Category Archives: jewelry

Shards and Spirit Box Kit

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Congrats to Barb Wolfe, winner of the SHARDS subscriber drawing for the Spirit Box kit. Barb’s a good jewelry designer, can’t wait to see how she puts it all together. Speaking of shards, yesterday’s workshop artisans outdid themselves in quality and production. Take a look at some of their work – it’s very fragile right now while it’s waiting to be fired, but the pieces should be even more amazing once fired and finished. The last photo is a card of air-dry clay buttons that I made yesterday for fiber art enhancement – I’ll post directions at a later date. Sherrill Kahn turned me on to air-dry clay as a quick alternative to earthenware.Thanks for a great workshop, y’all – see you Wednesday to finish your pieces and put them together at Ann Pearce’s jewelry shop.

Art teachers and adornments

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I don’t know where Sherrill Kahn gets her energy – after two full days of teaching workshops at the Studio, she lectured to a full house of North East ISD art teachers this morning at the McNay Museum of Art as part of their in-service for back-to-school. My painting pal, Gloria Hill, is the NEISD Visual Arts Director and she arranged for Sherrill to come from California for the occasion. Sherrill shared images of her intricate, colorful work and she gave lots of hints to teachers on how to inspire students even on a teacher’s budget. Did you know, for example, that cheap hair gel from the Dollar Store works beautifully as an extender for acrylic paint? Check our her newest book for lots more cool ideas.

Afterwards, Gloria, Sherrill and I went to my Studio to work on face shard jewelry, but not before several of the art teachers showed up just to visit with Sherrill on a one-on-one basis. We did get back to work on our shard faces, and we spent the rest of the afternoon with Ann Pearce creating our necklaces with her help. If you’d like to make your own clay faces, I have a workshop this Sunday, August 25, on clay adornments, so sign up and join the fun! There’s still space.

neck2 neck4 necklaceanns

 

Arts, letters & amber – a studio visit

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Carolyn Eastman Cazares is a Woman of Letters – Hebrew letters. She fell in love with the letterforms over a decade ago and paints them in layered compositions that transcend translation. I visited Carolyn at her Studio on the edge of the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio, and I was astounded with the diversity and passion in her work. When she falls in love with something – Hebrew letters, chunks of amber, faces that compel her, she is prolific in her explorations. Her amber and copper wire jewelry is lyrical – she says that amber is a combination of “liquid sunshine and ancient wisdom.”

She also makes a great chocolate gluten-free cake (and gave me the recipe). We talked for over an hour about creativity, relationships and art, and what inspires us, and we found a lot of common ground. If you’ve visited my house and my studio, you can see from the photos that Carolyn and I share a lot of the same kinds of “artists’ stuff”! Thanks for the visit, Carolyn – I will be back!

Meanwhile, back at the Studio

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Back at last from Boston with lots of inspiration and good memories! Look what was waiting for me on Facebook yesterday, just in time for Eileen Achorn’s beading workshop this Saturday at the Studio – two fabulous examples of cabochon beading using my face shards. These were done by Kathy Cosgrove from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. She wrote, “I purchased a few of your shards a few months ago and I wanted to share with you the outcome of my projects.” All I can say is, “WOW.”

This is an extension of the same technique that Eileen will be teaching, although she will (blessedly) start us off with the basics – if you’re in San Antonio, I hope you’ll consider joining us from 11-2 next Saturday the 15th at the Studio. Here’s the sign-up link. I had no idea that the little clay faces could be elevated to the kid of art that Eileen and Kathy do! And Eileen promises that even I, with little patience and no beading experience to speak of, can do this. We’ll see. I’ll send a report and pics after the workshop if you can be there in person.

Now, repeat after me . . . there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home . . . . .:)