Class Album: Wood Jewelry at Pratt

 

Jewelry That Grows on Trees 

Pratt Fine Arts Center, October 27-28

My fall wood jewelry class at Pratt has become an annual tradition that I look forward to even more than sweater weather and almost as much as the return of brussels sprouts.  I always count on the weekend's students for an injection of ideas and energy, and this batch certainly didn't disappoint!

Class Album: Multnomah Arts Center II

Jewelry That Grows on Trees
Multnomah Arts Center, October 6-7 2012

I had another great weekend teaching at Portland's Multnomah Arts Center.  As usual, it was as much an educational experience for me as for my students; I gave them my same old wood jewelry spiel and they cranked out another gallery full of work like nothing I've seen before.  Also, I learned that there is such a thing as Competitive Frisbee Dancing.  Who knew?  

Review: Centrum Explorations Class

Centrum Explorations
March 4-9, 2012

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.

Review: MORE Jewelry that Grows on Trees

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...

Review of Chainmail at Pratt

"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!

Vitrine: Magnolia Bridge

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.

Pratt 2011 Class Gallery

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.

"Veneer" at Portland's MoCC

photo by Dan Kvitka
75 Gifts for 75 Years
Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland OR
July 28, 2011 – February 25, 2012
Curated by Namita Gupta Wiggers

Happy birthday, Museum of Contemporary Craft! What do you get for a 75-year-old who has almost everything? Everything they don't have, apparently. In honor of this milestone, collectors near and far have donated or promised gifts that will enable the Museum to fill gaps in its permanent collection. Many of these works will be on display in a special exhibition that starts later this month and continues into 2012.

I am thrilled to report that my Veneer pendant will be part of the action! Thanks to a generous Seattle collector, the Museum of Contemporary Craft will own a copy of Victoria Beckham's cleavage (which is itself a splendid example of contemporary craft and has been displayed worldwide). Most of my series of maple cleavage pendants are more subtle sections of A, B, C, or D-cup frontages that can sometimes actually suction in place if properly fitted. Then I started thinking about the "what if" extremes and carved Veneer while looking at a paparazzi photo of Posh Spice. Almost any wearer fails to fill her "shoes", the gap behind the spherical lobes casting questioning shadows on the real chest beneath. The name refers to the practice of covering furniture and other objects with wood veneer, a thin skin of real material; it amuses me that the word also hints at Venus, and the related word, venereal.

And here's me at the opening reception for the show, in front of the case that my work shares with Keith Lewis'...

Apple Earrings

I've now lived in my current apartment for just over two years, the longest I have lived in one place since I left home to go to college. In that two years some things have stayed the same (the general awesomeness of the view, below right, the nightly ruckus from the downstairs neighbors), while others have changed beyond recognition.

Our street cuts diagonally across a hill so steep that several blocks are split into double boulevards by sloping medians. When we moved in the medians in front of the house were overgrown amalgams of Himalayan blackberry, parked cars, and abandoned furniture. Then last year a team of tireless neighborhood volunteers transformed the flattest section into what is now a jolly patchwork of thriving gardens. Earlier this year, the less hospitable section directly in front of our apartment began to get the same treatment (below left).

One morning before work I was eating breakfast and enjoying the view when I glanced down at the old apple tree out front. To my horror, I saw one of the gardeners looking it up and down, a chainsaw waiting at his feet like a muzzled rottweiler.

If you've seen my blog, you know my art depends on the cutting down of trees. But I generally prefer them alive, and I especially like this one. It's weird and hunched and totally asymmetrical; it grows beautiful blossoms and thousands of tiny, terrible apples. Birds nest in it.

So I ran outside in my jammies like a flustered hen and demanded that Mr Gardener tell me just exactly what he planned to do to that tree with that chainsaw. In my head I rehearsed calling in sick to work in case I needed to bind myself to the trunk in protest.

It turned out that he had consulted with the city arborist and was planning to selectively prune some damaged branches in hopes of reinvigorating the tree.

Well, ok then.

The next day the pruned branches were out for garbage collection so I helped myself to a chunk. I sanded down a couple of thin slices, and voila!: locavore earrings. I love that the flaws--the greenish tinge along the bark, the central starburst of stains, the punctuation of insect holes--are all records of the tree's trials and tribulations. And I love that the cross-section reveals a couple of rings that embody two years of the life I've shared with a man, a cat, and a neglected apple tree.