Shell Necklace (001), 2012, polymer, sterling silver, 2 x 2 x 21", $4750.

I’m trying to get used to the clean white finish of unoxidized sterling silver after years of routinely darkening the metal with liver of sulphur.  Dave likes to keep the silver white. Our metalsmith, Maryanne, also likes the unoxidized look saying that it looks more “finished”.  To my eye, it can sometimes look unfinished and unconsidered.

This image shows the same necklace before and after oxidation and the addition of two layers of gold leaf on the shallow sterling cups.  This is the first shell necklace, and I like many of it’s qualities; it has a nice loose slinky feel.  It’s both showy and dressy, but more casual in structure than many of our other more stiffly formal necklaces. While the gold leaf is a surface treatment and vulnerable to wearing off over time, this necklace’s shape protects the leaf from the usual wear and tear.

While I liked the original with white silver, I loved how oxidizing the silver knocked it back and leafing the cups made the whole piece more vivid and punchy.  We’re working on a black and white version for a client, and my plan is to blacken only every other cup to keep up the black and white theme.

So what do you think?  Do you prefer the look in the top image or the bottom one?

Steve Ford and Dave Forlano at the opening of Overlay at Patina Gallery in Santa Fe

Art Jewelry Forum is one of the best groups collecting and supporting our field.  They organize member trips to events all over the world, and give scholarships to emerging artists and researchers.  AJF President, Susan Cummings, interviewed us for her blog this month.  Dave and I wrote our responses to her questions while I was in Santa Fe for the opening of our show at Patina Gallery.  By doing it together, we were less repetitive and it was good preparation for the gallery talk we gave at the opening.

This next weekend, for the first time in a long time, David and Steve will be doing  simultaneous shows in different cities.  David, with the help of his wife Debrianna, will be showing new jewelry at the American Craft Council‘s show in St Paul, MN on April 20-22 at the RiverCentre (booth 1203), while Steve will be in Washington for dcTrunk.

It’s been five years since we’ve shown in St Paul, and we’re happy to be back.  The people are always wonderful, and everyone is excited that Spring has come to the frozen north. It’s the best craft show in the region, and this year it looks like about 1/3 of the exhibitors are new to the show.  DeltaSky magazine is promoting our work and the show to their 14 million passengers this month.

A lot has changed with our jewelry in the last five years.  If you’re in the area, come check it out.

The first year that we tried it, there were just three of us showing at the Westin Hotel in Foggy Bottom.  Last year we were a group of eight, showing at the Forum of the Harman Center for the Arts, just one small block away from the Smithsonian Craft Show at the National Building Museum. That show gets about 8-10,000 people each year.  The Smithsonian Women’s Committee has been wonderfully supportive of our project.  They’ve allowed us to promote the show in their program guide, and to lay out our cards at their show.  Many of the committee members came over and shopped with us themselves.

This year, we are a group of eleven exceptional craft artists.  Jane Herzenberg, Mary Hughes & Caro-Gray Bosca, Michael Kane & Steve Sells, Selma Karaca, Holly Lee, Rebecca Myers, Mina Norton, K. Riley, Biba Schutz, and Kiwon Wang.  All of us have shown at the Smithsonian Craft Show many times in the past (Ford/Forlano has 10-12 times?).  We each have a strong following among craft collectors in the Washington area.

This year, we’re also marketing more to the public with five days of ads in the Washington Post Express.  We’re placing ads in the program guides at the Harman Center’s theatrical performances for three weeks before the event.  We also have a full page ad in Ornament magazine, as well as a smaller ad in the Smithsonian Craft Show’s program guide.

While we’ve depended on craft shows as the primary way of marketing our work for the last 20+ years, Dave and I are also looking for what’s next.  Our hope is that smaller, simpler, more intimate events like dcTrunk can be a creative and direct way to reach our audience.  If you’re in the Washington are next week, we hope to see you at dcTrunk. Admission is free!

In a way, this new work is getting back to our roots with “caning” polymer clay. There is an added layer of my recent interest in printmaking too, as the clay is embossed with a linoleum cut plate. It’s also painted to bring out the texture of the surface, and to complicate the color within the clay itself.

I started making these two years ago, but only recently have I found a good way to use them in jewelry. At first, they looked too Chihuly-ish, which was a reference that I didn’t like. But I’m pleased with the freshness and vividness of this new work. We’re trying to pull a necklace together in time for CraftBoston next week…..stay tuned.

Our work is often taking clues from nature. While forms, colors and patterns serve as an inspiration to us it is not our intention to create literal translations of these things.  This series of necklaces created with hollow forms of polymer clay touch on the decorative art movement of Art Nouveau. The fascination of Art Nouveau with the natural world and its emphasis on creating a sense of movement are evident in the designs of the style. Quoting from a description found on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website , ”They are often awash with aquatic motifs,…taking inspiration from the unruly aspects of the natural world, Art Nouveau influenced art and architecture especially in the applied arts, graphic work, and illustration. Sinuous lines and “whiplash” curves were derived, in part, from botanical studies and illustrations of deep-sea organisms such as those by German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919) in Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature, 1899).”

Embrace Beads, 2011

Loetz and Osiris Art Nouveau vase c1900

Helen-Frankenthaler,Tutti-Fruitti

Squiggle Necklace Parts

We have brought back the Squiggle Necklace.

In an article published in Artcanvasmodern.com there is a brief introduction to Fauvism in painting and how color played a big part in it’s definition.   The group of squiggle parts pictured above next to Helen Frankenthaler’s painting, Tutti Fruitti draws a connection in color thinking.  What attracts me to these colors is best said in this quote from the article on Fauvism:

“This sense of optimism and the celebration of color and pleasure are associated with the aims of Fauvism. Fauvism’s liberation of color from symbolic overtones and its view of color as a way to express vitality and well-being are compelling messages carried forward in much of Frankenthaler’s work as well as in American Color Field painting in general.”

We often see this sense of “vitality and well-being” in the reactions of people who wear our squiggle necklace.  The squiggle necklace is like a three dimensional organic puzzle that is activated on the body as it is worn. The article goes on to describe Frankenthaler’s painting:

“In Tutti Frutti, Frankenthaler has placed large, organically shaped patches of red, orange, blue, yellow, yellow-green, blue-green and teal adjacent to one another in a puzzle-like arrangement. The bright colors play off of one another and interact with one another in an exaggerated, good-humored way.”

Circle Pin (011), 1997, polymer clay, 3 x 3 x 1/4", collection of the artists

We got an email today, confirming that the Tacoma Museum of Art has accepted a gift of a faceted pillow necklace from one of our collectors for their permanent collection.  That brings the count of museums that have our work to seven.

This fall, the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin will have a major show of polymer work, including ours.  Called Terra Nova, the exhibition will run through February 5, 2012.  The show will have over 20 of our pieces and the museum will publish a catalog of the exhibit.  Dave and I plan to fly out for the opening on October 21.  Elise Winters has donated many pieces from her personal collection to museum collections to elevate the public profile of work made from polymer.  She was instrumental in convincing RAM to have this exhibit, and we thank her for all her efforts.

I have to admit that I am ambivalent about being identified primarily by our material.  I prefer to promote the vision of the ideas that we’re exploring through the things that we make.  Early on, it was just the opposite.  We promoted our work by promoting polymer clay; “hey, look at the tricks we can do with this great new material”.  As I get older, the same artistic and design themes pop up again and again in paintings, prints, drawings, fabric design, as well as our polymer clay work. It’s frustrating sometimes to not have any radically new ideas.  For better or worse, it also feels authentic.

“Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity“.  That is, the more work I create, the better the chances are of creating something really good.

I’m aware of the limits of my own “talent”.  Rather than working on one ultimate expression, a masterpiece, I’ve always worked on many things at once–earning the quality that happens through the discipline of studio work.  One thing leads to another, and the work evolves more quickly when I work that way.  Process and discovery are two things that motivate me to keep making things.

The other quote was: “The game is what you catch, not what you spill“.  We spill a lot in the studio.  Most of what we make is spillage.  That’s true when I’m printmaking as well.  I make loads of printed parts (like beads), and then sort them into piles, then start laying them out into combinations that tell a story of sorts.  Like beads, the printed parts can keep evolving until they “ripen” to a finish.  When that happens is a visceral decision; it just feels right.

And while I’m on a roll with quotes, another favorite, from Picasso:  ”Inspiration does exist, but she must find you working“