Art and Soul Part One...What I Took

I'm back peeps!!  Miss me?  Ha.  My family sure did...especially Lily.  Geesh.  She suffocated me in bed last night and right now as I type!  I can barely type for her body.  So.....so MUCH to tell you about the 6 days I was away.  Yep.  6 whole days of no laundry, no cooking, no bedtime routine, no rushing around to this and that, no taking cats to the darn vet (which we have had over $1000 of vet bills this month alone!), etc....but I did miss my goodnight Mommy and of course my sleeping partner that weighs over 10 pounds. 

Anyhoo....Portland.  I have decided that it deserves a 3 part blog post.  So this is part one.  What I took to fatten my creative belt one more notch.  I arrived Tuesday around lunchtime because Tuesday night I had a class.  Come to find out both classes I signed up for were with this adorable artisan:

This is Jean Van Brederode.  An amazingly talented enamel artist.  Tuesday night was a total technique class on this fancy pants piece of equipment I so have to get now for the studio:

So in case you want to know, it's a hydraulic press.  This is a small one compared to her one at home.  This
one only presses 12 tons....at home she has a mac daddy 20 ton one.  Why do I need this?  Well, because after cutting my own pattern with a jewelers saw and piece of acrylic I was able to make this adorable bird pendant.  And could press it over and over and over.  Uh...huh.....addictive.  And with only 3 in the class we totally got the personal attention and time to play!!

Wednesday morning I was up and at 'em and heading to my second class with Jean called "Jingle Jangle Bangle".  And yes, we made bracelets.  The enameled yummy kind.  I've always been drawn to enameled work, and this was not my first exposure to it.  I can remember enameling at camp as a child and loving the anticipation of watching it in the kiln turn to glass.  I did learn how to not only mess with enamels, but learned how to form a bracelet from copper (my favorite metal to stamp) and RIVET!!!  Holy tamoly I am about to become a riveting queen! 

This was our enameling station.  She was a super great teacher.  And so organized.  Love that.  Well, she has some experience with teaching.....32 years of 8th grade English that is!  And since there were just 4 of us, man I went to town making.  She called me the "hurricane".  Good or bad I don't really care.  I learned a load and made even more!!  You saw my arm above right??  Here are the two that fit me to a tee...and I never took off the rest of the week!

So at the end of the day, where none of us even stopped for lunch, I secretly made a ring.  Had to.  Really. Well, she caught me in the act and I felt like such a bad student.  But I used remnants from my bracelet, so no waste at my station!!  And I LOVE it.  And I can totally see my own twist without the enamel come into play with new jewelry soon.  But I may also break down and ask Santa Claus for that fancy smancy blue kiln.  Because I really, really love enameling.  Oh, and a hydraulic press.  Yeah.  One of those too.

Enameling is Great!

Okay, for some reason my pictures are uploading in order opposite of how they need to. Hummm.... So I guess we'll start at the end and work our way back! Valerie and I and our constant quest for artsy knowledge took an Intro. to Enameling class at Art Worx in Marietta last month. Every Wednesday we'd make the haul up to this amazing jewelers studio for class. Our instructor was super great and we learned alot about the basics. So of course now we have to take this artsy knowledge and run with it! On election day while the kids were home from school I headed over to Valerie's amazing studio where the enameling kiln awaited us. (Valerie has already bought the kiln of course ;)) Here's my crop for the day: A nest of course, a bird or course, some blue doughnuts, white discs, blue discs, red discs and a stamped disc that says "I am an artist", is what I have so far. Yesterday I wore my nest and earring set and my Mom said she liked it. And those of you who know Mom understand that this is a compliment of great importance! She is always painfully honest! I really liked making these jewels and plan to make a line of them for the Naked Art Gallery in B'ham. Vero has asked if I wanted to sign on as a jewelry artist as well as painter since I now have the nest earrings from a couple of post ago. Heck yeah I say!

This little birdie is awaiting to be placed in the kiln. Enameling is basically fine glass powder placed on top of a copper surface, which is then heated in a kiln of 1400' degrees. This temperature would just about melt anything I think, but definitely melts the glass powder. My favorite colors of the day were Robin's egg blue, yellow and white. I think too that even though it is jewelry, it is important for my work to have some consistency across the board. And those colors will help translate my paintings into miniature pieces of jewelry. I will be exploring more of the "painting" type technique I used to make the eggs in the nest to make some of my birds, flowers and branches which always appear in my paintings.

This is actually the first step: See how pixie dust looking the glass is? It is sifted onto the copper piece, which is then placed on the stilt like above and then placed in the kiln for 1 min. 30 sec. not long at all! Be looking for more of this style jewels from me soon!