Monthly Archives: September 2020

1″ x 2″, glass and found objects

This week the kids begin remote schooling, and all our limits on screen time are officially out the window.  with class from 8 AM to 5:30 PM it’s a long day of electronics.  I’ve been thinking about all the wearables and extra screens that people have been choosing to use over the last few years, and how perhaps having to do all of our learning and socializing through a screen is going to make them less appealing.  This pendant uses reflective glass, old electronics and wire to create what looks like an aged wearable computer.

1″ x 1.5″, found objects

We went camping this week to try to fill some of the days before school starts (in some fashion) again. I was in the woods, sorting through beads for kids to use during their at-home learning, and somehow sitting among the trees by a lake with poison ivy and amazing caterpillars, the plastic beads just felt fake.  It was the metal ones that spoke to me, seeming more real and more comforting than the others.  This pendant is made mostly from an assortment of not-beads from the bead bin.  Metal pieces with no holes, a stone, and a chain.  My son says it looks like a bird, a person with hair or a mermaid, so hopefully it’ll speak to each of us in some way.

1″x 3.5″, spoon and scrap steel

Instead of being in my studio full of glass, I spent the weekend welding at Snow Farm.  After making a carload of large sculptures I used my last few minutes to gather smaller bits from the mountain of scrap metal and to pull out the pieces I’d cut from sheet metal with the plasma cutter.  This pendant combines a spoon and some hand-cut scrap into a graceful leaf-shaped pendant.  While eventually I’d like every weld of mine to be beautiful, for now I love knowing what James Kitchen, our amazing instructor, taught us, that although they’re imperfect, the welds are much stronger than the metal that they’re connecting. I like the idea that by being connected each piece becomes stronger.

1″ x 1″, found objects

This may not be real lace, but it’s lacy enough for me to count it for this week’s “lace” anniversary.  I found it at the beach at low tide, and my identification app tells me that it’s Coralline, a red algae that grows on rocky shores.    I’ve always loved fractals, and collecting shells, and this particular beach find hits both the marks.