the evolution continues

It's been a week of experimenting, trials and triumphs.  A few pieces have come together almost instantly, others over days.  Each element is tested, assembled, taken apart, reassembled, hung on my in progress wall, where I leave it rest overnight and come back the next day to see if it still works.

Hanging against my inspiration and where I am as of this morning .........

And, of course, if you've been with me for a while, you'll know how I struggle with cordage and the vehicle for assembling my pieces.  This collection is no different, although it's been a much less painful road.  Remember, I had decided on my color palette, the starting point being my beautiful sweater's ochre and linen.  Black and dark brown are always an easy option and readily available in any fiber I might desire.  Ochre or antique gold, not so much.  Tuesday, I decided I needed ochre cord or thread or something.  So I trotted down to my local chi-chi yarn store and fancy fabric shop in search of my vision.  Zip, zero, nada, squat ... nothing at all.

I already had 'plan B' in mind ... purchase some white Habutai silk yardage, cut into ribbons and dye the fabric.  Head over to the cheapo fabric store to buy dye and they've got a very minimal selection of basic old Rit dye.  BTW, I could have gone downtown to the real fiber store and bought fancy dye, but I wasn't up for that much of an adventure.  Alchemist Kathy goes to work ...

It took a while, but after a couple of tries, I got from "golden yellow" mixed with varying amounts of "dark brown" to this ....

The cord on the right was my inspiration.  Recycled sari silk that was the perfect look and perfect color, but beware - that stuff has literally no strength and I easily ripped this cordage in two.  While I was at it, I chucked some taupe Habu silk in the pot to see what would happen.  I knew I was in for a big mess, but I secured the little bundle of yarn as best as I could and went for it. 

Not quite the mother of all tangles, but close ...

Side note ... I'm one of those people that actually likes to untangle things.  I can remember way back in my teens when I was working at a department store and the jewelry department got a shipment of chains that arrived in a big mess.  Everyone took turns trying to untangle the enormous pile.  Not so sure anyone else was enamored with the challenge, but I loved it.

Okay, back to my cord choices.

After much deliberation, I decided that, even after several washes with extra rinse cycles, I was still concerned about the stability of my dyeing efforts ... maybe I should have gone to the real fiber store after all.  All right, so it's not like I didn't already have a pretty decent assortment of options on hand.

Right now I'm okay with using several different fibers for the cord and so far they're all pendants.  I still want to do some 'not pendants', but I'm running out of components.  This is most of what's left and I've still got bracelets and earrings to consider ...

I've also been working on a lot of different ideas for closures.  One thing with the pendants, the cord will be long enough to just slip over the head, so there won't be a clasp.  Some of my test closures ...

I've decided to go with the waxed linen wrap, second from right.  One little detail I like is the way I can include my KVK tag when I make the cord - very clean and minimal solution.

So I need to finish up here and get back to work.  But, of course, I want to share two of my favorite pieces.  Every day that changes.  This one reminds me of an ancient stone henge ... the way the two center pieces of fossilized bone fit together so beautifully.

How is it that pieces that look so simple and minimal take so long to compose?  For me, it's all about editing.  I put pieces on, add on, subtract, change the size of the accent component.  There is asymmetry, but it is balanced.  Still, it always surprises me how long it takes to get to this point.

And then this piece ... oof!  I played around with those long curved steel elements all week and then yesterday this piece came together.  It took a good part of my afternoon, but I'm so very pleased with the result ... especially the way the fossils mirror the shape of the steel pieces and the way I wrapped the cord to secure the fossil in place.  This is steel, fossilized bones and Roman glass on hand plied nylon cord.

Rightio!  There's work to be done, more jewels to create and plots to be plotted ... all happening with my  evolving ambient/Stephan Micus Pandora station in the background.  One thing I love about Pandora is discovering new artists ... my new fave, Bonobo.

ttfn

l i g a - kvk

p.s.  apologies for the erratic spacing ... something going on with Blogger won't keep my edits ... annoying.

audacious

 ... that's the word that came to me during this morning's mediation and my word for the day.  So I'm rolling it over in my mind, looking up the definition, seeing how it feels.

au-da-cious / [aw-dey-shuhs] / adjective

1.extremely bold or daring; recklessly brave; fearless

2.extremely original; without restriction to prior ideas; highly inventive

3.recklessly bold in defiance of convention, propriety, law, or the like; insolent; brazen

4.lively; unrestrained

I'm rather liking #2 and #4.  Audacious, maybe it should be my word for awhile, maybe I should make it my mantra.  

I have enormous admiration for people and work that I consider audacious, what I perceive to be the underlying confidence and strength.  There's that Geothe quote ...   "Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ... that I should staple to my forehead.  It's so much easier to be tentative, cautious, safe.  Suffice it to say, I do not consider myself audacious ... not yet.  For years I've said what I want to be when I grow up is eccentric.  Now I'm thinking that being audaciously eccentric would be even more better ... or is that redundant?  I don't know, whatever it is, it's not plain, it's not safe, it's not the status quo.

I've always been one to ease into the cold water,  tiptoe out to the end of the diving board and peek over.  Daily, I'm pushing myself towards the precipice for I know deep down ('cause I've experienced it many times), that when I leap the net will indeed appear ... it always has and it always will.  This is my grail quest but it's not a fairy tale or a purely abstract concept.  It's quite real ... I can almost touch it, very nearly taste it.  It's that itchy skin thing again.  My skin's been feeling very small lately.  Surely it's the force of nature, spring growth and rebirth, renewal and upward momentum.

The bud bursts forth in an explosion of audacious color and texture.  Actually, that should be about me ... my new work burst forth in an explosion of audacious color and texture.  Oohh, I rather like that as well.

As for new work, I've just bisque fired some prototypes of the vessels that will accompany the Talismans For Fellow Travelers Elements series.  The texture is very much there, color will come as a wash of mason stains (I haven't taken the time to mix up clay and stain for the inlays).  These little cylinders were built with clay thrown on the concrete slab in my yard - I think these stained will be lovely.  The front cylinder is about 2" across and 1 1/4" deep.  Not sure what I'll be lashing through the holes, maybe a leather cover, maybe decorative doodahs, maybe ... oh I'll just have to see what hits me.

  

And the full assortment of test pieces.  I just can't resist little pinch pot bowls - the largest is about 3" across.  They're quite thin and very light.  Next will be taller and more slender cylinders that will have stoppers - to hold the finished Talismans.

But it's time to get back to the wholesale orders and put experimentation aside for a couple of days.  This will be me, the audacious and delightfully eccentric artist going back to work. 

blessings - kvk

p.s.  blogger is doing something annoying with my spacing.  I did not write one huge paragraph - it wasn't me, really, it's the bloody program.
Ah well, not the end of the world, just accept my apologies for the block o'text.  I'll try to fix it later.

p.p.s.  so I centered the text ... maybe that's not so hard on the eyes ... sheesh

new bag of tricks + spring!

I would say I've got a couple of tricks up my sleeve, but today I don't have any ... sleeves!  Sweet relief - zorries and no sleeves and linen, all the windows open and puttering in the front flower bed.  I know I'm probably pressing my luck and it's probably way too early to be doing this, but I couldn't help myself.
Yesterdays project - 15 bucks at the nursery and a couple of hours later ...

 

Notice my shadow?  Yep, that's from this thing called the sun that's very warm and very bright.

And then I cleared out the insulating layer of leaves in the front beds and discovered the bee balm has been very busy.  This little corner is going to be amazing and me and the hummingbirds will be in heaven.

It's such a relief when the flowering quince starts to bloom and, when leaving the windows open at night I can hear the spring peepers.  Do you love peepers?  I love peepers.  How could anyone not love peepers?

Ah, yes, but that aforementioned bag of tricks ... what might that be, what would be hiding up my sleeve if I was wearing sleeves?

Well, the plan is, I'll be combining these bags ...

with this lovely and ginormous slab of concrete in my yard ...

... throwing small slabs of white earthenware on the concrete to make small vessels and shallow pots then inlay colored clay designs accented with metal clay slip - no glaze.  The intention for this work - vessels to hold components from the forthcoming Talismans For Fellow Travelers - Elements.  I have been thinking about the concept of building your own talismans for months and I'm very much in the middle of figuring it all out, but it feels like the missing pieces are finally falling into place.  So, I'll be keeping you posted as the concept progresses.

But right this very second, I am so excited to get my hands into this fresh bag of earthenware clay ... pinch pots and slab pots ... did you know you could 'throw' slabs of clay ... probably one of my favorite things to do with clay.  This is where the slab of concrete comes in.  Way back when, in the amazing little pottery studio at Whatcom Community College on Bellingham Bay, Washington - we'd 'throw' slabs on the concrete floors.  It's very meditative and enormously satisfying and the slabs have a beautiful organic quality - so much better than chucking them onto the big ol' boring slab roller.  And, yep, it was Elephant Ceramics that got me all inspired and I can't wait to see what happens.

Okay, must play with clay now.
with much gratitude and great joy ...
blessings - kvk

vigilant me

It seems my life's theme over the last couple of weeks is vigilance: watchfulness; the process of paying close and continuous attention.  I've been working hard to take notice of all those little things that I tend to ignore and brush off with the thought of 'later'.  It's that ongoing feng shui-ing my life thing.   Moving through this process I just never know what's going to catch my attention.

This one amused me to no end ... I decided to finally, and I do mean finally, wash the canvas from my PMC tool kit.  This is the tool kit I bought either late '97 or early '98, one of the original PMC tool kits, and it has never, and I do mean never, been washed.  I'd kind of been enjoying it all nasty and crusty, layers and layers of lord knows what built up through the years.  But the other day I looked down and said "enough".  Behold the before ...

I won't say the result is pristine, but it's worlds better ... worlds!  Then I decided my work surface needed attention as well, so it got a good scrubbing.  Then I tossed the nasty little bit of oil-soaked foam (okay, so it was less than a year old) in my vintage PMC container (anyone remember those?).  It's quite refreshing to have a shiny and clean work surface and toolkit.  I probably won't wait another 12 years to clean up my tools.

I had to take a break from taking catalog and website pictures - it was making me crazy and I was getting really bored.  Beware of Kathy when she gets bored, she's been known to take on new and daunting projects.  But you see, I've been thinking about this one for years, and I do mean years.  I've decided to teach myself how to cast glass beads.  You see, it all started when I first saw this necklace ...

I had seen it in Ornament magazine ads and then it was in the Collectible Beads book that Robert Liu did in '95.  It was those chunky translucent blue and sea green beads that really got me - pate de verre - I had no idea what that was.  Funny thing about this necklace ... the maker is Laura Popenoe and she lives in Port Townsend and we got to be quite good friends while I was there.  Wouldn't you think I would have asked her about those beads?  Nope.  I have been thinking about emailing her and getting some pointers, but being the pig-headed sort that I am, I'm going to work on my own for a bit and see where I get.

I've bought a book ...

 

And what really got me going was my idea for molds - creative paperclay.  In the early days of PMC, core material for beads was a big problem.  For years I used paperclay, which was less than ideal but there weren't really any options.  So I knew that it would fire to 1650, not shrink and not burn up - it's the volcanic ash and talc.  After firing, I would just drop my beads in water and the paperclay would crumble and dissolve.  I thought it could be great for glass molds ...  the core for the center hole  made ahead of time, dried and stuck into little pinch pot molds - no bead release or worries about getting the bead out of the mold.  Plus they're very cute ...

Next, I discovered there's a rather large art glass supplier here in town.  I bought a few vials of ground up frit to experiment with ...

My first experiments have been less than stellar ...

But another one of those late night epiphanies has me trying something else - crushing up Roman glass and seeing what it does.  I'm not sure if this might be kind of sacrilegious, but I love the colors and I've got a bunch that's been sitting in a bin for ages, so what the heck.  My first attempts are cooling in the kiln as we speak ... that's the hardest part for me - waiting.  You have to wait until the kiln is bloody room temperature before you can open it!

 

I've also discovered that Rio Grande is selling glass supplies, who knew?  Ah, which leads me to another bit of house cleaning ... I just sent back all my silver scrap.  I cleared out a ton of old components and bits and pieces that had been sitting around forever.  I had a bunch of really early glass fired in PMC failed experiments.  I took a beefy pair of cutters and managed to extract most of the silver from the glass.  All that old stuff along with a lot of not so old stuff and with silver at $27 p/oz ... well it was a fine idea with excellent timing.  I got to do some much needed space clearing, get a nice chunk of trade-in credit, buy some regular materials but also order a nice assortment of frit for further experimentation. 

As I move forward to lord knows where, I'm back to that idea of vigilance ... staying awake and aware and heart centered.  To help with staying mindful, I've started getting the Daily Quotes from Abraham-Hicks.  I used to be a big follower, but I got kind of turned off from them for a while, they've gotten so commercial.  But I just decided that if the message resonates it doesn't matter where it's from.  An excerpt from today's quote did indeed resonate, "you cannot attract the presence of something wanted when predominantly aware of its absence." 

That's a tricky one ...

So much going on ... I'll keep you posted.
blessings - kvk

p.s.  it's almost my birthday month!!!!  wowie zowie, the downhill slide to fifty-five!

p.p.s.  270degrees is not room temperature ... drat