There is a crazy, and very wrong, idea that smaller things are faster to make, as if scale were the arbiter of time. True, super large artwork can take ages, but every time I move back to a small scale, I get to remember that tinier equals painstaking and exacting, which can easily take just…
Spring here is now Jedi season as baby barred owls Leia and Rey have emerged from the hollow in my neighbor’s nesting tree that looks like it was drawn by E. H. Shepard for a Winnie the Pooh story. Learning to fly is no easy task even if you’re born with wings. The landing part…
After becoming slightly obsessed with a chased gold cylinder from ancient Nubia that I saw last summer, I began experimenting with what I call micro chasing. I created this chased bead from seamless, sterling tubing (Rio Grande’s largest diameter). By slightly altering the order of Eastern repoussé steps I employ to refine my repoussé pieces…
Spring here continues in all its glory. The trees are nearly leafed out, which means soon I’ll be able to stop skimming oak flowers out of the fish pond. Skimming them does no good for the many displaced cervical discs in my neck, but it’s so calming that I can’t resist. This is how I…
I recently took an online art history course in Ancient Jewelry through the Penn Museum. The instructor Dr. Jane Hickman showed tons of gorgeous granulation jewelry from antiquity (along with filigree that’s really also granulation because it’s fused to a base sheet). As she was endeavoring to explain to the non metalsmiths in the course…
Over the course of my career, there have been a number of pieces that are significant markers of how I’ve been able to pioneer the ancient metalsmithing techniques that are my passion. My Eastern repoussé cuff bracelets stand out among my most favorite and certainly the most talked about of my work. They’re the best…
“What TV shows did you grow up with, and how did they impact your view of the world?” asked the coach in a course I recently took. As the Zoom chat filled with so many women listing Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, I felt a fond nostalgia for the improbable antics, mishaps, and adventures of the…
