My Favorite Earrings

 Here I am, sitting in my garden, trying to photograph jewelry for my Etsy site. There is hilarity in trying to get images of jewelry being worn when you are the only person available. 

Being directly confronted by the aging that has happened at a very close range... silvery hairs threaded between my brown ones is challenging. Sun damage and wrinkles almost drove me into the house to add some concealing makeup. Then, of course there is the extra weight added by menopause.

In conversation with myself, I decided this is who I am, no need to conceal or filter. I prefer to go without makeup, be in comfortable jeans and t-shirt with some cowboy boots ( to make me feel confident when I am not feeling strong)! My favorite earrings I have made to date are my Glastonbury Festival Hoops...just a little hippie vibe from a bygone era!

Here I am wearing them and keeping it real!

#Etsy #cooperhillstudio

Natures Eternal Inspiration

 

Beauty in the natural world is a place of refuge for our spiritual selves and a springboard to creativity for the human mind. 

In Greek mythology Hera created the peacock from Argus, who had 100 eyes. The tail feathers represent the stars in the heavens and symbolize all-seeing knowledge. In Hindu faith, the peacock is associated with the goddess Lakshmi representing compassion, kindness and patience. In Christianity, the peacock symbolizes resurrection, immortality, renewal.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler's controversial "Harmony in Blue and Gold; The Peacock Room" is currently housed in the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Frederick Leyland had originally commissioned the artist to make minor changes to pull the room together, only to return to find that Whistler had become completely carried away. His claim was that he let his imagination run wild "I forgot everything in the joy of it".

There is certainly a place where we all meet and commune with nature, We find it in our gardens, on our vacations to beautiful places, a walk in the woods, and in our relationships with animals we care for who entrust us to keep them safe. 

By translating experiences and impressions into the medium of jewelry making I am allowed to find the same joy that Whistler experienced as he created "The Peacock Room". Contemplation of the natural world around me allows for peace to enter my mind, relax, celebrate beauty, and reflect another version of beauty back into the world.

Return of Happiness

 Like many people around the world, Covid-19 brought an abrupt change to my carefully laid plan. The job that I found deeply satisfying because I believed I could change peoples lives for the better was eliminated. My goal had been to work there until I turned 60, hopefully laying a foundation for an additional revenue stream for the organization, as well as outreach to underserved in our community. Art is the place where creativity can super charge entrepreneurship for self fulfilling success.

While job loss and separation from a community is painful and difficult, and the grieving process has its ups and downs, I am certainly among the most fortunate that there is solace in creating works of art. I spend my mornings studying gemology, working on sketches for designs I would like to create, and working at my bench. Healing is happening.

I share with you, my Lily of the Valley necklace. The flower is symbolic of the return of happiness, likely because of its beautiful fragrance and presence in early spring. We will survive the dark days of this sad time in the world... spring will come again.

New Life

Spring is the season of reawakening life and rebirth. It is no surprise that many religious systems have placed their heroes conquering of death in the season in which the world becomes lush again.
For me, the hope that a long winter (both literally and spiritually) is ending and new work will begin.
I have, with purpose, kept myself too busy for the last couple years after my Father's illness and passing. That busy-ness must come to an end, in order to re-engage with my creative life in the studio.

Purposefully, I am opening up time to allow the process of creating to begin. Returning to my business to build a new more sustainable model, that will allow more autonomy in my life. I look forward to sharing new jewelry, as well as hollow ware, and objects of art in a more direct way with my audience... I hope you'll all join me as I move forward.

Their Success Is My Success

         I had a  conversation this morning with my sister Sheila, who has been an education professional for over 25 years. She started as a grade school teacher, advanced to a literacy coach, and now serves a large school system as a supervisor for grades k-12. It is a huge job to implement new standards for teaching in an aging population of teachers. No one, and I mean no one, is comfortable with change. When it comes, the resistance to change is great, and the person appointed to deliver the message is "persona non grata" for sure. The thing to know about my sister is, she is absolutely passionate about her advocacy for best practices for the sake of the students. If she were the manager of your child school system, you would lucky!

I bring this all up because I am new to the teaching process. I certainly share my sisters passion for sharing and communicating information with students. I am still new enough that I am working out the rudiments of this communication process. I am self conscious in my delivery, especially in lecture mode when sleepy eyed students don't seem to respond at all to what my conversation is. I know they've been balancing lots of plates on poles like a circus act, but just the hint of a smile at one of my jokes to acknowledge they are breathing would help!

I also have heard the stories of my teaching colleagues, and been told I'm too easy on my class. I freely admit that I am unwilling to adopt a sarcastic tone with my students. I stay as upbeat as I can in my conversations with them. Their backgrounds are unknown to me, and it is to easy to misinterpret shyness for disengagement.
   What I love about the process, and get a chuckle over, is how exciting it is to see people who have never worked in metal before, make a really beautiful solder. It is like magic the first time they fit everything well, cleaned, fluxed, and watch the solder run perfectly along a seam. I am standing right beside them with my finger crossed, holding my breath as they are heating the piece and adding the solder!
   As my students progress from learning basic skills, to planning and executing their first complex projects, I am right there in their corner. If I can find a way to help them realize their goal, I've achieved something too. I have had to rethink through and find a way to talk about parts of the craft that are intuitive or second nature to me, deconstructing all the steps that take me to a finished product again. The result is, in my own practice as a craftsman, I am remembering details of the process that I have glossed over, and am again refining my own craft. It's been an amazing awakening, and I am falling in love with the craft again.
   My hope is, that I will always feel the benefit that teaching has brought in regards to my own craft, and that I will always be open minded and hear what people suggest to help me be a better teacher and communicator. I truly believe my students success is my own.

"Advance To Exciting Career In Jewelry!!!!"

  Those words "advance to exciting career in jewelry" used to make me laugh! That was how my boss at the manufacturer titled his want ads for bench positions followed by "no experience necessary...must be good with hands". At that time, I was learning the trade. My work would consist of days of long production runs performing the same task over and over again to hundreds of pieces! We had special names for some of those pieces. "The Dreads" stands out in my mind. They were little cluster earrings with a larger center stone surrounded by 8) .0075 diamonds ( for those of you not in the trade they measure about 1mm). I will never forget as long as I live, the day I tipped my tray of over 1200 of those tiny diamonds all over my bench and the floor, and had to find them all! CRAZY!!!

   I was reminded of those days today as I sat at my bench downstairs cleaning and polishing hundreds of castings to set and assemble for the upcoming gift buying season. The work is dirty, and anything but exciting. As the owner, CEO, artistic director, etc., etc., one would hope that these tasks would be handed to minions to perform. There's the rub in starting your own business. I am still at the stage where I do it all.  I often wonder what it is in me that would make a forty eight year old woman with a good paying job want to start from scratch? I remember being in the conference room with the woman who was my previous boss frustrated with me asking "why can't you just be happy collecting a pay check?". I don't know...I just can't!

  So that is how I spent my Sunday, cleaning and polishing castings. What gets me through the task is a vision of a viable business, where I can hire some students to work with me (we'll do the boring work together!) I have had many people tell me the best plan is to source the work overseas because the manufacture of jewelry is no longer viable in our country. I prefer to think of my business as an incubator where other creative people can train to develop their own micro businesses, hire a few students to help them and then pass it on!

My Favorite Tool

A couple of months ago I received an invitation from my alma mater to participate in a project in which I would do a short interview talking about my career and how my education at CCAD had helped me to achieve my goals in a self produced video. Because I am a little shy and not too tech savvy I didn't  participate. There were a series of questions that they wanted me to answer, one of which was, "what is my favorite tool?"

What is my favorite tool? I really didn't have an immediate answer because there are so many tools that I work with. At 48 years old, it should probably be anything that magnifies what I am working on! Optivisors, loupe, microscope...anything that helps me focus on those pesky little details that have gotten fuzzier over the years. The truth is that my favorite tool is the torch. It is where the magic of my craft takes place. I can anneal hard metal and make it pliant, take solid metal and make it liquid, and join two unrelated objects using solder that is alloyed to melt before the objects I am joining. It is amazing and often intuitive in processes...I love it!

What makes me laugh, is how afraid I was of the torch when I was first invited to use one. I am sure the fear was initiated by my first welding demo in a sculpture class in college. My instructor was a burly, irreverent fellow who started the conversation with all the ways you could blow the sculpture lab up because the equipment there didn't have the appropriate flash back valve protection! (At the rate of the tuition they probably could've afforded to do a better job with safety...) I was so intimidated that I chose a different means of assembly for my additive project!

Fast forward to my first day as an apprentice at the jewelry manufacturer that had hired me just out of school. To myself I remember thinking....anything but the torch! At 2:00 on my first day when my supervisor announced that it was time to sit down and learn to solder posts to earrings, I almost ran out the door! As he was demonstrating the technique to light the torch ( and I was thinking "without blowing the place up"!) and solder thin tiny posts that don't take a lot of heat to heavier pieces that need more (  I was thinking, you gotta do this 'cause you can't humiliate yourself by asking your Dad for money to pay the rent!) I don't think I ever would have imagined that I would ever love what you can do with a torch so much! I tell the story about tangling with that crazy torch that day. I must have melted two dozen posts to get 6 soldered on, and almost lost it when I knocked my jar of color saver over and caught my bench on fire! The woman sitting next to me laughed, reached over to pat the flames out and made some crack about they'd be calling me "Chernobyl Chris". I still wonder how I got it together to go in the next day and start all over again!

I kept showing up, and have learned to use that magic wand better than Harry Potter and his wand! Even with the addition of the laser, which I know many of my young associates prefer, I still prefer a torch weld  for assembly of parts even with platinum (absence of gems allowing). It is like so many things in life,  if you can move past your initial fears ( which are often produced by misinformation), and be patient, you may find that thing that you feared most will become your greatest ally, or at least your favorite  tool!