Monthly Archives: June 2022

1″x1.5″, found objects

Every yearn we spend a week at Taconic state park, exploring the woods, building campfires and swimming in the ore pit. I usually collect beautiful blue slag remnants from the smelting that happened here for decades, but this trip I’ve had my eye out for rusty metal. The bigger pieces can be welded, but this little bottle cap found a second life in a pendant, along with bright golden beads. They both make me think of the lifecycle of metal, including so much of it that happened here in this park: pulling stone out of the ground, turning it into metal, and having that metal slowly break down over time. (Thanks to my son for some expert photo editing help!)

.5″x 2″, glass

I still fall into the trap of thinking that in the summer things will calm down. There will be less to do and I’ll be able to swing in the hammock while sipping lemonade. But logistics get complicated in the summer, with camps changing every week, and keeping on top of packing lunches and spraying sunblock. Then as the summer draws to a close I always think everything will be easier in the fall. There’ll be a rhythm to the week, more consistency. But really, what distinguishes one season from the other is the sky. It doesn’t matter how busy things get in the summer, the blue skies make it all OK. This pendant is made from amazingly thin fusible blue glass from Paragon.

1″ x 1.5″, glass

I sat with a friend last night and talked about the sciences. She’s a chemistry girl, and I’ve always loved biology. She explained that once you can place something on the periodic table, you know how it’ll act. I think I love biology for exactly the opposite reason. Even after learning the parts of a cell structure the fact that it all works just seems like magic, and once you get into larger structures like the brain there’s still so much that we don’t understand. While I certainly want science to move forward, there’s something beautiful about all of the questions left to answer. Look carefully at the patterns in and on the pieces of glass in this pendant and you’ll see what look like cell structures, all created by minerals in the glass.

1″x1.25″, found objects

It’s been a Harry Potter-filled couple of months here. It’s hard to leave for school in the morning because my son is scribbling down lists of spells, and it’s hard to turn out the light at night because he’s so absorbed in the stories. Re-reading the books has rekindled my love of the series, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the golden snitch that zooms around during Quiddich matches. I love the idea that we can each imagine our snitch differently. I actually made four snitch pendants this week, each with its own personality. This seemed like the right one to share.

1” x 2.5”, found objects

The kids spent an hour last night cleaning off old rock samples used for a geology class.  Each one is labeled, and I recognized a lot of the names. Pyrite, mica, garnet, and many more. It started me thinking about what gives our stones value, and the funny cycle of rarity leading to value which leads to status for some stones and crystals over others. And then I thought about lowly glass, cheap and abundant, but shiny, translucent, and beautiful.  This pendant is made from beads and costume jewelry, all glass and cheap metal, but from a distance it could fool someone into thinking it’s elegant.