On another note....

This blog is about my shenanigans as an overall artist, not just in metals so I'm thrilled to share that I got into my first photography show!  The show is: All Souls Procession 4th Annual Photography Exhibition Competition. It was curated by Terry Etherton, who is a big name in photography (I did not know this until I looked him up) so that was cool and out of about 128 submissions, only 25 were picked, so that felt pretty good as well.  The opening was October 22 but it's running through November 7 in conjunction with the All Souls Procession in Tucson. You can learn more about the show and the Procession here.

Both pieces were digital collages of original photos I took in Flagstaff at the memorial of an old friend of my husband, Maria Ruiz, who died suddenly from an embolism, I believe. She was only 49. I had only met her once but liked her instantly. She was warm and welcoming and funny and just a great spirit. The turnout at her memorial, which was held at her cafe in Flagstaff was a testament to the tremendous love she inspired. The theme of the show was not only the All Soul's Procession but about honoring the dead and I hope I did her justice.

 

This time lapse video was sent to me by the organizer who compressed the

opening night reception into about 10 seconds

At the opening with my photos

Tribute to Love

Soul of Southside

Arrowmont- chapter 5, conclusion

Thanks to Jodi, I have burned discs of pics for my students and they are ready to send off so I don't feel guilty about finally showing their work here.  So the topic of the class was Introduction to Painting Enamel.  What is painting enamel you might ask?  Painting enamel is basically very finely ground enamel which behaves like paint in the application process but does contain glass so it glosses when fired.  There is traditional painting enamel, which consists of ceramic pigments which are mixed in fairly specific proportions with a finely ground white or clear enamel (it has the consistency of baby powder or confectioner's sugar) and then can be mixed with either oil or water as a binder.  Thompson enamel has developed a painting enamel that behaves like water colors and also a painting enamel in an acrylic binder.  I prefer the watercolor and traditional mix varieties myself. The advantage to painting enamels is that #1, you can mix colors to make new ones, which you can't do with regular 80 mesh enamel and #2, you can create tremendous detail. I had used painting enamel as an embellishment for my cloisonne images but I'm now hooked on working immediately with the painting enamel to build the entire scene.  I will talk more about the technical aspects of painting enamels in another post.

Everyone in the class had basic enameling experience or more but no one had worked with painting enamels.  Here's what we did (keep in mind this is all jewelry scale. I don't think any one of these pieces exceeds a 2 inch maximum in an direction and most are definitely smaller than that):

This was my example piece- watercolor enamel

This was the piece I worked on during class although I finished the eyes at home. I worked from a photograph-
watercolor enamel (the photo is a little washed out)

Jodi- These were done with oil based painting enamels. She discovered it requires a lot more paint to build up color on a dark ground but it can be worth it because the contrast can be quite nice.

Liza- Liza went for an abstract series or earrings using oil based painting enamels. This photo really washes them out.
They were much more vibrant in person.

Marti- a portrait of her daughter from a photo- in process. Oil based painting enamels.

Marti- oil based painting enamels (I think)

Marti- oil based painting enamels

Mark- Mark and Pat were the most accomplished painters among us and it shows! Oil based painting enamels.

Mark- I think this one might have been the water color enamels

Mark- Mark tried lavender oil instead of our mystery "painting oil" that Thompsons supplies with the kit.
He found it is much runnier so it does washes really well.

Pat- oil based painting enamels over clear rather than the traditional white ground.

Pat- oil based painting enamel over clear. Pat applied some painting Titanium White to the top of the koi and it caused this bubbling effect, which I've encountered myself with Titanium but don't know what's causing it. It worked for the piece fortunately.

Arrowmont- chapter 4

Okay, here are some shots of the studios and my students- all wonderful people and very talented! Many thanks to Jodi, Marti, Mark, Liza, Debbie and Pat for making my week such a joy :-) The studios in the main building are huge! There are two classrooms on either side of this hallway, where the faculty work for the season is exhibited. I did not have my act together to send a piece to the show unfortunately (such is life!). I did take quite a few shots of the work so if I get them sized, I'll include them in a future post.

The schedule went like this: ~7.30-8.30am breakfast- class started at 9. Lunch from 12-1.30 then class until 5pm. Dinner was at 5.30-6 and slides at 7pm or so. Then students could opt to go back to the studio until 1am or do whatever they liked.  Many of my students worked most nights and I was usually there until 9-10pm although one night we went to a local restaurant/bar for Trivia night and another night I went to the Aquarium. So the week was intense to say the least.  One thing I liked about Arrowmont's schedule, which most other places like this don't do, is class actually starts after dinner on Sunday night. This few hours gives the instructor time for the introduction phase of the class- passing out handouts and giving the students an idea of what to expect for the week.  This way, we can just launch right into demos and working on projects first thing Monday morning.  I also like the fact that they don't expect people to leave on Friday (we were able to work right up until 5pm) so Friday dinner and Saturday breakfast are included in the pricing structure. It's nice because the place doesn't just die on Friday night and people have a chance to socialize and relax after the intense schedule of the week.

Arrowmont has a wonderful program of work study on top of their elite residency program.  The residents do not have to teach unless they want to, they don't work for the studios, they get a stipend and they have semi-private studios in which to work as well as group housing on campus.  It's quite a plush gig and I for one applaud Arrowmont's support of emerging artists in this fashion.  This is not the norm because most places just don't have the budget to support their residents in this fashion even though I know most places would like to.

The Work Study and Studio Assistance programs allows interested individuals to come and work to maintain Arrowmont (everything from grounds keeping to janitorial- there are full time people in charge of coordinating the work) and in exchange they get room and board and then get to take a class on their off duty week.  The time frame can be just a few weeks to many weeks depending on the individual and the needs of the campus.  It's a pretty cool gig as well.  I have to say everyone I met there in any capacity: work study, studio assistants, residents and full time employees were wonderful and everyone seemed really happy and excited to be there.  It was such great energy from everyone!

Two last things about Arrowmont before I sign off for this week. The food was really good.  The kitchen does a phenomenal job of cooking for everyone and if you have special/ weird dietary needs like I do, they will bend over backwards to help you.  I did bring gluten free bread and bagels with me b/c I knew I wouldn't be able to find much of that stuff in such a remote area. I was able to stash the bread in the fridge in the kitchen and just go in and get it anytime I needed.  I don't eat red meat or non-organic chicken so they fixed fish for me.  They also always have a vegetarian option at every meal.  It is so important when going to a place like this that the food is good.  People are having a very intense week and have paid quite a pretty penny to be there and to be able to relax over good meals for a little while each day is really wonderful. And-coffee is available alllllll day!

Lastly, the rooms/ bathrooms were really clean and comfortable and the grounds were beautiful!  Thanks so much to all the Arrowmont staff for such a wonderful job!!!  Okay, I'm done gushing :-)  Enjoy the pics and next time I'll finish with what we actually made. I know I promised something like that this week....sorry.  Next time- definitely!

The door on the right was my classroom

The metals studio- and yes, it is as big as it looks!
Individual benches in the middle, soldering stations to the left and more open work areas on the right.
Anvils in the foreground.

This is the hammer room which is a smaller room between the metals studio
and the glass/ enameling studio. The door to the right goes into the enameling studio.

The studios have catwalks for visitors to see what's going on in the classes
without disturbing them.  This was my class hard at work.
A few people were still out at lunch when this shot was taken.
My messy table is in the lower right corner.

Jodi and Liza with Marti in the background

My student Mark and Donna who was visiting from the bead class

Catwalk looking down on the bead class across the hall

Just one of the wood studio rooms. The wood studio is an independent building built about 10 years ago-
beautiful gallery entrance and multiple equipment and teaching rooms

This is one of the studios in the wood building- the class was Extreme Pens.
They were doing miniature wood turning for pen blanks. It was pretty cool.

Interim

Last weekend was kind of busy- got to spend a good chunk of Sunday in the studio and while I was gone, get this, my wonderful hubby cleaned out the fridge and vacuumed the house then grilled us a fabulous dinner of barbecued chicken, corn on the cob, garlic bulbs and salad!  What a great way to start the week! 

I've got photos from Arrowmont ready, just haven't had time for a thoughtful post to go with them so I'm planning for Thursday- Saturday to get that done.  Just FYI.  I've got some other topics already lined up- using a rotary tumbler may be the next one but we'll see.  There's lots going on art-wise to post!  I can't remember if I mentioned it, but not only do I work in metals, I also do photography and digital art so this blog is also going to be about that and other art happenings I get mixed up in.  I discovered how hard it was to keep one blog going so rather than have different blogs for different topics, I'm just going to spill my guts here.  After all, none of us are one dimensional people or artists, right?  Hope you find it all good :-)

Arrowmont- chapter 3

Well, I'm taking a little aside from what actually went on in class and including some photos this week of the surprisingly good aquarium that is literally across the street from Arrowmont.  Don't let the fact that the aquarium is a Ripley's Believe or Not franchise discourage you because it's accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and is really quite impressive.  They stay open until 11pm so it's easy to walk on over after slides one evening if you've decided to take a break from working late in the studio and check out the denizens of the deep.  I went with Chad Alice Hagen, felt and fiber artist extraordinaire, who was also teaching that week.  If I hadn't been teaching myself, I'd have wanted to take both the fiber and bead classes that were being offered on the other side of the hall!  Next week, I will show you what we worked on in class and what the studios looked like but for now, enjoy these piscine pics!

Jellyfish

A Sawfish- amazing creature!

Sawfish mouth and gills- looks like eyes but they're not

Jaws music, please

Squid couple

Random fish but such a clear shot even through the thick glass, I couldn't resist including it

There were lots of fish....

Chad Alice Hagen in the Penguin Pod- This was neat. You crawled through a tunnel and popped right up
in the midst of the penguins and they weren't disturbed in the least,although there were idiots ahead of us
banging on the plexiglass to try and get the penguins to do something.
Sometimes I wonder who really belongs in the cage.....

Penguin Feet- I don't know why this picture is so small....

Arrowmont- chapter 2

Here are some more shots of Arrowmont and of Gatlinburg, which is a very odd town. It is just a little ways down the road from the super tacky tourist strip in Sieverville, where you can find Dollywood and other like ilk, but it is also right at the entrance to the Smoky Mountains National Park so there's basically one main strip that's super tacky and it's completely surrounded by these beautiful mountains. Gatlinburg gets about 10 million visitors a year but there are only 3,500 residents in the town. Arrowmont is situated just off that main road but once you round the drive, you'd hardly know all that stuff was there apart from the occasional noise that filters through the trees. It's an interesting mix. There's the appeal of feeling secluded (I missed getting to see the black bear wander through campus one morning) while on the grounds of the school but you can walk down the drive and be immersed in a full on carnival-like tourist strip complete with cheesy arcades, festival food (all the homemade fudge you can eat), shopping (as long as mostly what you want to buy are purses or imitation Japanese swords), etc. When I was trying to explain it to my husband I compared it to Venice Beach in CA but without the body builders or ocean and with more permanent architecture. It's really quite an experience. But of course, it's only an interesting diversion for the real reason to be there, which is Arrowmont. Blogger has decided it doesn't want to upload any more photos for this post for some reason so I'll have to post more later. Enjoy!

Stuart House- another of the older structures on campus

Looking over the ceramics kilns into town. The Aquarium is that blue thing in the distance.

The main strip in Gatlinburg- wish I'd taken more photos! This one is soooo tame!

Yes- free moonshine tastings. Yes, I had some.

This is the Ogle Cabin, the oldest cabin that was built in the area in 1807.
The furnishings are as close to period as they could get (ignore the modern
conveniences for the volunteer who sits the place- very nice lady and very
informed)

The other side of the cabin

The Salt and Pepper Museum that, alas, I did not have time to go into before I had to leave

Arrowmont

Well, thanks to Mary Chuduk, I had the privilege to teach at Arrowmont in August. It was absolutely wonderful!!! For those of you who may be unfamiliar with it, Arrowmont is an arts and crafts school in Gatlinburg, TN that was originally founded in 1912 as a settlement school for rural farm kids to get an education. The school was dedicated as a year-round arts facility in 1968 although summers at the school had been devoted to arts and crafts workshops for many years prior. Today, it is one of the premiere locations to take week+ long intensive workshops in many media: painting/ drawing, wood, clay, photography, metals and enameling, glass fusing, paper, book and fiber arts. To view their website, click here

For Arrowmont, I developed a class on painting enamels, something that is not widely taught but a technique I've been experimenting with for a while now. I went looking for a photo of the main sample I made but by golly, I must not have take one so that image will have to wait for next time. For now, here are some photos of Arrowmont and one of the countryside. I'll post more later. Enjoy!

On the way to Arrowmont- the beautiful east TN scenery

This is the house I stayed in- Staff House

Inside the lounge between the sleeping quarters and the cafeteria at Staff House

Patio off the Library and our studios

View down the driveway at Arrowmont. The main building is on the left

The Red Barn, one of the oldest buildings on campus

Mesa Arts Center Shindig Tonight!

The Mesa Arts Center is having their big season kick-off tonight from 6-10. There will be performances, the gallery will be open and there will be art demonstrations all over. I will be working in the enameling studio so come on by to chat or ask questions. A good time will be had by all! :-)

Okay- yes, I'm soooo late getting back to this

Life has been interesting. I reported last fall that my South Mountain teaching gig had fallen through and I was lucky that Polly, my wonderful boss at the Mesa Arts Center had several classes that needed covering for the fall. I had a free tuition voucher to use from all my community college teaching so I signed up to re-learn Adobe Flash at Mesa Community College thinking I'd have time on my hands to go back to school a little. Well, I was casting about for a part time job and found an ad, somewhat old, on Craig's List for an e-commerce administrator at the Heard Museum here in Phoenix. I figured, since the ad was old, they'd probably already hired someone, but I applied anyway. Did I mention I also do web and graphic design on top of metals? Yep.

Well gosh darn it, I got an email back in a few hours and one thing led to another and I suddenly had a 4 day a week steady gig at the beautiful Heard Museum with benefits, cool id badge and everything! I've been working there since November 2 (finished my MAC classes and the Flash class). I've had Wednesdays off to do freelance/ teach at MAC/ work in the studio but that may change come October because my boss at the Heard wants me to go to 5 days a week. I'm still going to teach at MAC in the evening and I've already told my husband that there are some weekend days that are just going to have to be studio days until we move into our house (did I mention we bought a house right at the bottom of the housing market- fixer-upper but a real steal) and he builds me a studio at home.

Okay, so. This is why I haven't had a chance to get back to the blog. However, my class at Arrowmont made so I am frantically getting ready to teach an introduction to painting enamels, which is a new class for me to teach even though I've been doing it a long time. It's always stressful when it's a new class, even when you know the info. At least I know how I do it. I'm trying to make sure I can cover multiple methods and probably over thinking and over samples-ing the whole thing. I do that :-)

So I'm planning on having photos of the trip and the class to share after mid- August and this has also re-galvanized my resolve to get into the studio more.

And I haven't forgotten I need to post the links to those fabulous enamelists I went to the Grand Canyon with (gasp!) last June! So to end this post, I'm going to include their urls and a pic we took last June (before I wacked my hair off). Hope you enjoy.

Visit www.marychuduk.com and www.debbiesheezel.com.au to see some incredible enameled art!

MAC Fall Season Shindig

Come on out to the Mesa Arts Center this Friday September 11 for their Fall Season Kick-Off Party. It's free, kid-friendly and we'll be demonstrating cuttle-fish/ plaster casting (jewelry scale). The Mesa Arts Center is located at 1 East Main Street, Mesa AZ and the event time is from 6-10pm.

There is still time to sign up for classes as well. Check out the MAC metals website for details. Hope to see you tomorrow!
:-)

Fall Workshops in the Valley

It's time again to think of classes for fall. The Phoenix Center for the Arts and the Mesa Arts Center both have some great classes planned for fall. Click the links to go to their respective sites!
I will be offering several workshops this fall as well. Check out my classes page for details. I will be making an extra post shortly featuring an incredible enamelist I met this summer. Stay tuned :-)

Life Changes

Well, I've been teaching for South Mountain Community College as an adjunct for 3 rewarding years but 2 weeks before they were set to begin, my classes were given to the new full-time faculty so they would have as close to a full load as possible this fall. So I am a bit adrift at the moment. Polly Smith, metalsmith extraordinaire and head of metals at the Mesa Arts Center where I am one of her residents graciously offered me several more workshops that needed an instructor when the original person had to back out. I am so grateful to Polly for so many things. She's a great person, artist and boss and she's now thrown a net under me twice. The first time was when I'd just finished my tenure at the Phoenix Center for the Arts and had no studio. She offered me the second residency spot when her other resident (I will not mention names) abruptly left. It was perfect timing and I've had such a great experience there since!
So- I'll be offering a much extended line-up of workshops/ classes at MAC this fall. Check out www.macjewelryclasses.com or my Classes page on www.jewelclark.com for more info. Classes start September 8 so if you are interested, sign up soon! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
:-)

Lazarus Rising (again)

The summer was supposed to be a time for me to catch up on a lot of art and things that I normally don't get to do during the school year, including keeping up with my blog, but somehow, I don't know how, I've gotten so little done! How did I do that and still feel run off my feet most days? Oh well. It is the nature of life and of someone who wears many hats.
I'm re-tooling my blog a bit and will hopefully this fall move it to a Wordpress format when I'm not building sites for other people or teaching... and I'm widening the topic a bit. I will also be posting only once or twice a month since I should be realistic about it and I'm sure I can time manage that if I put it in the day planner :-)
I will be posting about classes I'm teaching, artists I like/ have met, show announcements, talking about art and design in general and including my projects and how-to's. I hope you like it and find it fun and useful. Away we go!

Solder Basics 101

I started writing this Sunday but didn't finish and I've had food poisoning since Monday or this would have been up way sooner.

Okayyyy. Back to the topic of this blog! Last time I wrote anything metals related, I was talking about soldering. I'd like to cover a few more things I've learned over the years, which doesn't mean I don't still screw things up, but knowing a few tricks goes a looong way to minimizing the screw-ups. Plus, I haven't yet created a solder god for my solder-station so I'm flying solo right now!
:-)

So, for starters, and forgive me if I repeat info from a previous post, the metal must be clean (no oxidation or oils) and the areas to solder must make physical contact. No gaps. Silver solder does not fill in gaps! I like to hold the join area up to a light source to look for any light coming through. If light comes through, I need to sand or file one of the two pieces to make a tighter fit. If you know one piece is the way you want it, always try to work the other one only to create the fit. Keep one piece constant so you have less variables to deal with. To clean a piece, you can sand the surface or throw it in the pickle (keep your pickle hot and strong and only leave work in briefly). You could remove hand oils and such with soap but if there's oxidation, soap won't help.

As I mentioned before, I like to sweat solder as much as humanly possible. So what is sweat solder? Some people refer to it as "tinning" (sp?), where you cover the area to be connected of one piece with solder (always cover the smaller piece), flow the solder, then place the solder covered piece on the piece you want to connect it to and re-flow the solder, joining the two pieces. The most important thing to remember is to heat the non-solder covered piece up more than the solder-covered piece to facilitate the transfer of solder from one piece to the other. I usually make this a 2 step process but you can do it in one.

With that said, let's go through an actual example.

So here's my set up. I always use a solder pan so I can rotate the work as needed and I solder on an old fashioned kiln brick. When the brick gets dirty, I just take it out to the concrete and sand it smooth and clean. Great stuff.

Here is one of the pieces I'll use for my example. This is another one of the Primal Scream pins. The surface is sanded and I'm ready to solder. The smaller items to the right are my name stamp plate, the backs of the bezel cups and the pin findings, all with a little solder already flown. The stamp plate has hard, pin findings have medium and the bezel cups have easy.

Here is the piece fluxed and with the stamp plate on top.

I want to heat the sheet and not the stamp plate until the flux goes clear and I can tell the larger piece is at soldering temperature. Then I brush the flame over the stamp plate and watch for a mercury-like seam of solder to appear between the two pieces of metal.

FYI- always make sure your solder brick is as level as humanly possible. Gravity is not your friend when soldering. Also, use just the haziest coating of flux possible. I've seen pieces slide and solder way off where you'd want them when there's too much flux and the brick isn't level.



I pickled the piece and refluxed and added the pin findings. Again, I'm just going to heat the large sheet until it gets up to soldering temperature then I'll let the flame hit the pin findings.
Once the back is done, it's time to solder the bezel cups.

I coat the back solder area with yellow ochre because I'm going to have to flip the piece over and- gravity is not my friend :-)
Speaking of gravity, now that the pin findings are soldered to the back, I no longer have a level surface to solder my bezel cups to. I don't want to hang the pin findings off the side of the brick because- gravity is not my friend! So I need a way to level out the piece so my bezel cups will stay where I put them and solder nicely. Any old non-flammable, not likely to solder to the piece, not likely to off gas toxic fumes when heated object will do and I just happened to have an old piece of binding wire lying around and the height was right so that's what I used.





Once I'm done soldering I transfer my pieces to a clean steel block so they'll cool fast before pickling. I don't quench anything and I especially don't quench silver and you should never throw hot metal into pickle of course. The steel block works great because it acts as a heat sink and sucks the heat out of my pieces lickety split.

To quench or not to quench and 101 uses for binding wire will have to wait for another time. Hope this was helpful!
:-)