News Roundup

First and foremost in my news of the week is that the contest I talked about entering here came to a result, and I got second place!! Besides $500, I got quite a nice line for the resume, I just don't know whether to file it under awards or exhibitions, since the tiara will be on display the weekend of September 17th as well. and according to the (probably) form email I got the judges were impressed with my work, which is a huge compliment given that the panel consists of an artist, an illustrator, a person from ARTISANworks, the owner of a gallery, and the Memorial Art Gallery's exhibitions director. So overexcited!

Less exciting is what's currently going on in my studio classes. My theme of a walk in the woods went down fairly well in jewelry though it could accidentally make a left turn into the idea of weeds. I still don't know what I am going to do for the chasing repousse project, for which my pitch bowl etc. arrived and I am working on tools for.

This is some of the results from my first attempt at true chemical dying of fabric. I'm particularly fond of the one on the right, as I was not expecting it to turn out at all. There's six other pieces brewing in the fabric studio and some of those I am even less sure about how they will look.

This is the low budget re-creation of what I am doing in  2D design, which is drawing various types of lines on paper that will then be cut out and arranged into a composition on some illustration board. It seems like it's adding an extra step to the process, but I can see the point, being that the professor wants us to be able to rearrange and play with the line elements before we glue them down. Above is one of the lines I came up with that the professor liked. Still, the class is tending towards the boring side and reminding me how middling I am at two dimensional works.

The goal for next week is to be less harried in making a blog post, since between work and classes I don't have enough time to think!

Recycled Art Competion

This is going to be a content light post, since it's the quickest and easiest webspace for me to upload the images I'm using to enter the Greentopia Recycled Art Competition, and email isn't being nice in letting me send them. Both small and large images and a copy of the artist's stament are here for your enjoyment!

( Click for Large)

( Click for Small)



Artist’s Statement on “Post Apocalyptic Puck”

                At the time I made “Post Apocalyptic Puck” I was interested in the theme of science fiction, particularly in making artifacts and jewelry that looked like they came from the future. Consequently this piece wound up with a detailed small story behind it. It is meant to have come from a post-apocalyptic future where mankind has lost much of its technology and has fallen back to believing in magic. In this bleak future I envisioned a surviving man who wishes to emulate the magical and mythological beings of older times, particularly mischievous fairies like Puck. Thus in order to display his imagined power, this future man has fashioned himself a magnificent crown out of the man made debris and small shiny objects left after the apocalypse.

                With such a story in place, I was able to freely design the piece using the stash of found objects I keep to use in my jewelry. Most of it comes from my odd habit of always looking at the ground for lost and forgotten little “treasures,” which are supplemented by friends and family giving me old broken jewelry and things to re-use. Being gifted a set of grapefruit spoons in this manner was the direct inspiration for this piece and I gladly took up the challenge of incorporating them into a work. Actively avoiding fabricating pieces from new metal the tiara steady grew, its shape dictated by the existing objects I had and my own sense of design, making “Post Apocalyptic Puck” a unique joy to create.