Thanksgiving Vacation Art -- Viking Knit and Sketching

The good news and bad news about Thanksgiving is the break from the regular routine. It's not possible to work on metal clay or glass while flying or stuffing my face hundreds of miles from home. But something artistic has to happen or I get antsy. So I took along some 28 gauge Argentium sterling wire to make a Viking knit chain to go with the new resin pendant. I photographed it before with a very open, single knit chain, but I wanted a closely wired double knit chain.


It was great as long as it lasted - I forget how much wire I can go through in a very short time! It's just barely long enough after being drawn down, or at least it will be long enough as soon as I can make endcaps and clasp.


With nothing left to occupy my hands on the flight home, I resorted to the trusty sketchbook. Somehow I get in a groove on planes. I'm really drawn to the constructed box to house the hallmark, shown in bronze. This might be quite a challenge, but it looks fun!


I'm also gearing up to do a whole series of my wire link bracelets, so I drew one that uses simple hand-formed floral decorations. I'm anxious to make this one, as I have a drawer full of those floral bits. After many sad blobs of dried out clay at the end of packages, I've changed my working to make these components with that leftover clay. So the bracelet will just be cutting tiles and "gluing" on the flowers. Now, I need to work on the idea I have for making a cutter for my "squeezed pillow" shape, to make these bracelets really quick. Oh, and then there are the beaded connections -- I need a quick assembly line process for those.

More Than One Way to Get Published!

Submitting photographs for publication is a never ending job. I'll get on a roll and send a bunch out, then forget all about it for months. Then there are the rejections, which are definitely hard on the ego. Sometimes a piece that has gotten a lot of attention can't get published, or at least takes a lot of shopping around. Wouldn't it be fascinating to know how those decisions are made? Things like: it's the wrong color for this issue, or the only space left is landscape and your photo is portrait orientation. Wouldn't it feel a bit better to hear it that way?

But wait, there's an easier way! Sometimes publications just happen with no effort whatsoever! (Or almost.) In this month's issue of Art Jewelry Magazine, two of my pieces appeared in advertisements.


Tonya Davidson of Whole Lotta Whimsy asked me for an image of my carved bronze cuff a while back for their half page ad on page 17. Nice! And right next to that bronze bangle by Barbara Becker Simon that I've so admired, too! There was a tiny bit of effort required, to get it into the requested format and ship it off ASAP. Being prepared is key, I guess. I feel so honored to join the long list of artists whose work has appeared in their ads. I can't quite believe it! Thanks, Tonya!


On the other hand, there was absolutely no work involved in another ad on page 7, for the International Society of Glass Beadmakers (ISGB). I had no idea that they would use my Retro Lovebird necklace for the ad there. The only connection I can figure is that I did make and submit postcards for the Gathering last summer, which I thought would be great advertising for the Bead Bazaar that I couldn't attend. Just getting the work out there pays off again!

I adjure you to submit your work, repeatedly. Post it online, in a blog, in forums, on Flickr, on Facebook and Crafthaus...just keep at it. Really, it works!

Silver Clay Rings -- Strap Band and Wire

I finally got around to working on the strap band ring I made in Kate McKinnon's workshop. The band is 10 cards thick, cut as a flat strap, fired then formed, inserted into a wet clay slab. I got that much completed in class, but the ring has been sitting on my worktable for a couple of weeks.


Yesterday, I cut a thin circle with my bird texture and attached it to the top. Then I domed an open ring (actually two, since I underestimated the needed size on the first) and set that over the texture. Two hours in the kiln, some finish work, and a quick layer of turquoise resin gave me this hefty ring.

I'm not much into rings usually, but this was so fun and easy, I might have to do a few more.


And I formed the heavy 12 gauge wire ring, with silver clay bird and flower added to the ends. Even easier!

Resin Inlay Pendant Finally Finished!

This resin inlay into silver clay project seems to have dragged on forever, but I'm thrilled to say that it is finished!!



Fussy detail after detail has been attended to:

1. replacing some syringe decoration on the drop that came off in the tumbler
   
2. adding the white moon under the resin
   
3. experimenting with alcohol inks on the faux bone, but finally only adding a few marks on the edges for fear the entire thing would be too blue
   
4. waiting for the rainbow topazes to arrive, after deciding they would complement the resin better than laboradorites
   
5. adding extra ball rivets in unplanned places to compensate for placing the bail directly behind the planned top rivet
   
6. experimenting with how to attach the chain for the drop
   
7. struggling with setting the cabs in those bezels -- hard to get to all sides evenly because of stuff in the way!
   

Even with all the frustrations, I'm quite happy with this new piece. Now, onward! I've got a box to construct and several cool pieces from Kate McKinnon's class to finish. Strap band ring is first up, then the branch with the birdhouse.

Jewelry Blog Carnival -- The Soaring Cost of Fine Metals

Have you noticed the prices of metals are soaring? A check yesterday showed the price of silver to be $18.41 per ounce. Even so, silver is a bargain compared to gold at $1135.50 and platinum at $1435.00.


The topic for the blog carnival today is how the rising price of metal has affected my work. I have to say that it really has not changed my approach in any way, probably because my predominate metal is silver.

Yes, earlier in the year, I toyed with bronze clay, which is substantially less expensive than silver. Many metal clay artists are moving to bronze to reduce costs. However, the work required in making jewelry from bronze clay is just as extensive, if not even more so, than when making silver clay jewelry. Truthfully, the labor in my work is the more substantial part of the cost. I like the look of bronze for some purposes, but with my high labor investment, the cost of materials is less significant than if I were making simple pieces.

I suppose it depends on how I define my target market. Since I don't do a lot of shows where lower end jewelry would be in high demand, I don't focus on that type of work. I make what I love to make, which is technically challenging and time intensive, and then I let it find its appropriate home. My buyers are typically those with an appreciation of the skill and artistic abilities involved and a willingness to pay for something beautiful, handmade and one-of-a-kind.

My long term aims are to market my jewelry to the very high end jewelry galleries and markets, so if anything I'm tending to drive my work in the direction of increasing prices by adding such distinctions as gorgeous stones, 22K gold, and enamel. If cost cutting were a serious issue for me at this time, I'd move toward using more conventional silver rather than the doubly expensive metal clay.

Of course, I have the luxury of having financial support from my husband so that I can make this choice. Life constraints might make this choice different for others, in which case cost savings might steer such an artist toward simplification rather than intricacy. If money were my goal though, I'd still be working as a scientist, since it paid a lot better than art!

Shown above: a simple silver clay window piece, with fun 3D effects due to attaching prefired fine silver balls to the flat window. Shrinkage curved the edges with the balls out of the plane. This piece is waiting for a hand-painted enamel on glass tile and a box assembly to hold that tile, plus some larger structure or added embellishment to give the piece more heft, since it turned out to be too small in scale. Such is my work: a long process.

Read the views of other members of the Jewelry Blog Carnival on this topic at these links:
Angela Baduel-Crispin
Andes Cruz
Tonya Davidson
Marco Fleseri
Tamra Gentry
Elaine Luther

Studio Rules: No Procrastination and More

Procrastination -- the bane of productivity!!! I know this about myself: if I can keep the momentum, I can accomplish great things. If I start procrastinating on something, bad consequences soon follow.


Take for example, my resin project. My deadline was to finish it by the end of October. So here it is the middle of November and it's still sitting on my table, looking forlorn, while I anguish over which back piece to add, faux bone or silver. Two weeks ago I committed to silver, cut the piece out and let it dry, dry, dry. The faux bone piece was cut and shaped a month ago. Meanwhile I dithered over how to attach the pendant to a neck cord or chain. The original sketches had simple jump ring attachments at the corners, but I worried that might not look quite elegant enough with the rest of the piece.

Enough being enough, I urged myself to just decide and move on. Saturday, a trivial tube bail was added and the piece was fired. Sunday the tumbler spat the front, back, and a dozen other pieces all over, along with soapy water and stainless steel shot. Ah, this is what happens when I procrastinate. Obstacles appear, as if by magic.


Studio cleanup (of that small area anyway) complete, I continued with the construction, thinking a few rivets would have this piece behind me. I marked the three rivet hole points with a center punch, drilled the first, and inserted the ball rivet. Then the second. When I got to the third, there was a problem. That tube bail that I had agonized over was in the way!! Back in the day of corner jump rings, a center top ball rivet seemed expedient, but now there's no way to hammer inside that bail.

What to do? I could rivet at the corners, but that ruins the whole idea of my rivets integrating with the tree design. I could toss the silver back aside, and retrieve the faux bone from my table. I could add a few more rivets that semi-incorporate with the tree.

Procrastination -- the bane of my work.

New studio rules:

1. No procrastination. Once a piece is started, it must be finished quickly (within a few days). Plan ahead. Order supplies early; finish commitments early.
   
2. Clean up. Put things back where they live. Enough with this searching high and low for the polishing point mandrel that's not in the box with all the points.
   
3. Double and triple check. No more forgetting to turn on the intake fan when the exhaust fan is on. No more loose knobs on the tumbler.
   
4. No second guessing. Just do it. The muses don't like my questioning their inspiration.
   
5. Persevere. The only way to get back in good graces with those muses is to push on through and do the hard work. Don't give up.
   

I think I'm going to post these on my wall. And for what it's worth, I'm laughing at myself over all of the goofs in the last few days. I've only detailed a few here, but the list just goes on and on. It's either tragic or hilarious. I insist on being optimistic because it's my experience that when I encounter a run of obstacles like this, there's a big reward if I just believe in myself and fix it all.

The Glitter Effect on Silver Metal Clay

As I mentioned a few days ago, both of my pieces fired during the workshop exhibited the glitter effect known to sporadically manifest in silver clay. One piece had fine glitter that typically polishes right out. From the photo below, however, it's apparent that the crystal grain sizes on my glittery frame are very large.


Small particles of vermiculite are visible in the crevices. They appear to be wedged into place. I had to literally dig the vermiculite out of the filled interior of the frame, where it appeared tightly packed.


Over the last few days I've tumbled this piece with stainless steel shot for many hours, but failed to completely remove this extra texture.


Although fairly smooth and shiny in some areas, in places the piece looks slightly rippled. I suspect the temperature in the kiln was dangerously close to melting this piece.


My recent experiences with this sparkly effect has me researching the issue. This topic has been the subject of frequent discussion within the metal clay community, specifically how to get it deliberately or how to avoid it. Since metal surfaces were my specialty during my scientific research life, I thought I'd put together my personal views on what is happening in this situation, what might cause it or enhance it, and how it might be avoided. Necessarily I should add that I can't PROVE my hypothesis. As a good scientist I'm putting together my observations, trying to encompass data relayed to me from the experiences of others (but totally unverified by me at this point), and filtering that through my understanding of how metal surfaces behave.

As a prelude, let me state that I earned my doctorate in physical chemistry/chemical physics for studies on silver surfaces. In the course of 15 years of research, I used (among other things) atomic resolution microscopes to study metal surfaces and even published the first verified observations of metal atoms by scanning tunneling microscopy, thought to be impossible, but accepted after my work. In the course of certain measurements, I became an "expert," whatever that is, on growing atomically flat silver onto mica surfaces.

When silver clay sinters, the organic binder is combusted and then the fine metal particles adhere to one another. Silver metal in its lowest energy state forms a metal single crystal, with all atoms perfectly arranged. Given enough thermal energy and time, atoms on the surface of the original small particles in metal clay will migrate to the edges of tiny crystal domains and attempt to achieve that crystalline structure. Pores within the sintered metal, due to voids between the original particles, will slowly fill, and shrinkage will occur.

Small crystal domains have been clearly observed in SEM (scanning electron microscopy) micrographs of sintered silver clay, imaged by Tina Carvalho and published by the PMC Guild here. The rough surface of freshly fired silver clay appears white due to the scattering effect of these small crystals on visible wavelengths of light. When the surface is burnished, those tiny mountains are physically flattened, ruining the regular crystalline surface, but imposing enough smoothness to reflect light. However, reintroducing the silver to the kiln in a repeat firing will allow the crystals to start to grow again and return the silver to the white state.

By holding the temperature of the metal clay elevated for an extended time, expectations would be that the crystals would continue to grow in size, perhaps eventually reaching a size that would be able to reflect light coherently enough to observe macroscopic crystal domains, i.e. domains visible to the eye, with the appearance of glitter. Alternatively, since the mobility of atoms on the surface depends upon thermal energy, increasing temperature will speed that crystal growth.

Tim McCreight has speculated that the occasional observations of a glittery surface of freshly fired metal clay are due to growth of large crystals, perhaps caused by elevated temperatures or slow coolings, which seems consistent with the picture of microscopic processes presented here. However, some artists never observe such effects, even with extended times at elevated temperature. This posits the question: is something else involved, operating in some situations and not in others?

One possible explanation is the observation that artists who note this phenomenon were often (but not always) using vermiculite or fiber blanket to support the work. How would this material play into the microscopic process discussed here?

The composition of vermiculite is particularly suspect since it is chemically related to mica. The atomic spacing on the surface of certain types of mica provide ideal spots for growing atomically flat silver surfaces because it matches almost perfectly the desired atomic spacing for silver. Everyone is familiar with that eggshell corrugated foam -- balls pack so nicely into that regular array of holes. The mica provides exactly that template for growing crystals of silver. Thus, the presence of such templates can provide nice nucleation sites to induce growth of large crystal grains. Ceramic fiber blanket, like that used by glass lampworkers or ceramicists, may have similar structure, but that's pure conjecture.

So, my suspicion is that several factors affect the appearance of the glitter effect.

1. High enough temperature may allow the surface to move a lot. So overfiring at temperatures higher than the typical 1650 degrees would tend to increase the growth of larger crystals.
   
2. Long enough time at high enough temperature may permit the surface to move more and hence grow the crystals larger. This accounts for conjectures that cooling down slowly may be correlated with the glitter effect.
   
3. Extra assistance in the form of nucleation sites from vermiculite, fiber blanket, kiln shelves or other materials placed in contact with the silver may help form large grains more quickly than if there were no template present.
   

Thus, the irregularity of the situation that causes the glitter effect depends on the exact combination of these factors present, making different artists see the effect under different circumstances.

Right now, if I wanted this effect, I'd try putting the surface in contact with small particle vermiculite (to give good contact), overfiring, and holding for an extended time. Since I don't want the glitter effect, I'll try avoiding vermiculite, checking my firing temperatures to ensure they don't exceed 1650, and ramping quickly, holding two hours only, then quenching.

And I'll keep collecting data to help refine my scientific understanding of what's happening. This is only a working hypothesis, after all, and subject to change with the addition of new information.

Metal Clay Weekend Workshop with Kate McKinnon

My weekend workshop with Kate McKinnon was fun and informative. The topic of note was boxes and birdhouses, but Kate is a very open teacher and invited questions about any of her techniques.


We learned about many of the techniques detailed in her book "Structural Metal Clay," which I highly recommend, and more from her two upcoming books on mixed media and sculptural metal clay and DVD:

• treasure boxes to display a favorite bead or other treasure (I'll be thinking about those in the future)
  
• architectural construction for houses and birdhouses
  
• rings of many types: strap, heavy wire, rivet (for beads), stack, etc.
  
• tree branches and other work with wire armatures
  
• ball rivets
  
• making attachments
  

The only frustration I had with the course was a firing issue. Some of the houses, like mine that had openings, were filled with vermiculite for support. However, too much vermiculite meant the houses bulged like little balloons during shrinkage, even popping less than perfect seams. Beyond that, the kilns fired long (another experience of fire brick vs. baffle kilns to add to my data set) and too hot, giving time for crystal domain growth leading to sparkly silver. It's the analog of devitrification on glass -- hold too long at just the right temperature and the mobile silver atoms rearrange themselves into glitter. I know some people love that look, but I'm not one of them.

My bulgy birdhouse above has been hammered back to something approaching original shape and had its seams reinforced. Not too much glitter here.

Bits: a bird and blossom on a 10 gauge wire to form into a ring, a couple of big head rivets for later attachments, and another bird on a wire to insert into the birdhouse (there's a hole in the bottom that needs to be enlarged).


This small open roof house still shows the horrific glitter back. I've never seen an example this extreme, so I hope that all polishes out. The open roof accommodates one of my enamel-painted glass tiles, with a jump ring through front and back holes to keep it in place, but leave it interchangeable.


Here, I've straightened the walls (and the bottom after I saw the photo) and popped a glass tile in to show what it will look like.



I have more to show and more to do, but right now chemistry class is calling me.

Working on Paper

When life is just too busy to get hands on clay, it's great to have a sketchbook nearby. When even sketching doesn't fit into the day, at least I can go back and look at past ideas for new inspiration.

Here are a few ideas on my drawing board, literally.

enamel-painted beads with fuchsias and hummers and silver endcaps:



and a silver box bead with similar imagery:



a bird and nest piece in silver clay with enamel:



a constructed box:



The box is a perfect thing to consider as I pack for a two day workshop this weekend at Wired Designs in San Antonio. The topic is boxes and birdhouses, taught by the imitable Kate McKinnon. How serendipitous is that?

More Textures for Metal Clay

Yesterday my local metal clay group had a meeting to play with texture making. Although I had recently purchased conventional Speedball linoleum cutters and printing blocks, I'd yet to give them a go. With a bin of small blocks at my side, I doodled away, slowly getting the feel of the tools.



While more useful for deeper textures, it was quite possible to do very low relief. I'm excited about the prospects of multiple heights to the impressions in metal clay. That's one of the things that's both useful and frustrating about the other methods of making texture plates that I've shown: it's harder to do multiple levels. Carving blocks allow more options with easy access.


These blocks are all approximately business card size.

We also used two-part silicone mold mix to take textures from found objects: lots of shells, coral, buttons, picture frame molding, etc. What a perfect thing to do while sitting in the sunshine on a lovely fall day.