Tying Ribbon onto Leaves

I am attaching a scrap of copper I found laying around, in preparation for the Dallas Indie Festival. The scrap had a ribbon hammered on the end.    I think It was an improvised tool I needed at a particular time.

Forged copper leaf with ribbon held by a third hand. 

This is what I get about 20 minutes later...

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Salt and Vinegar pickle, a dip in the oxidizer and a wire brush

Before I hit the sack I'll add it to this week's projects.  

The game is to turn these into completion by Midnight Thursday.  There will be more reports to come.

Piece of Wire

I lopped off a length of wire from this 10 gauge coil..

I fashioned it into an armature...

I know what I want to do with it, but I am vexed by the connection.. What I means is that I want a really cool way to hang the crystal and then suspend the whole thing from the ceiling. 

A leaf connector would be cool....

Keep posted and I'll follow up with the solution. 

June 4 (next night)

Roses are blooming outside the studio....

And then this...

As art becomes representational it suggests imaginary conversations or scenarios of a wondering nature...I look upon it as an object.  The intention is subtle kinetic flow-- like perpetual motion.  It is all a matter of physics and weights.

RAINBOWS IN THE JEFFERSONIAN CREATORIUM

WE built our studio with a window designed to test the mobiles for rainbows.  Here are the first images

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We will soon install a dark blue stained glass heat shield to be opened only when testing for rainbows.

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Wisteria frame seen in the background, left

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all over the palce

Tango, Free Wine and Wire Roses

I frequently can be found at the Discovery Green Flea on the third Saturday of every month.  This is what they say on the website

"Discovery Green Flea is irresistible to the avid shopper! Whether you are a bargain hunter or an eco-sensitive collector dedicated to repurposing and reusing, seek and find at Discovery Green Flea while enjoying light bites and local entertainment. With the planning expertise of Project for Public Spaces and our new friends at Brooklyn Flea, Discovery Green Flea is the place to see (buy and eat) and be seen".

For instance, In May 2014 you can shop to the exotic sounds of Rom Ryan and Moodafaruka 

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A big band, little picture.

The night before I begin the first project in the Red Studio

Hammers and a stump, using an old hammer head as a forming stake

I hammer copper wire after first heating it with the torch to loosen up the molecular bonds and make it soft and pliable.  The images here have gone through three 'courses' of heating and hammering....  

Handsome pieces, but what do you do with them?

The next step is to fabricate the rosette itself.  

This is a good way to develop a green index finger or otherwise absorb copper into the bloodstream

Pretty soon we have three of them, but no two are alike.

Three roses on square wire

The last step involves hammering the edges of the square wire into a round (roundish?) shape and making the spirals. THis process requires that the wire be heated (annealed) at least one more time.

Not finished until we polish and then apply a coating of Renaissance Wax.

WHen you are finished inspecting the mobiles and jewelry at Metalicity,be sure and check out our featured adventurer,  Vida Antiqua featuring vintage women's clothing. Taking from the words of  ZZ Top,  every man loves a sharp dressed woman.

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Allen Arts Alliance Festival - Day 3

We have had a BEAUTIFUL weekend so far an looking forward to a WONDERFUL Mothers Day here at the Allen Arts Festval at Watters Creek! I just really enjoy sharing love and joy to others and can't think of a better place or day to do that than right here in Allen, Tx on a day celebrating the source of where that joy comes, mothers!

Celeste's window Jewels 

Creation Tech Landrum has dreamed up and produced a new series of Window Jewels incorporating our hidden but vast collection of beads

In the words of Captain Beefheart, "Come on down to the big dig."

Art Car Artist Holly Klemm gave me some pieces of old glass that were mined from her back yard.  The resultant mobile has been admired by many for a few months and one admirer just took it home!

Earth

Allen Arts Festival at Watters Creek shopping Center, Allan TX

Gearing up and getting ready for another GREAT day at the Allan Arts Festival!!!!!! I'm so excited, the last two shows we've had, (King Williams Fair in San Antonio and The First Saturday Arts Show in Houston) have been such a hit that all of our inventory was sold!!! What a great problem! We have spent the first day of the show creating all new mobiles and even launching a new line designed and created by Celeste Landrum herself our Fun and Fashion Expert!!!! We are looking forward to the beautiful weather and great new friends we will meet here. Come out and join in the fun!! We will be here until 9:00 tonight and 12:00 to 6:00 tomorrow (Sunday). There are wonderful activities for the whole family and especially the kids for this Mothers Day Weekend, so come out and enjoy the delights and stop by and say "hi"!!! 

Setting up in the morning 

these are right in the sunlight 

Ready on time

A glimpse of our newest line

FORGING METAL

Forging is the moving of metal.  It includes pinching and pushing.  Metal moves like clay, according to Nile Fahmy, the tatooed Tinker, a nationally known copper smith and metal artist who has taken  one-week residency at the Creative Side Academy in Austin..

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This is made from a 1 1/2 inch copper disc.

Night night number 2 produces a more complex rosette:

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King William Fair →

We will be on Turner Street at King William Fair, San Antonio

Diana Kersey at Fiesta

Diana Kersey, is a clay sculptor whose work is known internationally.  A former instructor at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, her work has drawn particular attention from the  the architectural and design community in San Antonio.  

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Mill Race Bridge in San Antonio

There is a longstanding tradition of using ceramic tile as exterior architectural trim in San Antonio.  There is a gallery of Mill Race Bridge details fount on her web site, www.kerseyceramics.com.  I think you can poke around this site and discover some delights. 

She joins 119 other top artists this weekend in San Antonio at the Southwest School of Art Fiesta Art Fair, arguably the number 1 art fair in Texas in terms of awesomeness, and one of the premier shows in the country.

A LITTLE SLIVER OF PARADISE

I used to think it unseemly for an artist to have a job.  I spent quite a bit of time on the hammock contemplating the jobs of the artist.  Now I work at the University of Texas. Waller Creek runs through it.  My boss ordered me to go out and take pictures some years back, of parking signs if you must know.  Occasionally an errant image of Waller Creek finds its way into my camera.

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Fish Going Places

The campus is like a city of 100,000 people stuffed into 400 acres.  People are always going places.  

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Watson House

The Watson House is tucked unto a limestone bluff hidden by the foliage of Waller Creek.  It was built by Abner Cook Austin's earliest architect in 1854.  Soon it will overlook the Dell Medical School.  

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Turtle Admiring 19th Century Architecture

This turtle resides on the creek below the Watson House

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Bridge for Heavy Equipment Going in Here

This location is about a quarter mile North of the Dell Medical School site.  Here they are building an new College of Electrical Engineering.  Next month we will see a bridge across this spot to accommodate heavy construction equipment.  I will follow up with a later report.  I would urge readers to hold off on judgement--those who might be disturbed by the paving of paradise.  Even in this scene, there is quite a bit of what might be called 'art.'  The Cypress Trees were all planted in the 1940's and 50's by English Professor Joseph Jones during his lunch breaks.  You can read about it in his book Life on Waller Creek.  We will trust, but verify that the University aborist, the Sustainability Officer and planners will create a Wonder centered on this beautiful creek.

Forged Jewelry - Not Fake →

in an earlier blog I talked about wabi-sabi, the hand made and the manufactured.  Hand-made does not imply wabi-sabi. An excellent essay on the distinction of hand-forged jewelry is found on the website of Victor Canera, a Southern California custom jeweler.  Canera works in Platinum and gold. Hh says, " A design is formed in the mind of the designer, ingots of platinum or gold are melted and then pressed, bent, formed or pulled into the different parts that comprise a piece of jewelry. "  This is the perfect expression of forging. 

Wabi-Sabi

The beauty of industrially produced objects lies in its uniformity. For three hundred years the expectation of quality has been associated with machine-produced refinements. Even today, the “high-tech” aesthetic influences design. Even as this industrial aesthetic has dominated design for centuries, a counter movement can be traced back to the late eighteenth century interest in ruins and the late 19th century medievalist revival. The Arts and Crafts movement sprang from the aesthetics of Pre-Raphaelitism . The governing aesthetic in jewelry design remains the industrial. However, there is a significant world-wide reaction the nu-natural in jewelry design. The result is an aesthetic which leaves the imprint of the human hand on the finished work.

Kiff Slemmons, a Chicago artist-jeweler, wonders about imperfection and its impact on art in an essay that appears in Metalsmith Magazine (Vol 28, No 1, pp 26-29).

"The beauty of imperfection, its pull on our conscious as well as sensual engagement, is not always recognized for its positive attributes. This is particularly true in the more narrowly defined realm of craft, where perfection is the ultimate achievement. But sometimes the most perfectly executed object lack vitality and their impact ends quickly after this acknowledgment….

"Imperfection can offer openness; in a way, whereas perfection can sometimes be closed and frozen in place. Imperfection can certain energy—can make for flow. Perhaps imperfection is most obvious and easily understood in outsider or folk art, in which the expressive qualities are spontaneous and immediate."