!

Brooch by Robert Ebendorf: tin, found objects & pearls

Beginning May 24, I will be at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville teaching the summer session metals class until June 11.  We will address surface and color and in addition to working with found color sources such as tin and found objects, we will use enamel, prismacolor and image transfer. Tomorrow we will be joined in the studio by guest artist Robert Ebendorf.  He will be with us for three days bringing his own unique vision and passion for found materials to the classroom.
As the class progresses I will be posting images of the student’s work…stay tuned!

Victorian hair brooch with table worked open frame and palette worked woven hair center

A. Bernhard & Co. catalogue, 1870, Ornamental Hair Jewelry

Last Saturday I atteneded a lecture at The Visual Art Center in Richmond, VA, to see a presentation by  Suzanne Savery,  the Director of Collections and Interpretation at the Valentine Richmond History Center.  My interest in her talk was prompted by my own research and making of jewelry that references the ephemeral.  In her presentation about mourning jewelry  she spoke about the concept of using hair in jewelry, and that it arose primarily because people wanted a way to remember someone  separated from them either by distance or death and  that hair served as a physical memento at a time when photography was not readily available. It was a type of jewelry that remained popular until the early 1900′s and that many people today find morbid.  Ms. Savery brought several examples of hair jewelry with her for participants to look at and the brooch pictured here is similar to one she had on display.  I had the opportunity to talk with her after the lecture she said that while the Valentine museum has a rather large collection of this type of jewelry, it is not on display but if you are interested in research or learning more you can make an appointment to see the collection. Click the following link to learn more about memorial jewelry. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O122821/locket/