Why Do I Make Jewelry?

It's that time of month again... The Etsy Metal Blog Carnival!

This month's question is "Why Do I Make Jewelry?"

I have a BFA in sculpture and did metal sculpture and some jewelry in college, a long long time ago.    
But, I've made art all my life. I've made lots and lots of different art... printmaking, calligraphy, sign painting, clay, silk painting, metal sculpture, photography, drawing, ... 
I don't really think I have a choice, I have to make something.

So about 10 years ago I ventured back into working with metal and enamels and making jewelry. And I felt like I had come home. I absorbed everything I read and learned in workshops and it stuck. It was as if I already knew all of this stuff, I had just forgotten. 

It was different than making something to hang on a wall. Jewelry is more alive: it moves; it's 3-dimensional; it's noisy; you are allowed to touch it, as a matter of fact you have to touch it. I have a hard time going to a museum or a gallery to look at paintings and sculpture and not being allowed to touch them... I do it anyway!

 The other thing that appeals to my ADD nature, is that just about any art that you can do, you can do on jewelry, like painting, drawing, calligraphy, small sculpture, photography... so I feel like I'm not missing out on anything.

Why do other Etsy Metal members make jewelry?

 Cynthia Del Giudice 
 Laura Jane Bouton
 silentgoddess 
 Beth Cyr 
Peculiar Forest 
Tosca Terán 
 Nodeform 
Mary Anne Karren
My Precious Studio
 Deborah Lee Taylor
Anne Walker
Andrea Ring 
Gracebourne Design  
 Danielle Miller 
 Inbar Bareket 
 Jewellietta 
 Abella Blue 

EtsyMetal Blog Carnival ~ September 2, 2012 "Pets"

Etsy Metal Blog Carnival
Topic: "Pets"
Please share your pets with us! Pictures, stories, new pets, old pets, dogs, cats, ants, anything that has ever lived in your house that wasn't human, be they friend or foe!

Right now I have 2 Australian cattle dog mutts, Lucy and Sparky. They are the funniest dogs I have ever seen. They'll play tug-o-war and Lucy will lay on her side, dead weight, and Sparky will drag her around the house. 

Before Lucy & Sparky we had a chow/yellow lab mix named Chris. He was a great dog. The lab/chow mix had him a bit confused though. Chows don't like the water and labs love it, so when we would take him to the beach he'd want to go in the water, but he'd only go in up to his doggie knees. It was a sad day when he died at age 13.


I have 3 sons, so we've done the pet circuit... we've had parakeets – Shim 1, 2, and 3. My son didn't know how to tell if they were male or female, so he took the 'sh' from she, and the 'im' from him = 'Shim." And we've had hamsters, bunnies, goldfish, and a giant 7' iguana named Noddy. That was interesting. He kept attacking one of my sons. And their poop is like giant bird poop.


On the uninvited side, we've had ants, rats, gophers, raccoons, possums, moths, spiders, skeeter eaters, mosquitoes, blue jays, sparrows, and an occasional squirrel.


If you would like to learn about the pets of other Etsy Metal Team members, check out their blogs here:

1. Laney (silentgoddess) - http://silentgoddess.blogspot.com
2. Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com
3. 2Roses - http://www.jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com
4. Erin Austin - http://metalmusing.blogspot.com/
5. Rebecca Bogan - http://AdobeSol.wordpress.com
6. Victoria Takahashi/Experimetal - http://vtakahashi.blogspot.com/
7. Lou Hunter- https://peculiarforest.blogspot.com
   Cynthia Del Giudice - http://cynthiadelgiudice.blogspot.com

Etsy Metal Blog Carnival- Nobody's Perfect!

"Nobody's Perfect!"
Care to share a piece of your work that did not turn out quite as beautiful as you had planned?
Perhaps you have an interesting experience that went awry...
Do tell! 

That’s hard to say too, because even when a piece doesn’t come out like I may have intended, or fell apart, or just looked weird, I still learned something from making it. But if I have to choose, I’d pick Ring A Day #37 (and hope that #37 doesn’t feel insulted!) I like it least because of the craftsmanship. (Let's not even talk about the crappy photo.) It was lumpy and not filed and sanded very well. However, it was also a turning point, because I started to realize that even if I’m making a quick ring or a simple ring, it should be done well. That’s when I started looking more closely at what I was doing and trying to work harder on the technical aspects. Not that everything I do comes out perfectly, but that I have that more as a goal now. Thank you #37. 

This piece is copper, forged, woven, enameled - 3" long by 2" wide
Well, I like this piece, but it really wasn't at all what I intended. I started out with a strip of copper with 2 rectangles on the ends and my plan was to forge the skinny part till it curved which I did and that was successful. But the ends were going to be parallel to each other and I was going to stamp a design on them and it was going to be a pendant. But... the piece was really too big. Also, when I forged it the rectangles curved into each other instead of being parallel. However they curved into each other enough to cut them into strips and weave them. But... next time I would make the strips longer and cut off the excess, because of the overlapping I ran out of length on the one side so I had to cut off one of the end strips. You can see that the right side only has 3 strips while the left has 4.


Check out how other Etsy Metal members answered this question:
1. Silentgoddess - http://silentgoddess.blogspot.com
2. Gracebourne - http://gracebourne.blogspot.com/
3. The Silver Pearl - http://silverpearlmetalworks.wordpress.com/
4. 2Roses - http://jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com
5. Inbar Bareket - http://www.inbarbareket.info/blog
6. Anne Walker - http://creativeinclinations.blogspot.com/
7. Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com
8. wildflowerdesigns - http://wildflowerdesigns.blogspot.com
9. Michele Grady Designs- http://michelegradydesigns.blogspot.com
10. TK Metal Arts - http://tkmetalarts.blogspot.com

Is There Life Outside of Metal?

Etsy Metal Blog Carnival -- February 7, 2011

Tell us about other kinds of art and craft you do. What other media do you work and play with? How often do you get to create? Does it relate to or inspire your metalworking?


I've always wanted to open up a store where I would sell art and craft items and have workshops that would teach different media. That way I would have access to everything. It would also satisfy my need to keep buying art and craft items! My house sometimes feels like that store. Over the last 20-30 years, I've tried every media I possibly could.


Lately, metal has definitely taken over my life, it's so easy to combine other media in metal that it seems to satisfy most of those other needs. Adding enameling, I can paint and draw on metal, I can punch holes and sew metal together, I can cast it and use it like clay. I can create small sculptures. I have to say that I'm totally obsessed.

                  

Encaustic Self Portrait

Encaustic Photo Booth

I teach an art class twice a week to disabled and able-bodied teenagers. In creating lessons for the class, I look at other mediums and find myself thinking that this is fun! I need to do more of this. But I usually, only do it in the class. One thing that carried over was working in encaustic, painting with wax. 

From the encaustic you can see two of my other obsessions, self-portraits and photo booth pictures. I have about 40 or 50 strips of photo booth pictures from when I was in college, about 30 years ago (and it only cost $.25!). My friend and I used this as our art medium, our teachers weren't quite so sure about it. I've always done self-portraits, drawing sketching, painting and I still do them on occasion. I have Photo Booth on my Mac (I was very excited to see that!!) and I do use it frequently, with a cache of pictures waiting to be made into something. The pictures don't look quite as good, I guess that's because I'm 30 years older and that camera seems to pick up every detail! The encaustic self portrait was from a picture using Photo Booth.

Metal Photo Strip

My photo booth pictures have totally inspired my metal work. I have used them many times as inspiration. As a matter of fact, I have a whole story about it on my website:       www.evelynmarkasky.com/Site/Photobooth.html


The other thing that I do at least 2-3 times a week is sketch. Of course, that is mostly for ideas for my metalwork. Yes, I am obsessed!!


Please check out the other blogs in the carnival and see how other artists answer this question:


1. kate jones - http://www.katejonesdesign.blogspot.com
2. kathryn cole - http://www.kathryncolejewelry.blogspot.com
3. 2Roses - http://www.JewelryTutorial.blogspot.com
4. Twigs and Heather - http://www.twigsandheather.blogspot.com
5. Erin Austin - http://www.metalmusing.blogspot.com
6. Thomasin Durgin - http://metalriot.blogspot.com
7. Nodeform - http://nodeform.blogspot.com
8. Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com
9. stacey hansen - http://wildflowerdesigns.blogspot.com
10. Nina Gibson - http://ninagibsondesigns.blogspot.com/
11. elizabeth scott - http://esdesignsjewelry.com/blog
12. Evelyn Markasky - http://markasky.blogspot.com
13. Amanda Conley - http://amandaconley.blogspot.com
14. Jenny Baughman - http://ridgeschool.blogspot.com/
15. Catherine Chandler - http://catherinechandler.blogspot.com/