For 39 years Centrum's Explorations program has been offering Washington state middle schoolers the opportunity to spend a week in a frenzy of creative activity. Each day students take four of eight possible classes; the 2012 offerings were marimba, hip-hop dancing, taiko drumming, songwriting, creative writing, drawing, theatre, and wood jewelry. Students live, eat, and study on the campus of Fort Worden, an historic army base on the Olympic Peninsula (seen "Officer And a Gentleman"?), burning off whatever energy they have left after class by combing the beach or clambering around the hillside fortifications.
I had planned for the setting to play a big role in my class, as a source of both inspiration and raw materials, but we didn't get off to an auspicious start. On the first morning I hustled my 2-hour "core" group out the door for a hike that I fulled expected to turn them into raving naturalists and avid found-object jewelers. We'd been outside about ten minutes when the temperature fell and the skies opened. I called a retreat and we returned to the classroom totally soaked, clutching a few waterlogged twigs in our frozen fingers.
Inspired by Fort Worden in a different way, we soldiered on. Each student picked a piece of wood that he or she found especially appealing and drew its portrait, paying particular attention to attractive lines, knots, bits of lichen, etc.
On day two, it snowed. But luckily our wet twigs from the day before had dried out somewhat, so we got to work learning the about jewelers' saws, filing and sanding, drilling, gluing, and joining pieces with wire elements or string.
The students also learned to work with commercially available wood such as sheets and dowels, using it alone or in conjunction with their found-wood elements. It was very exciting for me to watch the students take the same information and run in different directions; for example, some patient types went in for making lengths of chain out of tiny jump rings, while others tackled ambitious sculptural designs.
And as usual, the woodburning tool proved popular--so popular, alas, that it pooped out before the end of the class.
Towards the end of the week, the activity ratcheted up as we all rushed to finish work for a final showcase attended by all the other students, as well as many parents had teachers who came up especially for the evening. We arranged the table to give visitors some insight into the whole process, with everything from raw wood and first-day drawings to works-in-progress and finished pieces on custom made stands.
Budget willing, Centrum takes place in the spring of each year. Although wood jewelry won't necessarily always been part of the roster, the lineup of classes is guaranteed to be enticing. If you know of any middle schoolers who would jump at the chance to attend art camp, check out the Explorations information on Centrum's website.
Ah, the satisfaction of finishing a piece! Especially when it's been in progress as long as this one has. I started this over a year ago, sporadically whipping out a rib or tibia now and then whenever I had a free afternoon.
It's about 28" long, carved from the spalted boxwood I salvaged out of a neighbor's yard (same as I used for last year's Messenger). The assorted anatomical-ish bones are joined by tiny sterling links and anchored at each end by skull and pelvis. It could be a necklace or a sculptural piece, but as usual I find it most satisfying as a thing to play with.
More Jewelry That Grows on Trees February 4-5, 2012, Pratt Fine Arts Center
After all these years, I've accumulated more ideas about wood than one syllabus can accommodate. In this follow-up to my regular Jewelry That Grows on Trees workshop, I had the chance to introduce students to my own recent experiments with new surface finishes, constructed stone settings, and inlaid, laminated, and bent veneers. Check out this impressive range of samples and finished pieces...
Last year while visiting the historic waterfront town of Port Townsend, WA, I heard rumors of a stretch of shore so famed for excellent beachcombing that it had come to be known as "Glass Beach". I set out from downtown in search of a spot to match my optimistic mental vision: pale sands strewn with Japanese glass fishing floats, studded with cobalt chunks of patent medicine bottles.
Hours later I had found anemones, kelp, detached crab claws, and even a gumshoe chiton, but no glass. Tired and discouraged, I flopped down on a stretch of sand and looked out at the grey waters of the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.
When I finally turned my attention back to the beach, I saw that I was surrounded by tiny pieces of glass. In 15 minutes of pecking and hunting I garnered a small pile of pebbles--amber, green, clear, and, rarest of all, cobalt (perhaps Port Townsend was never big on patent medicines?). Other than their color, these tiny bits barely hint at their former forms, being so much closer to sand itself than to anything that ever held liquids or sliced unsuspecting feet.
"Chainmail: Strength in Numbers" Pratt, October 15-16 2011
Like knitting or weaving (or doing sit-ups, maybe? I'm not sure), making chainmail is satisfying in a way that only something so tediously repetitive can be. Open a jump-ring, close a jump ring, and eventually a fabric appears, like a trace record of your gestures.
The principles are simple, and once I'd managed to make up some vocabulary and sound effects to describe them, my students were off and running. As in my wood jewelry classes, I was amazed to see the variety of ways in which each person used the same materials and techniques to express their own ideas, from bias earrings and a rosette chain (above)...
to stamped-link and color-block samples (left) and a twisted tube bracelet (right)...
to a necklace combining 4-in-1 tube and spiral (left) and a multicolored spiral chain (right)...
to a set of finger-puppet armor: a 6-in-1 tube with a 4-in-1 cape. If you aren't a little bit crazy at the beginning of a chainmail weekend, you will be by the end!
North Carolina's Penland School of Crafts has exerted a huge influence on me ever since I first attended a workshop in the summer of 1997. When I look back on the pieces I've made at Penland--however crude, however experimental--I can see dozens of little kernels that eventually grew into my "real" work. What would I be making now if it weren't for Penland?
Over the years, I've been a work-study student (washing dishes), a scholarship recipient, a studio assistant, and, finally, an instructor: Penland was where I taught my very first wood jewelry class, back in 2007.
And now I've had the thrill of experiencing Penland from yet another perspective, as a participant in the 2011 Craft Educators' Retreat. When I opened the email inviting me to apply it was almost like getting one of those "YOUR NAME HAVE WON 60000GBP" messages. A week in the woods with 100 other teachers, talking and learning and teaching in any of a dozen well-equipped studios? Too good to be true!
It was a whole lot of silver lining stuffed into one small dark cloud: my inability to attend three demos simultaneously. Other than that and self-imposed sleep deprivation it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I deeply believe that one of the most important qualities a teacher can possess is indiscriminate generosity, and this week hammered that idea home. Not only was I surrounded by people who are at the top of their game, they were unanimously willing to spill their secrets, whether in scheduled demos or informal tutorials sparked by a lunchtime chat.
Mark Gardner taught woodturning and Stoney Lamar shared his signature surface texturing and finishing technique (that's metalsmith Suzanne Pugh looking on).
Sculptor Sabiha Mujtaba (my awesome roommate) showed us how to transfer a design from model to block in preparation for power carving. Dean Pulver wowed silversmith Julia Woodman with an impromptu demo of the "Ming Ding".
Sculptor Critz Campbell shared a low-tech trick for steam-bending wood, and I ventured out of the wood studio to see papercut artist Béatrice Coron's overview of materials and tools.
Perhaps even more inspiring than the expert instruction was seeing the experts take a risk on trying something new. The hotshop schedule quickly filled up as teachers like master blacksmith Jim Cooper jumped at the chance to blow some glass.
I hadn't blown since last year, but to my surprise some of the skills I accumulated at Pilchuck came back to me, while the overriding anxiety didn't. Patiently coached by gaffer extraordinaire Sami Lipscomb, I made a hip flask that's a big step up from my last attempt.
I took advantage of tools I don't usually have access to and made a little progress on my ongoing doll project. Mark Gardner helped me to turn some tiny wood versions, and Ben Elliott showed me how to make similar shapes in flame-worked borosilicate glass.
And I finally got to cast some glass rings that I'll eventually clean up and carve into signets.
I brought along a handful of empty vitrines, which turned into mementos of this very memorable experience: a sample of Dolph Smith's "forged paper" technique reminds me to be a generous teacher, a collage of leaves and mica simulating the Penland view reminds me to me resourceful, woven shavings from Stoney Lamar's turning demo reminds me to enjoy the process as much as the product, and a set of wings removed from a squashed bee reminds me that aiming for beauty often involves overcoming squeamishness. Quite a lot of lessons from just a week in the woods!
Thank you so much to the funders, my fellow retreaters, and everyone at Penland who worked so hard to put this amazing experience together.
At long last, I have a website of my very own! Visit to see a gallery of completed work, find out about upcoming classes and private lessons, or shop for my vitrine pendants. The site is still very much a work-in-progress so I am grateful for comments, corrections, and constructive criticism.
You can access this blog through a tab on the website, or reach it directly at julia-harrison.blogspot.com.
Many years ago I fought and won an epic eBay battle for a 1920's souvenir pendant from Rio. Two glass discs were reverse-painted with the silhouette of the city's skyline and sandwiched together around slices of iridescent blue butterfly wing, which fill in for both sky and water. The whole thing was then fitted into a thin silver bezel, protecting the fragile contents.
I've always been mesmerized by souvenir jewelry--exotic materials and exotic forms combining into a portable talisman of some faraway place--but this pendant really got to me. I love both its particulars (the craggy shapes, the hot, shimmering blue) and its general mechanical principle, the fact that a couple of pieces of glass and a little silver could enable their ephemeral contents to survive a century and travel the continents.
So now I make my own vitrine pendants and my own, personal souvenirs. Over the last couple of years I've traveled much less than I used to, so the curiosity I once expended elsewhere now drives me to explore Seattle and to preserve my experiences by making stay-cation souvenirs.
This piece shows Elliott Bay and the Magnolia Bridge, as seen from my apartment window. In keeping with my Making Do challenge, it uses gold leaf given to me in England 15 years ago, and the wing of a blue Morpho butterfly that I've been carrying around since high school.
You know that saying about good intentions? Here are just a few of the things that pave my own personal road to hell: plaster molds hand-blown bell jars scientific glassware fabric yarn a childhood's worth of beads a sheep's-worth of New Zealand wool soap for casting soap for carving jet for carving a hunk of jelly opal for carving 500 mother-of-pearl buttons 10 pounds of blue-and-white porcelain shards ink, watercolors, acrylics more fabric wood, wood objects, wood shavings, sawdust
All of these things and many more were acquired with the noblest of intentions: I meant to make them into art.
But I haven't. Instead, I've made them into a hoard. A hoard that overspills my drawers and shelves, takes up a valuable chunk of my parents' garage, and breaks my back every time I move. It's a pain, but even more than that, it's hurtful.
A year or so ago I read about a study of different types of stress and their effects on your health. Before that I would have assumed that the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush that always makes me feel like puking would rank as the least healthy kind of stress, but it turned out to be something more insidious. The study determined that the greatest emotional and physical damage is caused by the stress of things left undone.
I began to realize that my stockpile of supplies is, by definition, a teetering stack of things left undone. And talk about stress! If you tend to run yourself down for being uncreative or unproductive, a heap of crumbling Sculpey, yellowing sketchbooks, and crusted-over paint sets is just the kind of corroborating evidence you don't need. For every time that some ancient acquisition enabled me to act on a bright idea, there must be at least fifty times that the sight of a stack of unused, thwarted, and reproachful art supplies has caused me to turn off my desk lamp and leave the room.
Something desperately needed to be done, so I've embarked on a kind of self-intervention. I am challenging myself to get by on the supplies I have for as long as possible. There are no arbitrary dates, no insane impositions; I'll buy stuff if I absolutely need to for a class or a client, and I'll get rid of things that I decide are unusable or simply not for me.
In the short term, I hope to clear up some shelf space. In the longer term, I hope that this challenge will stretch my creative practice in new directions. By making do with with I have on hand, I expect to make and do things that I might not otherwise have thought of or gotten around to. Many years ago I went to a show of drawings by Gabriele Ellertson, one of my beloved college art teachers, where one standout series came out of an ill-starred residency. Somehow Gabriele's materials were lost along the way and she had only a limited and uncharacteristic palette to work with: two bottles of ink, one black, one virulent yellow. Did she throw in the towel? Nope. She made a series of hilarious and lovely ink drawings of anthropomorphic slugs.
And ultimately, I hope that this experiment can help me to address the fears and distorted perceptions that are probably at the root of my Depression-era tendency to hoard art supplies against the coming of a long, cold, creative winter. Perhaps I will learn to recognize when enough is enough--or to trust that even when it isn't, the world doesn't necessarily end.
I am trying think of on my self-imposed restrictions as a barrier placed between a plant and a window. Please check back soon to see what new directions I try while puzzling my way towards the sun.
This was my fourth time teaching "Jewelry That Grows on Trees" at Seattle's Pratt Fine Arts Center. By now it shouldn't surprise me, but it does: I give the same information to a new group of students, and out comes yet another stunning collection of unique pieces.
