I hit up the Rochester Gem Show last week and got some nice stones from it. Though it seemed like this year the dealers had more specimen samples than cut stones I still feel like I found a ton of good examples, and I made smarter decisions about which ones to buy. I have plans for most of them at least; like the denim lapis on the tape strip and similar sized stones will be put into some more copies of the Jupiter Pendant, the snowflake obsidian piece will go into earrings, the sugilite I want to make into a pin, the unakite into a pendant, the list goes on.
I haven't been in the studio as much as I want to be, therefore I only have sketches of future plans for the production projects and a couple of designs for CAD.
I have been slowly working on the large rainmaker necklace (as I have dubbed it) at the top of this page and you can see some of the plans for my new stones and senior show here.
Laser cutting! All my laser cutting ideas for my Digital Methods class and another varation on my tube setting earrings for production. I am a bit excited to laser cut some earrings for sale and just ordered some sterling tubing for more production. If anyone wants to save the date for the student sale this year it will be December 5th and 6th opening at 10 AM or so each day.
I also want to have these drawings laser cut as a pair of earrings, perhaps they would do well in the sale?
Still haven't forgotten the earring jacket idea either even though I need to work on it some.
Also begining to run out of concluding noises and sounds to end my posts with this semester, but continuing with my subtheme of creepy radio transmissions from last week have the Russian Woodpecker.
This one is radio interference caused by the Duga-3 over the horizon radar system in Chernobyl meant to give early warning of missles coming from America to Russia. It was operational between 1976 and 1989 and interfered with shortwave radio to the point that devices and radios began to be made to eliminate the annoying noise caused by the system. Welp hopefully next week will have cheerier material and some jewelry being worked on to show the world.
Its been two weeks into the semester, and a lot has been happening, even though I haven't been able to get into the studio as much as I want to (curse you swipe card)! and the quickest way to show off is through pictures so here we go!
Metalsmithing: worked up a couple pipe cleaner models for the nested vessel project. I am leaning toward the one on the left, and hope I can use 16 gauge blue aluminium wire to weave between the copper spokes of the base. It's going to take a hell of a lot of wire though and I'm not sure I have the patience or the funds. (Also I cannot get this paragraph to justify to the left for some reason, perhaps it needs to express its individuality?)
Jewelry: Making endless jump rings at home since the lock on the studio isn't active. I was able to get in one day though and start cutting out Pac-man links as well as learn how to fuse some jump rings! I'm only halfway regretting using absurdly thick metal for Pac-man, but at least the links will have more dimension to them?
Ceramics: Yep its a pinch pot with a snake looping around it. For this project I had to create a zoomorphic tripod vessel and this was the only good idea I could come up with. On the right is the slapped together maquette for the final. The final itself actually does stand on its own, though I do wish I could go back and re-seat the pinch pot at a more rakish angle but the piece is now dry and ready for crit on Tuesday.
CAD Class: In a move that I feel is somehow ironic, I'm the farthest ahead on things in my Rhino CAD class. Thus far we've been learning the interface and what tools do what by going through the basic tutorials. Hence the castle for moving and stacking solids, the flashlight for Boolean unions and differences (and an extra bit on lighting) and I got ahead on the duck, which is about manipulating the standard solid shapes into something more organic and a few other details. Now we are going to start an actual "real" project by building a toy. So far my only plan is to build a wind up toy, but it should be fun!
Something like this one though more complex than a sphere. Speaking of toys I've found some fun little quasi-inspirational things on the internet, which will be shared next time when I pretend this blog is on Tumblr.
This video is the perfect representation of how my last two weeks of classes are going to be. Beginning with jewelry my plans run thus:
Here are 13 blanks for trillium shawl pins just annealed that need to be chased and have the copper leaves soldered to them. After that its clean up, sawing forming, patina and lacquer, plus the creation of the pin stem too.
For those leaves I have been making these sheets of copper very holey. Other products for the student sale include ye olde interlocking triangle, link a dink, pins. I have 17 of those mostly together and am currently cranking out some extras to bring it up to an even 20. The planned d-pad pins I think will have to wait until next years student sale, where they will at least fit with the theme I preemptively chose, so consider this a hint as to what it will be.
I'm hoping to be done with the production stuff by Monday so I can focus on the actual last project for jewelry: a large flower necklace with lots of texture.
The run down for the other studio classes looks like this:
Weaving! A scarf! Fibers! It's much more fun (despite loom threading mishaps) and makes more sense to my 3D oriented mind than dyeing or screen printing. for my 60 inches of scarf I'm just going to repeat the brown-red-orange-yellow-blue section 15 times and go all out for a striped scarf.
There's no picture for 2D Design since that project hasn't really been started, and is a retread of things I learned in 6th grade, namely one and two point perspective. This time I have to draw up a city and paint it in black and white acrylic. Couple with the other studios and my lecture classes requiring last minute papers these next two weeks are doomed to be spent in absentia from my blog until finals week when I can breathe and unveil my grandiose plans for next semester.
So as this first semester of junior studio closes there some final remarks to say. Firstly, as far as I know both of my pins in the charity sale sold and the entire event raised around $7,000 for Japan according to here! Yay! I'm hoping to make more Link-a-Dink pins for the December sale over the summer since that one was gone before I got to the sale. Gone at opening bell = popular, right?
Since I'll be home for the summer, my blog activity might taper off a bit with an internship in the wings, but there will be more other artistic and design things posted; like sketches, paper crafts, and what little jewelry things I can do at home, such as my nefarious plans for this brass tree trunk that once had asteroid leaves:
Muh, ha, ha, ha, ha, my plans for it are a secret, but it's too cool to waste an object like this. If I'm not careful it might turn into next semester's theme despite my plans to make more wearable objects. The only guarantee is that it's bound to be a long crazy summer, and I'll need a vacation from the vacation by the end of it!
