A Few Good Midnights

A week of all nighters and a good week (or two) to recover from them makes Veronica a late posting girl. I narrowly finished this semester in time but I did it, dual wielding torches all the way! Hence why I completely forgot to take any pictures of my metalsmithing stuff. Between that class and ceramics, I'm fairly certain vessels and I don't get along very well, but boy do I like purchasing them from shows and thrift stores.

I digress, mostly because there isn't anything happening immediately right now, and for that I'm grateful to have a break between projects. To start, the end of year round up for jewelry looks like this:

One Pac-man necklace,

One pair of VR glasses, (what made them super secret is the arms of the glasses have little yellow LEDs in them, powered by a battery in the fake plug)

And finally one sword like spoon for a gentleman's eating contest. (Which no one seemed to understand)

Briefly here is the final portfolio for CAD which I was mostly proud of:

 Castle Exercise,

 Flashlight Exercise,

 Rubber Duck Exercise,

 Lollypop Exercise,

Toy Robot,

 Perfume Bottle,

 Ring,

Table and Chair Set.

 Can you tell I enjoyed CAD? Next fall I get another crack at it and probably will focus on lighting objects in the program. Before then though, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the upcoming summer projects.

Though not quite exactly what I'm doing, this experimental pendant is a good place holder picture when talking about production! Yes this summer it will finally happen, I will be designing and making jewelry to sell in the fall and winter student sale. This also means an Etsy shop will be in the near future, so stay tuned for details! This venture officially launches next week, with my summer independent studies in jewelry. While I prepare for the business world looking into cards, photographs, and taxation I'll have just enough time to see Albert Paley's Lecture at the Nan Miller Gallery here in Rochester. I'm particularly excited to make it to one of his exhibitions this time, since I had to miss his last one at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Its going to be an exciting, if busy, summer and I can't wait to get cracking and see what I come up with!

Greentopia Aftermath

I nearly forgot to talk about how much fun the Greentopia Festival was and my piece on display!

Case in point me looking like a goober behind my piece in the "gallery" space which was the atrium of a bar/restaurant right in the heart of the festival area. Next to my piece is a work that is supposed to represent a tea pot and behind me is the first place winner. I have forgotten the title of it but over a period of 180 days the artist collected some of the garbage she threw out each day and put it in a jar. Thus, the line of jars on the free standing wall with a braided rope of plastic bags trailing down in front of it in a sort of showing-the-audience-how-much-trash-they-throw-out kinda way.

Here's a detail with patrons standing in front of it. I will say one thing and one thing only about it: after seeing a wall of jars at the Burchfield-Penney Art Museum in 2009 and a rack of them again in 2010 or so, it's safe to say jars are played out by now.

Third place was this coat rack welded together from scrap metals and discarded decorative metal fencing. The artist who did this had just discovered welding and was all excited about it in their artist's statement. In the background is another large scale work made of copper and brass which was 8 feet tall or so.

It was styled after an armillary sphere and rather nice looking, and reminded me my of my goal to make a metal garden statue of some kind for my mother. After this point however, my pictures take a turn for the scenic so here's the falls that gives the High Falls area of Rochester it's name:

All in all its was a fun day, and the rest of the festival was quite interesting too, ranging from food to music to purses made out of old plastic feed bags, plants for sale, and naturally jewelry made from old electronic bits.

Finally, here's a parting shot of my piece on display with the placard that had my artist's statement on it. Luckily I was able to keep it afterwards as a litle souvenir of my "win" in the contest. And that just about wraps up my day at Greentopia and the Recycled Art Competition.