The Glades

Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park grasslands in the Florida Everglades (above) and, the big Cypress trees in the strand (below.)

Here's a short story about why there don't seem to be any walking trails in the strand. I was taking the above photo when I noticed a butterfly (below.)

I then walked to the other side of the road to see a white bird in the swamp (below.)

When I returned to my original spot on the road I looked down into the swamp right next to the road - feet from where I was standing. The last picture shows you what was looking up at me.

Here's a closeup:

Victoria Park Balconies

Balconies in the Victoria Park neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale reminded me of the balconies in Culebra and Vieques.

Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach

Below is a closeup of plantings in the interior courtyard of the Norton Museum of Art where we saw the Ansel Adams / Georgia O'Keefe Exhibition and the Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism Exhibition.

Art Deco

Two art deco hotels in South Beach

Wish I Could Go....

Modern silver artist Agnes Seabass is being featured in a one-woman show and sale in SF on Feb 13th. Ms. Seabass will be at the event.

On the Bench

On the bench today are some earrings in process; I'm working on the silver to fit white topaz and garnet stones with different dimensions. Also on the bench is the fork tine I need to shape in order to set the stones. And at the top of the picture are some pieces of silver I cast years ago. Interesting pieces; I found them while looking for an opal triplet I created years ago.



I wonder what I had in mind for them - if anything. I might have just been playing with the pink sheet wax to see what I could do. Now I have an idea for them to be used in a bracelet. The two odd pieces out will probably become earrings.

Office Vignettes

As I slowly take back my office from my own 'stuff', I've kept a few spots that remind me of my inspirations, and created a couple more spots.

The angled ceiling gives me room to grown my photos up the wall to the left some more.

In the meantime, I've put placed more of my photos on a bulletin board along with a painted silk I picked up in St. John. Yes, that's my leg in a photo taken by someone else, and that's me with the turtle and sharks.

The final vignette consists of other mostly people's work, includes photographs of turtles, paintings, and a funky lamp, a dive shop's biz card, a postcard from my friend Steff Korsage, and a necklace I made out of toys while some good friends and I played at the Museum of Craft and Design in SF late last year. I even finally hung up my design award and a HS XC award. These items are all below my framed degrees which used to fit my office space better back in the days of me being in the engineering world. One of these days I'll get that plaque of the patent and hang it up also. Sitting nearby are boxes from Brasil and a Cuban cigar box being used for storage. 

Making Molds

Using the yellow molding rubber, I'm molding a bottleneck ring and also a custom order signet ring. I'd like both rings to be a little bit smaller than the originals are. 

Inside the mold on the left is an earring in pink molding rubber that will become a pair of earrings set with clear topaz. I'm using the pink rubber for this mold because the earring being molded was made to fit the stones, and the pink shrinks less than the yellow.

Surf's Up at Sunny Cove

In my first step down on the beach I found some seafoam green bottle glass that had been worked a bit by the ocean. Bonus. The ocean air and 79 deg F plus weather were the main treats.

I spent some time reviewing Ernst Haeckel's "Art Forms from the Ocean" thinking about some new designs....

What was in the Boxes on the Pallet?

This!

Well, the table. The rolling mill was moved off the garage workbench to it's new home. Now it can be bolted down.

The vacuum caster will join it when we can figure out why it leaked after we tested it out (it's a used Rey-Master Cast 5804. If you have a manual for that model, or for the very close Vigor 5803, I'd be happy to see it!) 

The inspirational map (islands of the Pacific) was bumped out of another room to make room for a world map; it's now in a very good spot.

First Harvest of 2009

The first harvest of 2009 (or final harvest from 2008's garden) is hot hot hot

yum

Ever seen a delivery come on a pallet configuration like this? I can be sure that nothing heavy was lying on top of these boxes

More random photos from last weekend

Bronze & Copper Toggles

Last night I spent several hours with my good friends Pat and Kathleen playing with Bronze and Copper metal clay for the first time. They are prepping for a hands-on workshop on Feb 8th in Los Gatos for the local metal clay group (SFBASCG.) 

Both Pat and Kathleen had played with the new clays already; in fact Kathleen has made many many pieces with the bronze clay. As for me, well - I have now opened, and used, the free sample pack of bronze I received last summer!

One of the toggle clasps might look nice with a hand knit copper bracelet that's been sitting on my bench without a clasp for quite a while....

As a bonus, I talked with Pat's newly certified diving husband about his first dive trip. We also talked about places we'd like to go diving; our lists are both long. :)

Kathleen has kindly offered to fire my bronze and copper (product in development by Hadar Jacobsen) pieces for me in her charcoal setup. We'll see if all the bronze flakes I managed to get on the copper make a difference.

I was reminded....

As I looked through the blogger gadgets the other day, I ran across the Miro gadget (see it -> below on the right). The gadget's Miro images reminded me of a visit to Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro on Mallorca. The studio space was amazing, as were the views. The property is on a hill, overlooking the bay. The foundation holds print making workshops in one of the studios, displays the participants' results, and also exhibits the works of other artists. When we visited, there was an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois' work. You can see more pics of the foundation here.

Surprised to see a photo so far from a beach? Why was I on a trip and not diving? On a trip where the intention was to visit somewhere I wouldn't be drawn into the water, I didn't dive on this one. At Sant Elm, we saw a group heading out to dive (you can barely make out the dive zodiac below), and that made me want to head underwater.



And, from a bluff on another spot on the island we could see fish in the clear water below. More temptation!



Happily spending time on land on Mallorca, we enjoyed the abundant public art. Here's a pic of some of the scenery: a ceramic mural by Miro at Parc de la Mar in Palma de Mallorca.



Closeup of part of the mural

Peridot Ring - Flush & Prong Set

A fresh iteration of the "Bottleneck" ring design. All peridots. Four flush set and one prong set. The ring is 'fresh' because it's less than 2 hours old. :)

Please pardon the hot spots and other issues with the photos. I'll take a nice photo for the website someday....

Knitting wire in front of the TV

While watching TV these past couple of weeks, I've also been working on some new combinations in knitted wire chain. I tried mixing copper and fine silver wire at the same time, copper only, two strands of fine silver, and increasing and decreasing the size of my loops.

I'm seeing a funky bracelet in this sampler piece. Now it's time to create the sample where I pull the chain through the drawplate to see how my double strand pieces look once drawn....

Electrolytic Saltwater Etching of Copper

Results from electrolytic saltwater etching of copper



In my days at a semiconductor capital equipment company I made a lifelong friend. When we first met, she was a "process" engineer who etched the dielectric material on silicon wafers; then she etched conductive materials; then she was a product support engineer, et cetera.

A month ago I showed her the Art Jewelry magazine article on etching copper, nickel silver, brass and other materials in a salt water solution using a D cell battery. As an etcher, she was very interested. She'd never etched at home. Her current company (where they have a chemical that etches metal in only 20 seconds) is on holiday break, so this week she's free to come out and play.

Play we did - in our nerdy way. The local Radio Shack had only one single D cell battery holder, prompting an etching experiment. I purchased the single D holder, and also holders for a single C and two Cs.

We placed two sets of copper anodes and cathodes in almost identical etch setups at the same time. The main differences between the two was the number of C batteries and the resist designs on the copper.



Loooooook at the difference in the water color after a few minutes. The double C setup skipped the blue-green water phase and headed right to the orange water phase of the process. After five minutes the copper had significantly etched. After an hour, the copper was more than ready to be taken out. The single C battery tub etched much slower; after 2 hours the depth of the etch was still shallower than the 1 hour double C etch.

We etched both sides of the anode and purposely ignored recommendations to duct tape the edges - as you can see on Ben's piece at the far left.



Next time the process will be tweaked a little. Some rubber cement on the lead to the anode. Alligator clips instead of twisted and wrapped wires. Perhaps try a new type of metal. Duct tape on the edges. And, we'll measure the voltage and current from the single and double C setups and compare to the recommended single D setup.

By the way, we were shocked not to find a molecular orbital diagram of the process on wikipedia! ;-)

Calder Jewelry Exhibit at the Met

Friend and fellow jewelry artist, Pat Accorinti, forwarded me a link to a New York Times article about the Calder Jewelry exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. I especially enjoyed the slide show with closeups of ten Calder pieces.

Whale Shark!

Until last week, the longest I'd ever seen a whale shark is twelve seconds over eight years ago. I know this because that's exactly how long the video of my first whale shark encounter is.



After the last dive of the trip last week, the boat captain starting yelling down to us as we were heading back to the beach. We looked over the side and saw a whale shark right below the boat. The 20 foot long creature hung out for a while about 15 feet below the surface as we snorkeled above it. Awesome!

You can now access the whale shark video from 2000, and other trip video and slide shows, over on the right hand side of this blog.

Patina Expeirment Results

As promised...here are some photos of the brass bracelet and copper piece I was experimenting with in October.



I left the brass bracelet in the fuming container much longer than recommended, and the colored patina you saw in October washed off. Now that I've pushed that patina past it's time limit, I'll revisit it again someday and see how long to fume it so the blue greens stay.


The moist sorrel washed off leaving nice colors on the copper sample.




My favorite new copper patina is shown below on flat and hammered copper samples. The fuming recipe is comprised of sea salt, cream of tartar, vinegar, and ammonia.



You'll be able to read more about the cream of tartar patina in my "Accessible Patinas" article in the upcoming zine which Catherine Witherell and Deryn Mentock are publishing. They are busy compiling all the articles together now for a January release. More details to come.

Another fun result from the copper patina experiments is a mottled blue / green from sal ammoniac and tobacco. The results lead me to wonder what would happen if I ground up the tabacco even finer before this immersion process.



Here's a closeup look at the flat piece after rinsing

Lireille Gallery of Contemporary Jewelry and Art

Today I met with Yan Liu, co-owner of Lireille Gallery of Contemporary Jewelry and Art. If you stop by Lireille Gallery, you can now see seventeen of my necklaces, 30 pairs of earrings, and 20 rings. If you'd like a preview of my art work at Lireille Gallery, I created a catalog of the items in the gallery and posted it on my website on the gallery page.

One of the two new rings I created the night before is shown below. I took my cast sterling bottleneck ring design and applied texture and patina. The liver of sulfur left a very interesting purplish pink color in the grooves after the ring was cleaned in the ultrasonic. The flush set stones are 2mm and 2.5mm white topaz. (sorry for the picture quality - I should have left time for a photo session.) If you'd like a better look - it's in the Lireille Gallery.





I also took the same Bottleneck design in sterling silver, with the same textured finish, left it unpatinated and flush set 2mm peridot stones.

I like playing with the finishes and patinas. Which reminds me, I promised some more of my patina experiment pics in an earlier post which I'll get to soon.


Here's the rainbow over 880 seen on my way to Lireille Gallery.