Out and about with art this holiday weekend.

Last minute notice about two events on part or all of this Memorial Day weekend.

• Eastern edge of Pittsburgh: Swisshelm Park / Swissvale Neighborhood / Community Art Walk. Saturday, May 29, 10 am – 6 pm.
  
  Interactive Map
  
  This is my own neighborhood but, given the last-minute notice I had about it and the drizzly weather forecast, I’m not setting up a display for this.
  
  But I do plan to wander around and meet other artists (all within walking distance for me!), plus chat with others I encounter along the way. I’ll wear a fly fishing vest with lots of pockets, and plan to stuff them with samples of my art-jewelry (and, while I’m at it, a credit card reader too!).
  
  Let me know if I should be looking for you too!
  
  
• Chautauqua – Lake Erie Art Trail: Hub Crawl, Saturday, May 29 and Sunday, May 30, 10 am – 5 pm each day.
  
  Interactive Map
  
  I sure wish I could just zip up for this tour too! If you’re too far north to make it down to my area for the Art Walk, above, then consider heading up for the Art Trail. If you stop at Hub 2, the Portage Hill Art Gallery, please tell artist-owner Audrey that I pointed you to this event (and ask to see some of my pieces that are available there).
  
  
• And, wherever you may find yourself, have a memorable Memorial Day weekend!

My first real “live” show in 18 months!

The Wilkins School Community Center in Regent Square, where I have my studio, is still closed to the public. But the big paved area in front is open, outside, and this Saturday, May 15, from 8 am to around 1 pm, will be the site of WSCC’s annual Plant Sale and more! No book sale inside, and I can’t do a show up in my studio, but I will set up a simple sales spot outside among the gardeners and various information tables. I think they’re putting me on the driveway side, but can’t be sure until we set up.

Also at the same time is the annual Regent Square Community Yard Sale. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s typically a big event, with folks coming in from all over to stroll around the whole lovely neighborhood on that special morning seeking good deals. Street parking is first come first served, and please watch out for pedestrians!

Because yard-sale customers don’t come expecting to buy high-end jewelry, my spread this time will feature a lot of my most affordable pieces. Because I don’t do the thing where I mark my pieces up just so I can offer big sale-price discounts, the best I can do (for this show only) is to offer a bit of a deal for multiple purchases: 10% off second and subsequent items (after the first, highest price, one). If you want something I haven’t brought down, at the end of the show (once I’ve taken things back inside), I’ll be happy stay a bit longer so I can bring out some of my very special pieces for your consideration. (I sure look forward to the day when I can welcome visitors inside my studio again!)

Students, fellow artists, and others: If I have something of yours and we haven’t been able to connect while the building has been closed, do let me know. I have sone fired pieces, books, a stool, and more that I’ve saved for various folks! It’s probably worth letting me know in advance, so I can be sure to pull it out of whatever corner I stashed it into and set it someplace where it will be easy to grab and bring downstairs.

One final note: I rarely do outdoor shows, just indoor ones. I don’t have all the regular display materials and such for outdoors, so if the weather turns windy or rainy, I’ll have to bail out and haul everything back inside as fast as I can. Cool is fine, just not a lot of wind and/or rain! But predictions are for a lovely spring day, so I’m sure hoping that holds…

Mid-Winter Hues, 2019

This Saturday, February 2, brings us the opening reception and awards celebration for the 2019 Mid-Winter Hues show at the North Hills Art Center from 7 to 9 pm. The show runs through March 1 and, after the opening night, can be viewed on weekdays (M-F) from 10 am to 3 pm, plus Monday evenings from 7 to 9 pm.

The juror for this show was Katie Koenig, a local artist (and very new mom!) whose realistic acrylic paintings of everyday objects I just love! So I’m particularly interested to hear what she’ll have to say at the opening / awards event about various pieces in the show.

Apparently there are a total of 106 entries (wow!), and I’m delighted to report that the two pieces shown in this post, both of which I made late last winter, will be among them!

Spring Thoughts on a Gray Day is an enamel-on-steel pendant. Mid-winter days here in this “rust-belt steel-town” are often rather gray…. We remember that brightly colored skies, hillsides, gardens, and more will return. Cars will have snow and salt washed off them, and those with bright colors will reappear. People will take off their heavy, dark coats and again sport bright colors. But in the cold, dark, gray of mid-winter, pastel tones may be the brightest colors imaginable on some days….

But then there are days when the sun does come out and various bits of sparkle do brighten things up for a while. I tried to capture that idea via the lavender cubic zirconia and selective polishing in the reversible sterling (.960) silver pendant I’ve titled Serendipity Wave, while the textures on each side of this piece remind me of various kinds of tracks in the snow … or perhaps dreams of tracks in the sand dunes of an escape to warmer climates!

I’ve seen some preview pictures of a couple walls of paintings (probably about a third of the total Mid-Winter Hues show) and the thing that impressed me was how many seemed to be attempting to banish the grays of winter with bright colors! So I’m looking forward to seeing the whole collection on Saturday. And to seeing some friendly faces at the opening. Oh, and after having spent that afternoon in my studio, to suddenly trying to fit in a little stop at the Mt. Nebo Pat Catan’s (did you see my last post?!) on my way there.

Ten Years!

Happy New Year! OK, I am a few days late with that thought, but where has the time gone? How can it have been just over ten years already since I started this blog?! I want to thank everyone who has helped to make the past ten years so wonderful!

And here are a few of the things coming up early this new, coming year:

After a break for the Holidays, my (mostly) Second (mostly) Saturday Studio Sessions return on January 12!

This month the time will be from about 2 to 6 pm. I’m setting it a little later than usual so it will run into the International Pot Luck Dinner that Global Pittsburgh is hosting in the same building from 6 to 9 pm, to make it easy for folks who want to attend both.

I’ll have a little mini-shop open. Mostly it’ll have my newer enameled pieces on copper or steel, along with a selection of silver earrings and a few of the smaller silver pendants. (If you missed getting something special that you wanted last year, let me know ahead of time and I can try to bring that in too!).

And I’m planning to have one worktable set up, so there should be room for one or two students to join me. Again, give me a heads-up … otherwise, I’m likely to just spread out over the whole thing myself since I have several deadlines looming. (But company is always welcome!)

The next two Studio Sessions are tentatively, hopefully, scheduled for:

• Saturday, Feb 9, 1 to 5 pm
• Saturday, Mar 9, 1 to 5 pm

If I make any adjustments to the dates or times for February or March, I will post updated information for those events over here.

My first workshop for the year will be on Friday, January 18.

Petites on a Post is scheduled to be held from 6 to 9 pm that Friday night at the North Hills Art Center. You’ll learn how to make a pair of fine silver post-style earrings. But my classes are always flexible: No holes in your ears: join us anyway and make a couple lapel pins! Not into posts: they’re the “bonus step” in this class, but you can join us and make dangles instead. Not into tiny things: join us anyway and just work larger! (NHAC’s course fee includes enough silver clay for two petite items, but I’ll have more that you can purchase from me in class.)

Technically, registration closes a week ahead, so that’d be Friday the 11th. But since I’ll be able to show off samples and answer questions during my Second Saturday open house, I’m hoping they’ll still let folks sign up that weekend. But registration will definitely be closed before that next Monday, so if you’re interested, please sign up as soon as you can! (Click on the link at the workshop title, above.)

I’m currently recruiting students for two workshops in my studio.

• February (date & time TBA): Learn to Make Buttons!
• March (dates & times TBA) A Two-Day Introduction to Bronze.

If you’re interested in being kept in the loop for one or both of those, let me know! Send me an email, or leave a comment with this post, and you’ll be included in the discussion of when we’ll meet and some specifics on the possible projects.

Lately, I’ve just felt the need for some rainbows…

… because we get rainbows when light breaks through the haze and clouds in just the right way!

So I’m trying to bring that on by making rainbows, adding vitreous (porcelain) enamel to hand-made steel pieces.  And I’m delighted that the juror for the Pittsburgh Society of Artists selected this one (whose little photo I’ve added to their postcard) for their 53rd Annual Exhibition!

The thing is, I really thought I’d taken a “final” photo of this piece, after a couple more firings of red and orange. Those are among the most sensitive (i.e., most easily “burnt”!) colors, so I’m super-careful with them. But I can’t find any later ones (after I’d added some jump rings for hanging it, and strung it on a nice black snake chain). I just had to crop the little image out of a big “what I did today” shot that I took before I left my studio that night.

That collection had a number of rows, with several pieces in each row.  Ones at the top were finished; lower rows needed increasingly more work.  This one was in the middle of the bottom row: not too bad a starting point, if I do say so myself! You can see where I was going with it. Anyone in SW PA who wants to see it in person is welcome to stop by the 3rd Street Gallery in Carnegie, PA. It’s a delightful little gallery (and frameshop) that I am happy to have discovered through the process of getting juried-into this great show.

I’m heading over to the show opening this evening, wearing another of my rainbow-pieces. I’ll have a few for sale in my Open House tomorrow; there are several in the works on my bench; and I’m hoping to find time to make more before the holdiay-sales-crunch, which has already begun, gets fully underway! They’ve already helped me feel better and I’m hoping they’ll do that for others too!

I knew it would work!

There is absolutely nothing special about the enamel work on this piece but it is a proof-of-concept for an idea I’ve had for ages:

• save a bit of left-over (negative space!) bronze metal clay from a piece cut with one of my Silhouette machines;
• fire that onto a piece of copper to sinter it; then
• enamel onto the copper around the bronze!

I figured it should work, and I’m happy to finally confirm for myself that it does.

So the big question now is: when can I find time to make another batch of bronze pieces so I’ll have more “scraps” to play with!

And I ask myself, what was I waiting for?!!  I’ve wanted to do this with bronze and copper since I first started using bronze clays! When did Hadar release her first “Quick Fire” bronze?  2010?  If that’s right, since then!  But I waited what seems forever before taking even the next step (though, to be fair, I was playing around with a lot of other ideas in the meantime).

I remember how it felt the obvious thing to do when cutting clays with one of my Silhouette cutters (in this case, my Portrait).  Though I’d had that thought for a while, I remember firing that particular “drop” of cut-out clay onto a copper oval during my initial trials of “one fire brilliant bronze.” (That was the last of Hadar’s “one fire” clays that I tried, and I struggled with it a bit through several rounds of testing … but it is now a favorite when I want to work in bronze!)  I came across the “blank” last week as I was firing a few steel pieces with enamel: it was the last piece I fired before cleaning everything up so I could use that work-table for an Open House this weekend.

Looking back for when I’d made this piece to test with, I realized that it had been sitting in a corner of my studio waiting for me to stop and enamel it for over 3 years!  At the time, I did make three more such “blanks” to play with, but now I know I’ll spend even more time designing pieces for additional possibilities from both their positive and negative space components…

O, yes, that’s why I waited! On top of that, even the test-piece shown here has a simple “separation enamel” flower on its other side!  Simple in case this side should have failed for some reason, but there because …. that’s just what I try to do!

And now I ask myself: why couldn’t I have just been satisfied with making pieces that are reversible?f  But I know the answer: while there’s a big part of me that really likes, and strives for relatively “simple” designs, there is another part that just has to add some little “twist” while I’m at it…

Are you drawn more to minimalist or complex designs? (Not just mine: anyone’s!?)  Leave a comment!

“Cool Sizzle” at Art All Night … Tonight!

Yes, the last weekend in April once again brings us Art All Night! And Cool Sizzle will be spending all night night there tonight!

The Piece

Living in Steeltown (aka Pittsburgh, PA) it seemed only right that my tenth-ever entry into this annual show should, at last, be made from steel! All my earlier ones used silver, bronze, and/or copper, so steels’s the one metal from my main repertiore that hasn’t yet been shown there.

Specifically, Cool Sizzle was made from a steel that is both “sintered” and “black.” Regular readers of this blog will likely know what that means. If you’ve just landed here from the tag on my piece at Art All Night, the most important things to take from that are:

• sintered: relatively light in weight for its size, and
• black: not a shiny, stainless steel.

Sometimes I carefully design a piece (i.e., with a theme and a title from the start) but, more often, I start with a vague idea and see where the piece takes me. This was definitely one of the latter. Late last year (actually, while doing some Christmas shopping) I noticed a silicon trivet / potholder with a cute “flat bubble” design on it that I thought would make a nice “texture stamp” for a jewelry piece, so I bought it as a little gift to myself, and set it aside. Just this past Monday, anticipating Art All Night, I was looking around my studio and debating whether to enter something I already had on hand or try to complete something totally new. I moved the tray of enamel powders that just happened to be sitting on top of that trivet, and I knew: try to make something with it, out of steel, and colored with enamels!

Why call it Cool Sizzle?

The “sizzle” refers, not just to the bubbly pattern, but even more to all the heat involved in making it:

• construted using the “metal clay” process, it was fired in a kiln to nearly 1900°F for two hours;
• a certain amount of rust-protection was added via a “hot bluing” process (which turns it black…) of repeatedly heating it with a torch flame until glowing and then rapidly cooling it by quenching;
• adding color by wet-packing vitreous enamel powders into some of the hollows in the design, which ended up taking five more firings (though only at about 1500°F this time).

And the “cool” refers to:

• the use of mostly cool colors (blues and green) in the design (with just a touch of yellow (but not red or orange), meant to reflect the piece’s lightness (rather than for warmth)), and
• how the metal normally feels relatively cool to the touch.

The Event

The rules for Art All Night are simple: one (only one) piece per artist, anyone can enter, with no fees, no jury, no censorship. Also, no sales at the show itself, but participants can offer bids on entries that are then passed along to the artists when they pick up their work. It’s up to the artists to then contact anyone who has bid on their art. If you get one bid at or above your asking price, you just arrange a time and place to make the sale. If you get more than one bid, or offers below your asking price, then negotiations can commence. I haven’t been overwhelmed with bids on every entry I’ve made over the years, but the majority of them have happily gone to a bidder (several at more than my asking price!), and all but one of the others have sold very soon afterwards. (The lone hold-out is actually one of my personal favorite pieces, and I’ve really no clue why it’s still in my collection!)

2018 represents the 21st annual Art All Night event, and the first one not held in the Lawrenceville neighborhood! I wasn’t even living in Pittsburgh when I first discovered it: I was still living in California then, and just happened to be in town for a conference, noticed a little blurb about it in the local arts & entertainment newspaper, and decided to go check it out. And was blown away by this wonderful (then, little) exhibit of community art! It had everything from little-kid “refrigerator” art (with some great bidding wars among grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.!), to people who made something (NFS: Not For Sale) for themselves that they’d just like to let others see, to wild constructions you’d never, ever see in a regular gallery anywhere, to works that were clearly professional creations, and more.

A year (or was it two?) later, I was invited to come back to the area for a job interview around the same time of year. So I checked to see when Art All Night would be, and asked to schedule the trip for dates that could include it. I didn’t get that job but, surprise, a couple years later was invited to interview for a different position. And I scheduled it the same way again! That one ended up involving a lot of negotiating and re-designing and more negotiating before it got sorted out so it wasn’t until a whole year later when a house-hunting trip just happened to coincide again. Oh, and in between there somewhere were a couple little springtime vacation trips to visit with some friends that I also planned for late April. And I’ve continued to go, to volunteer, to offer demos, to enter pieces — one or more of those each year — since actually moving here. And if/when I ever move away, I sure hope I will want and be able to return for future Art All Night events!

But the thing about it is how much it has grown over the years! It started rather small, but grew quickly. The growth has slowed a bit in recent years, but it is still so very big that finding a suitable venue is now a challenge. Community Development Corporations use it as a way to draw first hundreds, then thousands, and now tens of thousands of people to some huge yet empty building. In addition to the pieces hung on walls, displayed on tables, or built up on-site on the floor, there’s live music, art demonstrations, participatory activities, food & drink, and more. And it really does stay open all night: current hours are from 4 pm on Saturday through 2 pm on Sunday! Adding up the different times I’ve gone to it across all the years, I’ve been there at just about every time of day or night, and the vibe does vary over the duration. Do let me know when you’d like to go!

Cranberry Artists Network Double Feature!

Kepler’s Dream	Spring Thoughts on a Gray Day

I wrote about Kepler’s Dream on Thursday. On Friday, I learned that Spring Thoughts on a Gray Day had been accepted into a second Cranberry Artists Network event, their 2018 Spring Show this year with the theme of Drip, Drizzle & Splash (DDS).

Now, to be honest, I’d wanted to submit both these pieces for consideration for DDS. Except I was in California for the second half of February. How is that relevant? The invitation to submit one piece for the International Womens Show arrived while I was in the air on my way there: ’twas the first message I saw when I turned off “airplane mode” on my phone upon landing. And that is when I saw that the deadline for submission would be the day before I’d return. So, um, I was going to have to submit for that something I’d have ready before heading home! So, as I described in my March 8 post, I decided to enter Kepler’s Dream for that show.

I could still hold onto Spring Thoughts on a Gray Day for Drip, Drizzle & Splash! (And another big “thanks!” to Hadar Jacobson for the recent workshop and also for this photo.)

The prospectus for Drip, Drizzle & Splash, which allowed us to submit two pieces for consideration, had encouraged us to consider “the emergence of new beginnings and the way our weather and environment makes this happen.” While I didn’t have another piece ready that complemented Spring Thoughts, I did have a shamrock piece from my Urban Flowers series that I’d just made in December that seemed to fit the theme. So that was my second entry. And I was delighted to learn that my Metropolitan Shamrock has also been accepted! That show will be hung on the night of March 12 and officially open on March 13.

Metropolitan Shamrock

Both shows will be on display through April 5, 2018. There will be a public reception for both of them from 6 to 8 pm on the evening of March 22. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you there!

March 8: International Women’s Day

I call this piece Kepler’s Dream, and it’s the one I chose to enter when I was invited to participate in the Cranberry Artists Network‘s show in honor of International Women’s Day.

Now, IWD is March 8, and the show is only being “hung” that evening. The official dates of the show are March 9 through April 5.  It looks like there could be as many as 33 pieces in the show.

There will be a Public Reception from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, March 22.

Question: Why enter a piece named after Johannes Kepler for Women’s Day?

Discussion: Well, I was in high school when I first learned of his discovery that planets moved in elliptical orbits around the sun (not the earth!) and the sun itself was not even at the center but at one of the two focal points of that ellipse.

That was also when I first heard about his conjecture from the early 17th century on the efficiency of packing spheres. That was not really proven until early in the 21st! I actually worked for a few years late in the 20th century with some folks who were involved in trying to find the proof!

Anyway, the readings I had been inspired to devour back in high school were key to opening my mind to being able to “think big” about the seemingly-mundane topics we were covering in school. Did you know, for example, that Kepler also published the first description of the hexagonal symmetry of snowflakes?! And he looked at the efficiency of hexagonal packing: think beehives! There’s more: go do some explorations of him yourself!

And so after decades of doing formal mathematics using accurate visual representations of what IS, here I am now doing artistic explorations of what COULD BE. I had no thought of Kepler as I began this piece: it would look rather different if I had! (And such a piece in this line will likely come to exist eventually.) But as I finished it, and looked at the combination of shapes I’d created (sort of oval and round), and thought about the colors I’d chosen (with their references to the skies above), and talked about it with some friends I was visiting at the time, I just began to wonder if Kepler might ever have dreamt anything like this.

Answer: So I named it Kepler’s Dream to honor him for being one of the influences (indirectly and centuries later) on this woman’s life!

Also, re technique: If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may think that this piece doesn’t look typical of my work. And you’d be right! This piece was made using Hadar’s Low Shrinkage Steel (metal clay powder). The back is plain, with just the bail for hanging it. (I do have ideas for other designs, with my usual make-it-reversible approach, but this one was part of the experience of simply perfecting this technique, so I kept it simple!)

After firing so it would sinter, the steel was treated to help it resist rust. Then I applied three different enamel colors into the openings of the embellishments. (Yeah, the mathematician / geometer in me had fun figuring out how to space out three colors among ten spaces, when ten is not an even multiple of three.) Because of the way I applied the enamels, it was easy enough to fire several different colors at the same time; to get good coverage, on the other hand, it took multiple applications of the enamel powders, and re-firing each round, until it came to look like this. As a final step, I applied a light coat of wax which helped to even out the color of the steel and should also help to further protect its finish. I made several others at the same time which I’ll try to remember to discuss in a later post. But I am including a tag with each one warning a buyer that, because steel can rust, I recommend some common-sense precautions: don’t wear it while bathing, showering, or swimming and, if it does get wet, try to dry it thoroughly as soon as possible.

Finally, a big “thanks!” to Hadar Jacobson for the recent workshop and especially for the photo, so I’d have it in time for the show!

2013 Art Buzz Tour — This Weekend!

Have you heard the buzz? Six sites! All in the Pittsburgh area’s “East End” this weekend: Regent Square, Swissvale, and Squirrel Hill. And my studio is one of the locations on it again this year.

I’ve got lots of jewelry on offer, plus a handful of other small adornments.

I also have aloe vera plants that need a new home, babies that i repotted from some of the big ones I keep around. (I do work with hot metals here!) BONUS: small ones are free with a purchase of $35 or more (or a discount can be applied to the price of any of the larger ones if that’s what you prefer).

Plus you’re welcome to share some of my cookies and hot mulled cider. (I also got the makings for cranberry-orange frosties but, with all the snow that’s falling, I’ll save that until there’s a request or I run out of cider, whichever comes first.)

Happy Holidays to all!