What’s New

1″ x .75″,  found objects
I’m horrified to see that the days are already getting shorter, and school starting yesterday gave me clear proof that fall is here.  The cold is tough, and the flowers drying out is rough, but the part of fall that really gets to me is losing the light.  As the evenings fade and then the afternoons fade too, I fall into a funk.  This pendant includes a glow-in-the-dark watch hand, which I hope will stretch the glow of daytime for a few extra hours into the fading fall nights.

1″ x 1″, found objects

Wouldn’t it be cool to have wings?  I think most people imagine soaring above the earth, watching the world go by, but for me they’d just be practical.  I’d be able to skip the traffic, zoom from one place to another, manage all the pick-ups and drop-offs and meetings and workshops with no sweat.  I’d struggle in the winter, what with the cold and the snow, but I think I’d still give them a try.

1″x1.5″, glass and found objects

I’ve been on Cape Cod all week, waking up to the sounds and colors of the ocean, and hearing the calls of seagulls all day.  Although teaching a mosaic class has stopped me from spending full days at the beach, it’s been a beach-filled week, and I’m sad to see it ending.

.5″ x 2″, found objects

There was a mural in Allston when I was growing up  that I absolutely loved.  In fact, I think it’s still there. Though faded now, it shows windows on a large brick wall, and through each window you can see a scene inside.  Cats, people, couches… there’s another similar mural on Newbury street with portraits of stars in the windows.  And in both cases, the windows are false or boarded up.  It’s just an imagined life inside.  Here in the US, unlike in the Netherlands, shades are drawn as soon as it gets dark, and you have to imagine what’s happening inside other people’s homes.  This pendant shows empty windows, ready for you to project your imagined reality, and a central window glowing with bright amber light.

1″ x 1″, found objects

I’ve made more than one design called “organization” because it’s a constant process, but this one is “organized”.  It’s the dream.  Small bits of my life and my space are in fact getting organized. I can manage about one square inch a week, so a pendant is just about perfect.

1″x 2″, found objects

Every time we see my in-laws we’re each given a bag of goodies.  Everything from  sweets to travel-sized toothpaste to jewelry, it’s all the things that my mother-in-law has thoughtfully collected over the past months.  And my goodie bags have extra special things in them; broken bits that need to become part of something new.  In the most recent bag there was a piece of hematite that became the center of this pendant.  It look like it was carved like a shark’s tooth and hung in a finding, but the finding is gone, and it was just a stone.  Each of the goodie bag gifts comes with a story, relics of a time gone by or a trip taken.  And here are a few, to create new stories together.

.5″ x 2″, found objects
It’s been HOT out this week, and I’ve been so grateful that we live just a short bike ride from the local pool.  It may be scorching hot in the sun outside the pool, and the screams and splashes of kids in the water may not allow the calm, relaxing swims that friends go to local ponds for, but in the middle of a lunch break, it’s a pretty great stop.  For those of you in the Boston area, find this pendant and many more at the Artbeat festival in Davis square this weekend!

1″diameter, found objects

Last week was fireworks, but this week, on the actual 4th of July, we’re zooming in to one single firework.  It’s not the colors that amaze me as much as there being lights in the sky, and I love when they spread out and each little ember breaks into hundreds of tiny new ones.

1″ diameter, found object

My city does its fireworks display a whole week early, and when the weather is perfect, like it was tonight, everyone is out.  There’s a line around the block for slushies at the 7-eleven, and the fried dough and the ice cream are flowing.  But the best are all the colors as the sky changes from blue to black.  This piece is made from another treasure passed on to me, and it has all the beauty and wonder of fireworks in the sky.

1″x1.5″, found objects

With a  shift in my work and the beginning of summer, plans changing and plans being made, the question of balance is once again top of mind.  I was gifted a bag full of earrings, full of history and the aged metals that I love.  The one that found its way into this pendant had a funny sort of balance to it.  No symmetry, but a half-hug.  Held together with a chain and a bead, it has the kind of precarious balance that I’m feeling right now.  Does it work? Yes. Will it work for long?  Not sure.

1″ diameter, found objects

Biking may not be the first thing you think of when you see this design, but here’s the back story: from the time I was small, everyone around me has been on a quest to find just the right bike gear.  My mom wanted a wide tractor seat for comfort, my dad wanted all the fancy gadgets, my husband wanted an electric bike to transport the kids, and we’ve been on a years-long quest to have the right size bikes for each kid on any given day.  If you squint, you’ll see that the center of this pendant looks like a bicycle seat, and it’s got all the fancy bits and pieces to make it just right.

1″ diameter, found objects

Last weekend my son spotted a mama bird sitting on her eggs in a nest above a pathway, and we watched her sit cozily while we walked below.  Then this week I was hosted at a graceful, generous, beautiful house in Provincetown with an ocean view.  It was so nest-like and comforting that it seemed like there was no reason to leave.  And the coper bead that acts as a nest in the pendant came from a thrift store near there, where it was just waiting to become this week’s design.

1″ x 1″, found objects

We just got back from a few days in Puebla, and while we were there we were able to visit a talavera factory.  We saw the process from start to finish, from fresh clay dug locally to workable clay, through to glazing.  Although there’s a limited palette of traditional colors that can be used by certified talavera makers, the designs are a different story.  Anything goes.  Ancient local motifs, designs that came with Arab immigrants, designs from Spanish conquerors, and contemporary designs.  It all counts.  I like that as long as the materials and the process remain the same, it’s acceptable to borrow across borders and cultures.  People often have trouble pinning my jewelry down and comment on how something might look Egyptian, or Native American, or French.  While I don’t want to be too derivative, I look for shapes and patterns that please me, informed by art from around the world, all made with the same techniques.

.5″ x .75″, found objects

Tiny nails have a special place in my heart, so whenever I have some in my pocket, I turn them into a pendant.  This time the design looks like an eye with beautiful long eyelashes, and it reminds me of a mosaic mirror that a student of mine made last weekend.  It had multiple small  mirrors, and said “change your view”.  In the center was an eye with the word “see”.  What a beautiful reminder that what we see depends on our view, and if we change our view, we see something new.  Thanks Susan!

.5″ x 2″, glass

Is it possible that I haven’t made a purple-themed pendant in all these years of posting pendants? This week two different people asked me to make more purple pendants, and I thought about why my very favorite color doesn’t show up as much as it should in my work.  I’ve leaned hard into glass and metal, both of which are hard to make purple.  Glass can do a lilac, or a deep reddish-purple, or a deep blue that leans purple, but not the kind of royal purple that you think of when you’re looking for the purple crayon.  So this pendant combines many of the purples that glass can do.  If you squint maybe you’ll see crayon purple.

I sat down to write about this pendant and I had decided that it would be called calendar, because the way the months feel to me is like lots of the same, with the odd holiday or wonderful meal to break it up, and that rivet at the bottom is where the breaks in the month happen.  But when I typed “calendar,” spellcheck, in all its wisdom, changed it (as always) to cake dar.  And once again, I thought “gosh, I wish I had cake-dar that could help me sniff out all of the cakes and lead me to them!” So here it is, either a rumination on time, or a miraculous device to help me sniff out cake!

1″x1.5″, found objects

I was thinking about all of the pieces on this pendant as flotsam, as things in the way as I try to float along, but then I realized that I’m not floating,  I’m working much harder to move forward. I’m swimming, pushing hard against the water and finding the gaps between the many barriers to swim through.  I’ve been watching my son learn to swim, and the process of learning is tough.  It’s reminded me that as I move along and take each stroke, at least I already know how to swim.  (Also, if you’re in the Boston area, come say hi and pick up some pendants for yourself this weekend at Somerville Open Studios!)

1″ x 1.5″, found objects

This isn’t the first time I’ve needed some direction, so I know I’ve made a compass pendants before, but I’m once again turning in circles and trying to choose the best path forward, and I’ll take all the help I can get, even in the form of a compass-adjacent pendant.

1″diameter, found objects

I didn’t mean to make a pendant about the eclipse, but there’s no denying that the iridescent center and the rings are reminiscent of what happened this week.  So many friends traveled to see totality and their photos are amazing, but even being here in MA where the temperature dropped and crowds gathered to watch the sky was pretty magical.

1″ x 2″, found objects

It’s the imperfections that offer beauty and depth.  There’s a reason that we’re most interested in the four-leaf clover than all the thousands of three-leafed ones.  At first I looked at this pendant and was frustrated by the marks I’d left in the adhesive as I placed the beads along the edges.  But they create shadows and balance the manufactured perfection of the teardrop charm.  And in the middle, the gem still shines, which is what it’s really all about.

1″x1.5″, found objects

It’s been icky and drippy outside. April snow puts me in a foul mood. But at least the water and ice streaming down the windows looks pretty, and I’ve decided to lose myself in the beauty of the weather to distract myself from the shivering and splashing.

1″ x 1.25″, found objects

I’m back to organizing.  Setting up a studio/gallery space in the wonderful  SoWa Mosaics kept me busy this morning, and I’m looking forward to many more hours of putting things in the right places.  And here, on a tiny scale, is some more organization.

1″x.75″, found objects

There’s nothing I want more right now than just little more time.  Five more minutes to get the email written, five more minutes to sweep up the scraps from the floor, five more minutes to rest before the day starts in earnest.  April doesn’t seem like it should be the busiest month, but somehow it always is.

.5″ x 2″, gifted objects

I’ve been helping to clean out the studios of two different artist friends who passed away, and handling their materials makes me think about the collection that I’m amassing of gifts that I’ve been given for art.  Bits of broken jewelry, glass collected from a beach, beads from friends’ travels, a slate roof tile that slid off a neighbor’s roof… each story makes the object more special, and the stories find their way into each pendant.  But in using the materials from  friends who aren’t there to explain them,  the old stories are lost and I have to make new ones, making their memories my own.