Monthly Archives: October 2024

1″ x 1″, found objects

I’ve been working on a piece of glass that shows hills and valleys that will cover the bottom section of a window, masking the view of roads and buildings and offering a more serene view.  But the hills themselves in my glass windows are busy,  with lumps and bumps and spikes, and in real life they’re even more rugged.  The further away you go, the smoother and more serene they look.  This pendant, made from pieces of a copper planter, has a hilly section on the right and a valley in the middle, with a nice, flat walkable area on the left.  

.5″ x 2″, glass

I don’t usually have the patience to do a color study before I make a larger piece.  But these tiny pendants work as color studies, just like the more thematic pendants can serve as little maquettes for larger mosaic compositions.  Although my tendency is to jump into huge projects with little to no planning  (as long as no one is paying for the project), I’ve started to like these small scale tests and practice runs.

.5″ x 2″, glass

How I wish it were the season when flowers were blooming instead of wilting and withering! I put together a pendant made from hand-pulled cane to bring a few of spring’s colors with me into the winter months.

1” x 1.5”, glass

When I was in High School I was art editor for the student art and lit magazine. I ran weekly critiques where we looked at submissions and then voted on whether to publish them.  In my memory, the critiques were actually quite respectful and thoughtful.  We thought about contrast, design, message, and applied all the art concepts we were learning in art class.  The one that feels most relevant today is “too busy”.  It’s easy to fill a canvas or a piece of paper with too much. You lose the subject and the noise wins.  And this, my pendant for the week, is an ode to “too busy”, in art and in life.

1″ x 1.5″, beads and found objects

If someone says that something is  “cookie cutter” it’s not usually a good thing.  It’s generic, just like all the rest. But for me, cookie cutters have only positive connotations. Anything that helps me bring more cookies into the world is a friend of mine!  As soon as I added the eyes from a set of hooks and eyes to the little silver triangles in the pendant it looked too much like cookie cutters for me to think about anything else. And then, of course, the beads became sprinkles.