Half Cracked

I've never been one for smooth, shiny, flawless surfaces in my metalwork. There are plenty of artists out there who do it and do it beautifully. I prefer a little more texture, distress, and time-wear. Maybe it's because I'm an old soul with lifetimes behind me, who knows?

So I surprised myself last week when I was tinkering in the studio with some fold formed copper charms. Rarely one to plan out an exact design beforehand, I started out this pair by simply annealing matched squares of copper, folding them, hammering flat, annealing again, and unfolding---revealing beautiful rustic creases in the metal. Now normally I would next turn to my favorite texturing rock (plucked from our garden) and start banging away as if my life depended on it. For some reason, I stopped short halfway through this time. 

How about we just leave half shiny, smooth, and serene---as a stark contrast to the chaos of the textured side?

And this is how designs are born. 

I'm quite fond of making coin-like discs out of copper, so that's the final shape I decided to go with here. Reminiscent of an ancient coin plucked from the soil, perhaps. I filed a bit along the folds of each, sanded, sanded, sanded, oxidized, buffed, and sealed with wax. Simple, perfect for everyday wear, yet noteworthy enough to make you feel like a pagan goddess. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Dapping Fool

Isn't it wonderful how new tools can gently help guide our evolution as artists? 

For years the only dapping set I've had was cheap, wooden, and next to useless. It would divot whenever I used it, had way too much "give" when I would hammer, and would chip and flake all over the place. I limped by with it on the few projects where I wanted domed metal discs. Oh, and those metal discs? I was cutting those out by hand and praying to the symmetry gods that everything would turn up roses. I'm all for winging-it in the studio and making do with what you have, but come on, this was complete amateur hour. 

A month or so ago I decided enough was enough--I needed a decent set of graduated metal dapping punches, a dapping block, and a disc cutter. In other words, I was putting my artistic big-girl-panties on and growing up a bit. And the difference has been night and day.

So since I've been DAPPING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT lately, the other week I had a notion to experiment with some half-hollow forms. The idea happened to coincide nicely with a new order of deliciously primitive ceramic cone beads from NadiaTerra. The result: half ceramic, half copper, scrappy little oddities. I'm reminded of excavated ancient pottery and weathered bronze age metalwork. 

I cut, textured, and dapped copper discs into domes, strung them on my own fat-bottomed copper headpins along with the ceramic cones, and connected both halves with a ribbon of blackened silver solder. A dot of solder on top, an oxidation bath, and a good seal with wax, and there you have it. 

The only downside to my new tools--I may have to invest in a good pair of noise cancelling headphones for my husband, as I'm sure all this hammering is less than acoustically pleasing... 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki 
LoveRoot on Etsy

Controlled Chaos

So much of what we do as artists boils down to this: controlling the chaos. 

Come on now, you know what I mean, I know you can relate. You have all these ideas and inspiration bubbling around in your hot little skull and they just won't give you a moment's peace:

• You caught Blade Runner on TV the other weekend and its gritty cyberpunk cityscape has been haunting you. 
• You were cleaning out the garden last spring and came across a fragile translucent snake skin snagged in some brush. 
• While you were driving to your parents' house in the country you passed this dilapidated barn half-covered with peeling crackled paint, half-covered with moss.
• After you finished reading Suttree, you couldn't stop visualizing that ragpicker passage over and over again. 
• That head of romanesco cauliflower you roasted for dinner yesterday--remember the fractal peaks and whorls that seemed otherworldly?
• That dream you had the other night...wow. 

For those with artistic inclinations, it can sometimes be challenging to organize all these ideas into a coherent vision that translates into our medium of choice. I have days where I flit from one project to another like a hummingbird. It's thrilling to have ideas popping into your head rapid-fire, but it can also be exhausting. Learning to take a deep breath, focus, and hone in on one vision...well, it ain't easy. Sometimes we have to be willing to let some go in order to fully realize others.


This week's pair of earrings is a metaphor for that attempt to control--or better yet, to be at peace with--that chaos. Any metalsmith will tell you that reticulating silver is an exercise in...blind luck. I created each charm by carefully taking a piece of silver through the process of reticulation with repeated heating and quenching to obtain the crumpled topographic texture that you see. I quite literally had (almost) no control over what the melting metal was doing under the torch. Half the time when I reticulate silver I'm just hoping and praying that I get a piece that's interesting and usable. These two charms ended up being completely asymmetrical yet beautifully matched--a little miracle! 

 
I filed off the rough edges, oxidized to bring out the contrast in texture, sealed to protect the finish, and hung them from some of my long sterling silver ear wires. A much needed personal reminder that we must strive to both control and flow with the chaos. Too much of one and not the other, and we get lost down the wormhole.

Happy Wednesday,
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

The Best Laid Plans

I had a vision. 

I was lying in bed--drifting, woozy, floating in that liminal netherworld where ideas come to us so fluidly. What I would do, see, is I would take a piece of copper and fold form it and beat it over some rocks, see, and then texture it and punch it and file strategic places and shape it just so and...

I awoke the next morning with vague recollections of my vision and headed straight to the studio to bring it to fruition. Fifteen minutes into the project when the copper buckled and snapped, I realized:

shit, this isn't going to work

See, sometimes our dreamy ideas seem perfectly logical and functional. And then we go to execute and we realize they could use a little more refinement. There is nothing wrong with this. Rome wasn't built in a day. There is beauty to be found in the process.

Today's pair of earrings features the salvaged results of this vision. I took the two snapped pieces of copper, trimmed them up, softened up the edges, oxidized, sanded, and turned them into simple lightweight earring tabs. And you know what? For being "failures", I'm really quite fond of them. Funny how that works. When life gives you lemons...well, you know.

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

White Christmas...or not?

I don't know about you guys, but I get all warm and fuzzy inside when I think about a nice fluffy blanket of pure white snow on Christmas morning. A soggy, gray, 40F day just won't cut it. I need icicles hanging on the eaves, biting cold, frozen breath, and plenty of quiet crystalline snow.

 









Well, here in Ohio it's not looking very festive weather-wise. Granted, Christmas is a week away, but I'm hoping we can get our act together and get some snow on the ground in time for the holiday festivities. 

Today's earrings are another in my series of "polybells" that I form out of polymer clay, texture, hand paint, and then seal. This pair just shimmers with snowy white, a lacy texture, kisses of silver, and a raggedy edge. And they're lightweight like you wouldn't believe - like wearing snowflakes on your ears. Finished off with a pair of my extra long copper ear wires, and you'll look like a Snow Queen. OK, perhaps not, but at least you'll be properly festive!

Happy Wednesday and Happy Holidays!!!

Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy