I am honored to have TWO pieces in PSA’s 57th Annual Exhibition

I was eligible to submit up to two pieces to the Pittsburgh Society of Artists’ Annual show, so why not offer two and maybe get at least one in! So I was truly delighted when I got word that both of them had made it in. Here’s a little (perspective-distorted) panorama of the show at the 3rd Street Gallery in Carnegie, PA. You can locate (not actually see…) my two pieces, displayed in long white shadow boxes on the orange part of the wall to the left here, and then I’ll tell you a little about my entries.

I started thinking about making the pendant I’ve titled Enjoying Nature during a few local political discussions about proposed zoning variances to allow for a huge condominium building on a parcel that, while not officially in the large city park that surrounds it on three sides, is still zoned as a park area. Those who treasure the greenery and wildlife (well, except perhaps for the massive overabundance of just a few, select species…) have been trying to emphasize the value of that oasis amidst the urban neighborhoods that surround it. And I simply wanted to try to illustrate it.

Click this image to see it rotate in my hand!

I started the piece I’ve titled Circling Into Control way back last year, in 2022. But I kept debating with myself about how actually to finish up the mechanism that would allow it to hang so that the wearer would be able to spin it around if s/he wished to play with it that way. I had one main idea, and a handful of spin-offs from that. But, finally, I decided there was enough going on with the piece so I should keep the spin-mechanism under control (as shown here): I let the piece have the little black onyx trillion I’d set into it from he start, plus all its textures and loops and other embellishments. Then I just kept the top lightly decorated but otherwise as simple as possible.

All of that making and finishing happened while I was in the depths of this summer’s covid-exhaustion. I had to work in much shorter spurts than usual. I held myself together pretty well while doing that — because I like doing that kind of work — but I did simply run out of functional time for a real photography session. I did manage to catch these quick shots in the last few minutes before I had to head out the door to deliver them, set into their display boxes, for the show.

Does either of them inspire you in any way? If so, please let me know!

My Acanthus was accepted for PSA’s 56th Annual Exhibition!

I’m delighted that my reversible, silver “lentil bead” necklace, Acanthus, was selected to be included in the Pittsburgh Society of Artists Guild‘s 56th Annual Exhibit!

What was most stunning to me was that, of the 71 artists who submitted pieces, I was one of only 22 whose work was selected, and this was the only 3D piece chosen! What an honor!

Oh, and if you know me, you probably expect that piece to be reversible … and it is! The other side is a similar sort of leaf design, with a somewhat subtle difference: more of an “outie” than this “innie” pattern in the center. I had originally made them separately, intending to do two different things with their respective “other” sides. But once these components were ready, they just sort of told me that they belonged together instead!

In addition to the two receptions for this show that are noted in the “postcard” photo, above, there are two additional events related to this show that seem worth mentioning:

1. Saturday evening, October 28, an Ekphrastic Reading. Free and open to the public.
   (I’ve been holding off making this post, awaiting time and other details (poet, artistic inspiration) for this event, but so far only the evening date has been made available. Do let me know if you want to attend that evening but don’t see details anywhere else and I forget to update this.)
2. Friday, November 4, from 4 to 8 pm. This is the shift during which I will be staffing the gallery!
   (It’d sure be great to have some folks I know stop by to see the show and visit with me a bit during that.)

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And, since I’m writing, I just realized that while I mentioned this earlier event on Convergent Series’ Facebook page, I didn’t note here that I’d had two pieces accepted in July for the Cranberry Artists Network‘s annual Martinis with Monet show, that one of them (shown on the left in this picture) had won an award, and that both of them were purchased by one of my collectors!

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What with all that from Martinis with Monet, my solo “glass-case” show for the month of September, and now getting into the PSA annual show, it really feels great to have hit the ground running (and not falling!) again, at last. (Though I still have to remember about posting such things!)

Here’s hoping that we all have a great autumn. And, as noted in my last post, I have two classes scheduled and filling (as I write this, a few seats do still remain) at Artsmiths soon too: might I see you there?

Pittsburgh Society of Artists 2019 Artist’s Choice Show

Well, I did it again, first time in a while, though: delivered a piece to a show and then, when I went to post about it, found I can’t find a photo of that piece!

This is an Artist’s Choice show with the Pittsburgh Society of Artists. So the artist has to be juried into the PSA in the first place, but then we get to pick which piece we want to exhibit. This time, in fact, though only one piece would be displayed, you could register either one or two. If you registered one, then you just had to deliver it. If you registered two then, when you delivered your work, you could talk with the show chairs and other people who were there about which one of them should go into the show. Unlike most juried shows, where you don’t get any kind of feedback on your work, I thought it would be interesting to hear some discussion of my two choices.

I chose to register two of my biggest, and thus heaviest, pieces. Pricey, in part just because each one used up a big chunk of silver. (Thus if either one of them were to sell, I could buy a good chunk more!) Another factor in their prices is that, because of their size, the construction techniques were not simple either. While I was delighted with the results each time, at that size and heft, both were what I’d call “learning experiences,” made a year or so apart. Because of that “status,” I was sure I had taken photos of both of them.

And then I went to write this post and, guess what: I can find a number of lovely photos of each side of the one that I did not end up leaving for the show, but none of the piece that’s in it. I know when I made it, and I can find others from that same time. It is a kind of unusual shape, so I guess I just figured I’d spend time another day figuring out what angles I wanted to try shooting from … and then forgot to do that? (That still doesn’t explain why I can’t even find any in-process shots….) Who knows!

So, to see what it is (hint: it’s a lovely, multi-sided, fine silver (.999) pendant with a citrine cabochon, hung on a sterling silver (.925) chain) you’ll just have to come to the show! As shown in PSA’s promo-card, the show is at the Christine Frechard Gallery which is now at 5126 Butler Street, 15201.

I’ll be at the opening reception on Satuday evening, August 3. The show will be open through August 30. (Check with the gallery for days and hours: I think it’s We-Fr-Sa-Su but the Gallery website indicates different days!) I also plan to attend the closing reception, on August 30. If you want to see me, but can’t be at either of the receptions, let me know so that we can arrange to meet some other time.

p.s., I probably won’t be at the opening for the full three hours, but I’ll be there for at least two. I also want to get downtown to catch the Squonk show! I’d planned to do that on Sunday, but then there was the mess of the annual Pittsburgh Regatta being cancelled. I’m delighted that Squonk was able to salvage at least a few Saturday evening shows in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Saturday Night Market & Downtown Sound Music Series! I hope lots of folks will show up to support that!

2018 Holiday Season Events!

It’s that time of year again…!

Even though I haven’t been able to post much here lately, these are the major events I have planned for December!

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Where you can find me in person:

Arts & Crafts Fair, Saturday, December 8, 9 am to 6 pm, curated by the C. C. Mellor Library in Edgewood, PA. Find me and dozens of other local artists in the festive Edgewood Community House adjacent to the library.

Studio Open House: Saturday & Sunday, December 15 & 16, Noon to 6 pm on Saturday (probably more like 1 to 5:30 on Sunday), in my studio at the Wilkins School Community Center (WSCC) in Regent Square. Since this is where I make my creations, this is the place to see the widest selection of my offerings! Please note that my Saturday event runs right up until WSCC’s Sustainable Neighborhood Holiday Potluck, and you’re welcome to stay and join in on that too!

UPDATE — A (very rare) SALE!
In my studio (Dec 15-16 only), select class-demo pieces will be 10% off!
I don’t mark my prices up just so I can later offer them at a discount… But in classes, I often make smaller, simpler pieces to illustrate a technique or concept, or to answer a question, ones that I later finish and offer for sale.  This will be your chance to purchase a few of those at a discount!

Second-round Studio Shopping, by appointment only, again in my studio at WSCC. For those who come at one of the above times, and someone you’re with expresses interest in something, and you’d like to come back without them to see if it’s still available for you to purchase as a gift, but can’t get there at another official event-time … I’m still happy to try to help you out! Schedule an appointment for Dec 17, 18, or 19 at a time that will work for both of us!

Other places where my art jewelry,
colorful ornaments, and more
are currently available for purchase:

• The main floor shop at The Artsmiths of Pittsburgh Arts and Cultural Center in Mt. Lebanon, PA, ongoing.
• The H*liday mART at Sweetwater Center for the Arts in Sewickley (Nov 24 – Dec 9).
• The Holiday Artisan Market at the North Hills Art Center in Ross Township (Nov 17 – Dec 8).
• The Gift Shop at the Hoyt Center for the Arts in New Castle, PA, ongoing. (Consider combining that with a trip for their 7 pm Holiday Concert with the Pittsburgh Cello Quartet on Dec 6.)
• The front room at the Portage Hill Art Gallery in Westfield, NY, ongoing. (Consider stopping there on if you go on the Mayville Merchants’ Holiday Open House tour, Nov 30 – Dec 2.)

And I’m honored to have entries on display
(and for sale!) at these current art shows:

Cherry Blossom Botany (below) is in the Cranberry Artists Network’s 2108 Holiday Show (Nov 8 – Dec 20, 2018) at the Cranberry Township Municipal Building, 2525 Rochester Road, Cranberry Township, PA 16066.

Random Rainbow #2 (shown in my previous post) is in the Pittsburgh Society of Artists 53rd Annual Exhibition (Nov 9 – Dec 7, 2018) at the 3rd Street Gallery, 220 3rd Street, Carnegie, PA 15106.

Looking for a class or workshop?

Private / Semi-private lessons. If you want to make something special yourself, the only times I still have open for the remainder of this year are the afternoons of Dec 17, 18, or 19 (Mon thru Weds). Contact me for details.

(mostly) Second (mostly) Saturday Studio Sessions will resume on Saturday, January 12, 2019. These are for students who want to come and use my tools and equipement while I hold my monthly mini open house and / or work on my own projects. (I’ll answer questions but don’t hold formal lessons during these times.) It’s first-come / first-served, so just let me know if you want me to hold a space for you (or put you on my waiting list) for that date.

My next workshops will be in 2019. The first one I have scheduled for next year will be on Friday, January 18, from 6 to 9 pm, at the North Hills Art Center. Petite on Posts will involve a fine silver project where you’ll learn how to make a pair of post earrings (or, if you prefer, small lapel pins). Registration should open on their website by the start of January (maybe late December) and I’ll (try to remember to) update the above link then. I’ll post news about other 2019 classes early in the new year too.

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!

If at first you don’t succeed … create an alternative!

There was an announcement for a Quilt Show at a local venue. (Which one may slip out elsewhere but, for the purposes of this post, I don’t intend to name it… Though I had a few moments of frustration, this is not meant as a rant against them; it is simply intended to describe some aspects of the life of a working artist…)

Here’s something you need to know about that Quilt Show from the start: it was announced as being non-juried opportunity! Entries would be juried for awards, but not to get into the show in the first place. The call for artists said that they’d accept entries all day each day for a week, as long as they still had room to exhibit them.

So I started to design a quilt to enter. My “medium” these days is more often metal than fabric, and my “scale” is typically jewelry-size. I decided to make a quilt-pendant out of fine silver, using the process of sintering powdered metal (aka “metal clay”). I would “piece” samples from a selection of different textures for one side. The other side would be textured with a floral pattern that I would accent by setting a small, yellow CZ into the center of one of the flowers. The pendant would hang by the use of an integral bail: a sort of woven-fiber pattern shaped into a “tube” much as could be used for a fabric quilt displayed as a wall hanging. And, yes, all those elements were deliberately designed as a nod to more traditional quilting!

I hoped that a quilter, or quilt-lover, or quilter-lover would appreciate it during the show and decide to buy it… I also wanted to make a piece that, while it did incorporate a number of elements, wouldn’t be an exceptionally complicated piece to make: I didn’t have a lot of spare time to work on it but, even more importantly, I wanted to keep it to something that could be sold at an “affordable” price! I started it several weeks before the entry-week but, with one thing and another going on, hadn’t finished it as the deadline approached. With a lot of other things on my schedule for every day leading up to the opening of the drop-off time, my only option was to use the one and only day I’d been holding open as a “day to play” for at least a few hours. Instead, I spent all of that time, and more, playing with ways to complete the creation of my quilt piece, then firing it, polishing it, adding a patina, finding a chain that I thought would work well with it, taking a couple photographs, deciding how best to display it, giving it a name, filling out the entry-paperwork, etc. It ended up being a rather long day.

But, eventually, my Yellow Flower Birthday Quilt pendant was finished and ready to go on display!

First thing the next morning I packed it into a carrier bag and drove off to the Quilt Show venue. I looked around for a couple minutes, taking in pieces from the previous show that were coming down and noting that already a few entries were there for the new one. When the person handling all that was ready for me, she greeted me with a cheerful, “Oh, I didn’t know you made quilts too!”

I pulled the quilt-pendant out of my bag, smiled, and said, “I know this isn’t a traditional quilt, but I read the prospectus carefully, and it does not specify fabric. I hope you’ll take this silver quilt.”

“What? It doesn’t say anything?! That’s a lovely pendant, but please hold on.” She went to get a copy of the prospectus, and came back saying, “You’re right. We never thought to specify fiber as the medium because I don’t think we ever imagined anyone would enter any other kind of quilt.”

“Well,” I replied, “when you’re dealing with creative people, don’t you expect to be surprised? She laughed, with “Personally, I’d be happy to have it in the show, but I think I’d better check.”

The person she went off to check with wasn’t available. She sighed and said, “If you’re willing, you could just leave it with me, and I’ll let you know the final decision as soon as I can.” I said that was fine, we chatted for a moment about logisitics, and then she got a call. No, they wouldn’t accept my quilt. She was sorry but wanted to assure me that before they presented another quilt show, they’d take care to be more specific about their requirements…

The show is now on. Because I’m not naming them, I can’t promote it for them either. In this case, I figure that’s fair enough. I’ve been back, have seen the show, and am impressed with a number of the entries. I did also note that the showroom still has in place several of their usual display pedestals–empty–where it would have been easy to exhibit my quilt-piece on any one of them. But that’s all water under the bridge, as it were.

But … the story doesn’t end there!

This past Sunday was drop-off day for this summer’s Artists Choice show by the Pittsburgh Society of Artists (PSA). Technically, that is a non-juried show too, but one big difference is that this one is not open to everyone, just to artists who have already been juried into the PSA Guild in the first place. It’s always an interesting show. Entries may be from highly prolific artists who are always looking for show possibilities to those who only make a few pieces and seldom enter any shows other than this one. They may be new, experimental works that an artist is just putting out there to see the reaction, or pieces that just did not fit into the “guidelines” for some other show. Now do you see where this is going?!

Yes, my Quilt Show piece has been renamed as Help Me Get Over the Quilt Show Rejection “because It’s Silver, not Fiber”! and entered in the PSA show at the Brew House Association (at the corner of 21st and Mary Streets in Pittsburgh’s South Side flats area). That one runs from July 6 through August 3, 2018.

And I’m still hoping that a quilter, or quilt-lover, or quilter-lover will find it there and want to take it home!

If you’re in the area, please join me at the Opening Reception from 6 to 9 pm on Friday, July 6. (At this point, I’m also hoping to head over to the Closing Reception, same time & place, on August 3, but who knows what may change in my schedule over the next month!)

Regardless of where you’re reading this from, feel free to comment: Do you enter art shows? Why or why not? How do you handle it when a piece doesn’t get accepted? Or gets accepted but doesn’t sell there (especially if you let the announced theme of that show serve as a part of your inspiration for the piece!)?

December Events!

Folks on my mailing list should know about all this already, but here’s what I have happening the rest of this month:

• Where you can find me in person:
  • Studio Open House: Saturday & Sunday, December 9 & 10, 10 am to 4 pm, in my studio at the WSCC in Regent Square. Please come upstairs and let me know what you think of my new designs! I will, of course, also have plenty of old favorites too! (Also in WSCC that day, downstairs from me, La Dolce Vita Boutique will have all sorts of Italian imports for sale. And just up the street, the Environmental Charter School will be holding their Fair Trade Market!)

  • Guest Artists Show, Saturday, December 16, 10 am to 6 pm, at The Artsmiths of Pittsburgh in Mt. Lebanon. (I’m thrilled to be one of several Artsmiths Artists invited to bring a larger variety of items than we normally have in the shop. If you know me only from there, do come see what else I’ll bring! Or, if you’ve not yet been to Artsmiths, use this as a reason to check out the whole shop + gallery + classroom facility!)

  • My last workshop of 2017 will be at a new location for me! In my class on Tuesday, December 12, at the Appalachian Rock Shop & Jewelry Emporium up in Harmony, PA, we will be making reversible, hollow, “lentil” style fine silver pendants or beads! (If it’s too late for you to sign up for that aone, I’ll be back there again in March of 2018 with a Woven Silver workshop!)

• Other places where my art jewelry, colorful ornaments, and more are currently available:
  • The main floor shop at The Artsmiths of Pittsburgh in Mt. Lebanon, PA.

  • The Gift Shop at the Hoyt Center for the Arts in New Castle, PA.

  • The Holiday Artisan Market at the North Hills Art Center in Ross Twp. through December 9.

  • The H*liday mART at Sweetwater Center for the Arts in Sewickley through December 9.

  • The Cranberry Artists Network Holiday Show in the Cranberry Township Municipal Building , through December 20.

  • The Pittsburgh Society of Artists 52nd Annual Exhibition, in the underground gallery at the Artsmiths of Pittsburgh through January 12, 2018. (Rounding out this list back at Artsmiths, I’m thrilled to be one of the artists to have had a piece juried into this show, PSA’s first time showing work here.)

I hope I’ll see local folks at one or more of those! If I don’t see you, no matter where you’re from, please know that I’m wishing you all the best for this holiday season and beyond!

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p.s., Sorry for the big gap in posting! I have a slew of articles started, in draft form, but for one reason or another (e.g., I may not have photos to illustrate what I’m trying to say; or I have photos but haven’t written the words yet…) I just haven’t managed to get any of them finished and posted. Most of them should still appear eventually!

My “Three Rivers” Pendants are back!

As soon as I heard the theme that Pittsburgh Society of Artists had chosen for their summer show at the FrameHouse & Jask Gallery — da burgh — I knew what I had to do!

I’d had a lot of fun, back in the spring and summer of 2014, when I made a whole series of “Three Rivers” pendants. I started in the spring, figuring out how to make them. Although they all had the same basic idea, with Pittsburgh’s “three rivers” flowing across them, no two were alike. The pieces were different shapes; the “land” and “rivers” were made from different metals textured with different patterns; the rivers might be recessed, inlaid, or overlaid; and some had an extra element, a triangular stone (rounded or pointed, cabochon or faceted) set at the place that locals know as “The Point” (where, in Pittsburgh, the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers come together to form the Ohio River, which flows down into the Mississippi and, eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico). I sold some of those at the Three Rivers Arts Festival that year. I had two (ones with fewer ‘burgh-specific features) accepted into The Confluence show sponsored by The Hoyt at The Confluence Cafe in New Castle later that summer. (The piece shown, next, left, even earned a Merit Award there!) And I kept selling the rest off in various other shows and shops throughout the rest of that year and the next.

Now, I meant it when I said that I had a lot of fun making them. But some of that “fun” involved facing and overcoming a lot of challenges, doing a lot of problem-solving. I was mixing metals: various bronze formulas along with copper and a couple different steels. And, because those all have different shrinkage rates (and those with stones had extra stresses because the stones do not shrink), there is a certain “failure rate” in the process. What’s a failure? Well, sometimes little cracks appear that are readily fixed, though that results in another whole round of firing, in which there is yet another chance of failure. Other times, however, the cracks are so significant that it’d take more time to fix them than to just make a whole new piece. While I do enjoy the challenge of getting everything to ‘play nice” together, there’s a limit to how much one can add to the “overhead” price of pieces to cover all the time and materials that go into both “research and development” and “unavoidable losses” while keeping the pieces reasonably affordable. So, after a half-year binge, I moved on to other design challenges.

But I kept thinking I wanted to make more, and the PSA theme was just the push I needed. Of course, it’s never simple. Since the last time I made them, I’d been working more with some different metal formulas, so another round of “R&D” was required! Oh, and while I was at it, I had decided to try to develop yet another approach to distinguishing the rivers from the land.

In my first few firings, the successes all had the most simple designs; ones that failed had the more complex (and thus more interesting) mixes, and those all failed in ways that I considered beyond repair. Ah, the challenge: I will make this project work!

Oh, and I’d also decided to make these on the larger side. Not huge but, since I was working with base metals (various bronzes, not silver or gold) I could afford to risk pieces that started out around two inches in diameter. (After shrinking during firing, those would end up about 1.75″ across.) I also made some oval pieces, ones that started out at 1.5 by 2.0 inches, and shrank to around 1.3 by 1.75 inches.

Of course, making them that big then limited the number of pieces I could fire in a single load…. Each load does add a small amount to the time I spend, but the real issue is having pieces stack up just waiting to be fired. Since I make one-of-a-kind pieces, and rarely do real production / volume work, I don’t consider that a major issue. It’s not meant as a complaint, but I mention it to explain to some readers why testing that, in a production environment, might be measured in weeks ends up taking me months….

I’m going to keep experimenting with these over the summer, and hope to eventually report on a few more here. In the meantime, though, I’m now presenting the first one that will appear in public, having been accepted the PSA show that opens tomorrow, Friday, June 9! For the piece I submitted to the da burgh jury I decided that, rather than worry about going complex, I’d stick to a simple design and go for a double-hit at the theme:

1. The design is a basic, overhead view of Pittsburgh and its Three Rivers, AND
2. The black spinel trillion cabochon set atop the golden bronze metal show the same black & gold of Pittsburgh’s major professional sports teams!

I added a small image of it to my version of PSA’s postcard, above, but here’s a bigger look at it. This is just my basic inventory shot because, silly me, I forgot to take a picture as it appears in the show, hung on a really nice necklace that alternates large loops with short chain segments. To see that, come to the FrameHouse & Jask Gallery this month!

Wrapping Up 2016…

Yes, we have a whole month left! The title of this post contains a bad pun … but I’m hoping you’ll wrap up some of my creations as gifts, or receive one wrapped up for you!

Here are places where you can find my art jewelry this December (and you can find me—in person, with extra treats—at those with an asterisk):

• Holiday Sparkle Art & Craft Market at the North Hills Art Center, now through December 10
• Holiday mART. Sweetwater Center for the Arts, December 2 – 11
• Holiday Open House, Hoyt Center for the Arts, is on December 3, 2016, 11 am to 4 pm, and then special holiday sales will continue throughout the rest of the month
• Studio Open House *, in my studio at the Wilkins School Community Center, December 2 (6-9 pm) and December 3-4 (10 am – 5 pm)
  I’m not promising to be back in my studio all day the following weekend (Dec 10-11) but I’m likely to be there for a few hours at some point. If that’s the only time you can make it, please let me know so we can agree on a time to meet there!
• Trunk Show *, The Artsmiths of Pittsburgh, December 17 (Officially I’ll be there myself just that day, but check with me if you’d like to come out on either Friday (16th) or Sunday (18th) as I may be there part of those days too. And I have a smaller, but still great, selection in the ‘Smiths Shop year-round!)

And, finally, I’m honored that, as a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Artists, I was able to have one of my pieces selected for display (and for sale) in The New Collective show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The show runs from November 18, 2016, through February 26, 2017, and I sure hope you’ll be able to get over to see all the wonderful artwork that’s been included. To find my entry, first head upstairs and then turn right, and right again, and then head down the last gallery on the right. My Bronze Bead Shelf is at the end of that, on the left. Since it’s framed for display in the show, so you can see only one side there, here’s what it looks like on both sides:

I hope to see you, or to at least have you see my work, at one or another of those events. If I don’t see you in person, there or somewhere, please know how much I appreciate your interest and support, and that I’m wishing you all the best!

Picnics, and Parties, and Art Shows, oh my!

What’s this mythical concept of “lazy days” of summer? Summers just seem so busy, with all sorts of events and happenings and things to do that one really does not want to miss. That’s not a complaint: it’s just a puzzle to me, where the lazy-days idea came from!

Anyway, amidst all the many things to do all summer, this is a super-busy weekend. Since I post here mostly about art & jewelry / teaching & learning types of activities, I’m going to skip over the truly “personal” events this weekend. I can fill a long post with places my jewelry and other art-creations are going themselves this weekend.

• Arts on the Riverwalk, in New Castle, PA: The art show that the Hoyt Art Center is running at The Confluence, in conjunction with this event, has its opening tonight, 4 to 6 pm. The show itself will run through August 26. I’ve had two pieces accepted for this, one of which is shown below. Although I was thinking of all the ocean-shore walking I’ve done in my life as I created it, I do enjoy walking along any sort of waterfront, so this still seemed to be an appropriate choice for this show:

  

• Community Days in Cranberry Township, PA: The Cranberry Township Community Chest and the Cranberry Artists Network are partnering (for the first time this year) on a show in the Cranberry Municipal Building in conjunction with this annual celebration. The opening reception for the show, Martinis with Monet, held on Wednesday night (for which I managed a post on Facebook, but not here…) was the kick-off event for the weekend-long celebration. The show itself will run through August 3. I’m thrilled to have had two pieces accepted for this show, one of which is shown below. I created Flowers Burst Even Through the Garden Paths for several reasons: primarily to honor Monet’s Gardens in line with the theme of the show, but also as one I could use as demonstration pieces for classes (layering, on the title side, and basic stone setting, on the other side) until it took off for Cranberry and, one hopes, a new home:

  

• At the Panza Gallery, in Millvale, PA: The Pittsburgh Society of Artists is having a Members Choice show there this summer. The opening reception is tonight, from 6 to 8:30 pm, and then the exhibit will run through July 29, and be open Wednesdays through Fridays 10-5 and Saturdays 10-3. Silly me, I didn’t take photos of my entry before I dropped it off (because I thought I already had several) but now I can’t find any of them. What’s in the show is the latest piece in my Three Rivers series; an early piece from that is shown below. Both of them have bronze rivers (with “expansion joints” designating the major bridges) flowing through copper neighborhoods, with a cubic zirconia noting the location of Point State Park and its fountain. The one in the show has flowery-garden neighborhoods (not the metropolitan geometry of this one), and by the time I made it I was much better at getting the rivers to work as an inlay in the copper, like actual rivers (as compared to the onlay shown here). And it’s on a fancier chain. But anyone seeing one should recognize the other as different but similar / familiar…

  

• ArtBrew at the Sweetwater Center for the Arts in Sewickley, PA: Last but certainly not least, from 7 to 10 pm tonight and tonight only (for this year) we have ArtBrew, the Arts & Crafts Fair where the “crafts” are the beers on tap. I was one of just thirty local artists who were invited to provide pieces for sale in the “arts” arena. Some worked in very beer-specific art forms, while others simply created works that the organizers found interesting. I’m in the latter category, and I’ve no clue how my pieces will do, but figured it was worth a shot. Sweetwater is a great place, and I’m happy to support this summer-fundraiser of theirs through commissions on sales of my work. Most of what I submitted are my earrings and pendants. Some were made using typical “metal clay” techniques, while some reflect other directions I’ve also been exploring. There are, for example, some enamel-on-copper pieces that I made on a whim in the spring. And some pendants and earrings, like the silver earring-elements shown below, that were cut out of clay in the “dry but still flexible” state using an electronic cutting machine on a design I created to fit the amount of material I happened to have on hand at the moment:

  

  I also had a dozen pottery items accepted for this event! I don’t often post about my clay-clay work here, but you can get a glimpse of the twelve I sent to Sweetwater below. Note: you really should click on this photo! I hope everyone who does will let me know (e.g., via a comment, either on this blog or at the photo-sharing site the click will take you to) whether you were surprised at what you found there, or whether, especially if you feel you know me and my interests, it was what you imagined as soon as you saw this photo.

  

Here’s wishing everyone a pleasant summer weekend, full of kindness and friendship.

And Happy 200th Birthday to Pittsburgh, PA, today too!

April 1: no joke!

What a great evening! I’d planned to treat a good friend to a birthday dinner (’twas actually yesterday, but Friday is a better night for going out), although I’d said we’d have to meet in the Lawrenceville neighborhood first because I wanted to go to the opening of the Pittsburgh Society of Artists’ (PSA) Small Works exhibit too. (I knew that’d be ok since this is someone who’s an active supporter of the arts!)

So we walked in, and headed down one aisle admiring the selections. It was fairly crowded at the beginning, but I managed to wave “Hello” to a couple of artists I know. Too far apart for an actual conversation, I was a bit puzzled when, instead of a waved “Hello” in return I got a wave and a mouthed “Congratulations!” What, I thought, am I missing some bit of social etiquette where we congratulate each other for having our works accepted into a show? It was a members-only show, and you could submit either one or two pieces for consideration. Of the 72 artists who’d applied, 45 had been accepted: 15 had two pieces in the show, and 30 had a single piece on display, for a total of 60 pieces. Now, I did have two pieces accepted, but three award-winners had already been announced and I wasn’t one of those. I knew all of that, from the mailing that PSA had sent out to its members, listing everyone whose work was in the show, and an interesting statement from the juror (which you can read there).

And then I turned the corner into the bigger room, and my entries leapt out at me! What in the world had I done to deserve a wall to myself! The photo below is a 270° panorama of three walls of that room. I shot it later in the evening, after the crowd had thinned out enough that you could see some of the artwork from afar. (And, while the artwork stayed in place, some of the people moved around which is why a few of them are partly cut-off or extended…. But the photo is about the art, so I’m using it anyway.) From left to right, there is a wall full of art, then a second wall of a different height with a strip of artworks, then a third wall with windows and a brick wall in between those, with just two pieces … mine.

You should know that these “small works” could be a maximum of 12 inches in any dimension. My pieces, in silver, were much smaller than that, 40 x 28 mm and 39 x 18 mm. (For those who don’t convert millimeters to inches regularly, 18 mm is just under 3/4 of an inch, and 40 mm is just over 1 1/2 inches.) For display purposes, I’d hung them in 10 x 12 inch black shadow boxes that I’d bought because they fit the specs for this show. And there they were, set off from all the paintings and photographs (plus more jewelry and sculpture, all of which was in two “aisles” behind me as I shot this).

I rarely post photos of myself, but here’s one taken of me next to my entries. And, if you look really closely, you’ll see a little red dot on the tag for the piece I’m standing next to, which means that one had already been sold, either as the show was being hung or in the first few minutes that it opened. That was the reason for the congratulations!

To the person who made my evening via their purchase, I want to say “Thank you!” And I hope that many of my fellow-artists will be thanking their purchasers before the show ends, on May 13. If you’re in the Pittsburgh area and want to check it out, it’s at the Framehouse & Jask Gallery.

“Small Works” with the Pittsburgh Society of Artists

What can I say … I’ve been busy making, and otherwise enjoying Spring, and over the next few days I’ll finally be reporting some news. Here’s the first item: this afternoon I was notified that two of my fine silver creations have been accepted into the Small Works show that’s being sponsored by the Pittsburgh Society of Artists. It will be held at the Framehouse & Jask Gallery, 100 43rd Street, Pittsburgh PA 15201, from April 1 through May 13, 2016.

Since I normally do work “small” (at least compared to what a lot of other artists do), I knew this was a show I had to try to get into. I thought long and hard about what to enter and finally decided that, while I do have the skills to design and develop intricate and complex pieces, that’s just not the style I like, neither to work in nor to wear myself. So I went for the fairly simple pieces that are more in line with my typical style.

Back in the fall of 2014, I made a series of pieces with “frames” constructed out of the the same material as the “contents” of the piece inside the frame. The first few were assignments in Hadar Jacobson’s teaching-accreditaton program, and then I kept going with more over maybe the next two months. I’ve been meaning to come back to those for a while now, and this silver-framed silver-plume is one of my newest ones. For the PSA show, it’s displayed in a shadow box with just this side showing. It has an integral tube bail, so the other side really is pretty much a “back” side, but it is still fully decorated and finished in my usual “other side” approach. I’ve got a few more silver-framed silver pieces in the works, and will say a bit more about the collection (with photos of both sides) once I’ve finished several more of those.

In recent months, I’ve also been exploring the use of a different approach to my “woven” pieces. In the past, I’ve always made sure that both sides were always securely framed the whole way around. I did that to ensure that the ends were always positioned safely and securely. With my latest weaves, however, I’m resisting the urge to frame them, and seeing how I can make them work in other ways. Woven Silver Banner Reclaimed is one of my newest examples of that. This one is also being displayed in a shadow box for the show, but it is fully reversible, with different textures showing on the strips from each side. And, yes, there will be more coming in the next week or so on the woven-silver pieces too.

But, for the moment at least, let me just wish everyone a Happy Easter. It’s a lovely Spring day where I am, with lots of delightful ways to continue to enjoy the rest of the day outside! I hope that some local folks will be able to make it to the show’s opening reception this Friday, April 1, from 6 to 9 pm or, if not then, at least at some point during the show.

PSA’S 2015 Artist’s Choice Exhibition

I had a great time last night at the opening of the latest show sponsored by the Pittsburgh Society of Artists.

I was delighted to find my entry, a pendant, in the “jewelry nook” between the two rooms downstairs at the Panza Gallery in Millvale, PA. I displayed it in a frame which led the folks hanging the show to place it on the back wall in that nook, which I thought was a great location. You just might be able to spot the frame way in the back of the first photo here! (If you want to see the actual piece, I offered up a photo of that in my last post.)

Aside: I keep going back and forth over whether to display pendants in a frame or out on a bust form. For art-jewelry shows, specifically, I’ll usually hang a necklace on a bust, assuming other jewelers will do the same and the sponsors will be prepared to handle the security involved in such a display. For art shows, on the other hand, where my piece may be the only piece, or perhaps one of only a very few, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, well, though I do think of most show attendees as trustworthy, it hardly seems worth the risk to make my entry so easy for even just one nefarious person to pocket. Does that make me paranoid? Maybe. But I know other art jewelers who won’t even enter shows because they’re worried what might happen to their pieces, and I am willing to put my work out there. So, maybe more cautious than paranoid? I admit to being a bit shy personally, but I’ve always enjoyed having my work out there for others to see and consider, and I’m always thrilled to have intelligent conversations about such creations.

Back to the show itself: I’d never been to an opening at this particular gallery before, so I wasn’t sure quite what to expect in terms of number of people, ease of parking, or anything else. But we found an easy parking space just a block away and, even with that the turnout seemed great: these photos were taken well into the evening, after a number of people had already left, which meant I could capture a few shots that showed some of the art as well as people… For local readers I didn’t see last night, maybe you’ll get over to the show between now and July 24. If you do, please be sure to let me know what you thought of it all!

My First Show as a Member of the Pittsburgh Society of Artists!

Somehow, we’ve sped into another month already and on Friday afternoon I dropped of my entry for another Members-Only show, this time for my first opportunity with the Pittsburgh Society of Artists since being juried into that group. Details of the show’s location, dates, and hours are on the “postcard” shown to the right (as usual, click for a larger image where the details should be clearer). I’m so happy to have gotten in this year, and thus find myself able to participate in some of PSA’s 50th Anniversary events. (Though after all my years in community / public radio, I will admit that I still first register the acronym PSA as Public Service Announcement…)

It was fun to see the entries from a number of other PSA members when I dropped off my selection: I got there a little over half-way through the times allotted for that, but I only thought later that I could have asked what proportion of the expected pieces had arrived by then. No matter — I’m still looking forward to seeing the entire show once everything is in place!

For my local readers, please note that the show’s Opening Reception will be on Saturday, July 11, from 6 to 8:30 pm. I’m planning to go, and I sure hope I’ll see some of you there too! Do let me know if I should be on the lookout for you! Or, even better, let me know if you’d like to carpool. (And, if you’ve never been to the Panza Gallery before, let me know that and I’ll share what I know about parking in that area.)

Ahhh but what to enter?! I debated and debated that with myself until almost the last minute. Finally, I went with the idea to let it be one of the pieces that had gotten me into the group in the first place, the one that resulted from my “Combining Inspirations” from several of my favorite artists.

My hesitation about entering that one was whether or not I should hold it back to use as a sample in upcoming workshops. But I’m happy with the approach to making those, and I’ve been further exploring this approach by making a few other variations to show off in class, so I convinced myself that this is the one that should be given the opportunity to be seen live by a wider audience and, hopefully, find appreciation in a new home!

Pittsburgh Society of Artists!!!

“Happy Camper” Here!

Last Sunday, I went through the screening process to be admitted to the Pittsburgh Society of Artists. This involved:

• filling out an application (online, in advance);
• showing up at a certain time and place on Sunday morning to set up a display of three of my recent pieces;
• going away for a few hours while one or more judges evaluated all the works that had been submitted;
• returning to pick up my pieces, and
• going home to await word on the decision.

I delivered and set up my display a little over half-waycoter through the drop-off time period. (From the number of pieces I saw and what I’d heard to be the number of applicants, I do think that the majority of entrants had already delivered and departed.) Once my pieces were all in place, I took a few minutes to look around at the other entries. While many of them were very impressive, there were two artists whose works I was particularly curious about. I actually got to talking to one of them at pick-up time: Ashley had singled out my work as she’d surveyed both rooms too! We were definitely in the minority, having submitted “3-D” pieces for evaluation, rather than 2-D. Turns out, though, that another link is that we’re both members of the Koolkat community (though we don’t remember ever having met at various events there), soon to have our pieces transferred over to The Artsmiths of Pittsburgh once that place opens this summer.

Of the three pieces I submitted for screening, the one shown here is the only one for which I can find a decent picture right now. I started it late last year, and it was the first piece I completed this January, but had held off posting about it because I was “saving” it for when I’ll talk about some new workshops I plan to write about shortly. Since I have a couple other pieces in the works that I can use to talk about workshops, you get to see this one now.

Anyway, I did not have to wait toooo long: around 8 that evening an email came in saying, “Congratulations! You have been accepted into the Pittsburgh Society of Artists!” I feel very honored to have been selected as a member of this group (and happy that they accepted Ashley too).