life in quarantine

heat wave ...

Lots of completed pieces to share.  I love the porcelain spikes on two of the earring pairs - made by Petra Carpreau of the Etsy shop, Scorched Earth.  They are GORGEOUS!! And look like they were made to go with the bronze clay.

playing catch-up

I continued to have problems with the powdered clay made by a well known PMC artist and instructor who shall-not-be-named.  Some batches melted into unrecognizable blobs.  Some were sintered on the outside (like the photos in the previous post), but brown powder on the inside.  Advice on her user forum showed me that these were not uncommon problems and the solution offered of doing continual test batches was not one that I wanted to waste my time, labor, or hard earned cash on.  Art Clay Silver fired beautifully.  So did FastFire Bronze.  So I have stuck with those and I am excited and inspired by the results.

No metal clay here - just finally finishing a piece started a long time ago and abandoned during a creative dry spell.

Another orphaned piece that got united with a chain from something else that hadn't worked out.  Big cool Tibetan silver(y) bead in the center.  Like a shield.

One of those YUGE Thai terracotta amulets - hanging from a vintage Suffolk County bus token.  But the "S" could certainly stand for Susan or Sarah - or Super.

And the rest are all PMC.  Silver, copper, and mostly bronze.  Which I love the best.  Which strikes me as odd because I don't really care much for gold - except gold paint.  Bronze though - I think of the Bronze Age, of course, archaeologist used-to-wannabee that I am.  The clay that I am using has the ancient proportions of copper and tin.  Both mined even in prehistoric times in Cornwall, by the way.  Anyone else hooked on "Poldark"?

time traveler

Time traveler.

Way back in the 1970's, I used to watch Dr.Who.  I was a fan of the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, with his unruly scarf and unrulier hair.  (I watch it on BBC America now too and am very impressed with the last three doctors, but I may just be watching so that my grandchildren think I'm hip.)  The idea of time travel has always intrigued me.  If I had access to a Tardis, the first thing I'd do is visit Broadway in the 1920's and catch the Marx Brothers live on stage.  The second thing is attend a ritual at Stonehenge when that culture was at its height.  When I hold one of these beautiful Russian fossilized ammonites in my hand, I am transported 60 million years (give or take a few million) back in time.  It's incomprehensible.  The quartz crystal bead above it is from Mali and I am told that children sift these beads from the sands of the Sahara, string them, and sell them to tourists.  Since there is no way of dating them, they may be anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand years old or more.

Here's another necklace that I wasn't satisfied with and decided to rework.  I added some more quartz crystal to the Labradorite and one of my copper wire DNA charms.  Now it makes me happy.  Just wish I could get the colors in the Labradorite to photograph better.  I have a cool new photo prop though - a nice little piece of driftwood with an interesting shape.

And one more new piece - this one feels so earthy - like the way that the woods smell in Spring.

into the dark again ...

Do you ever feel like you're in danger of becoming stuck in amber?  Like it's sort of comfortable and safe to be surrounded by that warm honey-sap but you know where this is going to lead and it's not pretty.  You've got a couple of choices: you can wiggle and fight it and maybe get out, or you can just relax and see what happens.  Go deeper.  BE the amber.  Is it just laziness??  Laziness with a hefty dose of fear thrown in?  I prefer (at the moment) to think that I'm not just making the same stuff, I'm making the same stuff a little better.  And after all, does any of it really matter?  Can any piece of jewelry, even if I'm arrogant enough to consider it ART, really matter?

Luann Udell, whose art and words always resonate deeply with me, just had a post about the artist not remaining silent in the face of grave social injustice. She makes, among many other beautiful things, these powerful and evocative little polymer clay horses inspired by prehistoric carvings and cave paintings.  She writes, 

“…And I can do this with my hands, by creating my little horse, which symbolizes the power that comes from our choices, our actions, even in the face of despair.”

https://luannudell.wordpress.com/

Read her posts.  She is wise and eloquent, where I am just stumbling around in the dark, trying to make some sense of this screwed up society and my part in it.  10 years ago I would have been at a vigil or a protest and that would make me feel better.  Today I'm just sitting at my worktable trying to fend off despair.  Here are my latest feeble attempts to put a little love and beauty out into the world:  Just treading water artistically maybe, but still satisfying on some level.  This I can do with MY two hands - my offerings of protection for the darkness.

in my mind I'm goin' to Carolina ...

It's almost time to pack up the old Volvo wagon and head South for a bit.  The baby is talking, the bigger kids growing ... well, bigger.  FaceTime is wonderful, but little Izzy thinks that Grandma Maggie lives in Mama's phone.  There's no place to set up all my wire and beads, so I'm trying to get everything finished, photographed and listed on Etsy before I go.

Can't wait for the AppleFest and the Dixie Classic Fair.  Apple dumplings!  Pig races!  Autumn in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Maybe we can get in a visit to the alpaca farm.  Maybe I can start to look for my dream house ...