Unlearning what I've learned

  I'm pretty much a self-taught artist. Sometimes that means reinventing the wheel, and "figuring out" something that any teacher could have told me on day one. Still, I kind of like not knowing what the "you can't"s are. When I first started playing with beads, I was a rugweaver. Peyote stitch, which is often the first stitch people learn, seemed to me to be a way to make complex flat designs  I wasn't interested because I figured if I wanted to make a complex flat design I'd weave a rug. I wanted to do 3D stuff. Much later I learned about all the cool 3D things you can do with peyote ( like the contemporary geometric beadwork people do), but by then I was a long way down another path, and I still don't know peyote.
   I started out by reading an article in Ornament Magazine about David Chatt. I saw all the cool geometric things he was doing with right angle weave (RAW) and knew that was where I wanted to go. I got Valerie Hector's book, and from that learned to build a cube, a dodecahedron ( she calls it a Plato bead, and it

was a while before I knew that that was because it's a Platonic solid), and a truncated icosahedron ( Archimedes bead--same explanation).  That was pretty much it for my education, except for  the cool stuff I picked up from the beaded molecules blog.  Mostly I just played and learned
   This is a pretty long introduction to where I'm going here.  I started out, as most beaders do, using seed beads.  But as I got further into the geometry, I found that longer beads showed off the geometry better, and ended up using metal tubes.  I found that circles of 4, 5, 6 and even more beads worked great when using either seed beads or round stone beads. I didn't much like circles of 3 round beads because so much thread showed, although I used those on occasion. On the other hand, with tubes, just the opposite was true--triangles, which is what "circles" of 3 tubes became-- were great because a triangle is inherently rigid, but any larger circle was floppy and didn't maintain its shape. That meant no RAW with tube beads.  The first picture is a floppy necklace done in RAW with tube beads.
   Then I discovered that if I used a stiff thread, like monofilament nylon, it reduced the floppiness a lot. The shape still moved, and you couldn't build really complex structures, but for simple cubic RAW I liked it.  In particular I liked the way a piece could move, while still holding its shape.  Picture 2 shows one of these necklaces.
    But a couple of days ago, I was at the crafthaus website (http://crafthaus.ning.com) and that first picture scrolled by in the photo section. I hadn't looked at it in a long time, and I found I rather liked  the uber-floppiness of it.  It was on old picture from back when I was using oxidized copper tubes instead of the ox-silver ones I use now. And the copper tubes had a thicker wall which didn't leave room for several passes of monofilament, so I always used fireline. You can see that in the narrower parts of the necklace, toward the back, I used  a triangle cross-section for stiffness, and I still do that in my newer necklaces like picture 2. But I may have to do some more playing around with the  softer version of these necklaces.

sterling silver tubes

 Buying and cutting those colored aluminum tubes that I've talked about in the last few posts has started me off on a tear.  I've thought for a while about using oxidized sterling silver instead of oxidized copper, but was put off by having to cut the tubes myself.  At the same time I knew that there were things I couldn't do with the copper tube lengths I had, that I could do if I could control the length myself.  So as soon as I had worked a bit with the aluminum tubes, I found myself buying silver tubes and cutting them up too.
  As a practical matter, the price difference between copper and silver isn't so very great because the necklaces don't actually have that much metal in them. They're light as a feather.  In fact, that may be a problem in some pieces down the road.  On many of my copper pieces I used some 18mm melon shaped beads, mostly to add a little weight to make the piece hang better.  But those same beads in silver are pretty pricey because they have a lot of silver in them.  For now, the time it takes to cut and, more importantly, de-burr the cut tubes adds more to the cost of the work than the difference in metal prices.  And I think silver has more customer appeal than copper.
   The piece on top, with the tetrahelixes, was my first one with oxidized sterling.  I find it doesn't oxidize as dark as the copper does, at least using liver of sulphur.  There may be other chemicals that make it darker if I decide I want that.  For now this is OK.  I felt I needed seed beads at the ends of the aluminum tubes, so I used them at the ends of the
silver tubes too.  On the second piece, below, I used them just on the aluminum, not on the silver.  As I was cutting the silver, I found I was seduced by how pretty the bright silver was, so for the second piece, I left it bright (also the dark blue and purple show up better against the bright silver).  However, as a practical matter, I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to clean silver, so I think I'll mostly darken it.  I've looked at a lot of Flora Book's work with silver tubes, and it's so beautiful it tempts me to do more with bright silver. I'll just have to see as I go along.
  On the bottom piece you can see the advantage of cutting my own tubes.  It's a simple chain of octahedrons.  But a chain of octahedrons would normally form a straight line.  In order to get the curve you need for a necklace I had to make the triangle on the outside edge longer than the triangle on the inside edge.
Here's where some trig would have come in handy in figuring out just how much longer, but I managed to figure it out with "lesser" math, and it came out right.

colored tubes

   I just got my first shipment of colored (anodized aluminum) tubes, and I'm loving them.  I've been wanting to make some pieces that are quite open, as all my tube pieces are, but still have a bit more presence.  The aluminum tubes accomplish this in 2 ways.  First, obviously, they're red.  But also, they're fatter than the oxidized copper tubes.  The copper ones are 1.5 mm in diameter, and the aluminum ones are 1/16" which is almost 2mm.  Because the tubes are relatively big, I found I needed seed beads at the ends, as having 3 big raw tube ends at each point of 
a tetrahedron was unattractive.  I had used #11 beads at the ends of copper tubes in the past, but I thought that the fatter tubes might "want" a bigger bead.  So I tried it with #8s.  But I didn't quite like it so I tried #11 beads (this is all in the 1st picture) and I liked that better.  A #11 bead fits quite nicely into the hole in the red tube.
   Then I had to figure out how to combine the red tubes with the blackened copper ones.  When I cut up the 1st 1' tube, I got 14 beads, but they were just a hair shorter than the long copper ones.  So I thought I might put seed beads only on the ends of the red tubes, and not the black ones, and that would even things out.  I did that in the 1st tet in the 2nd picture, and it pretty much worked, in terms of making the sides even.  But I wasn't sure I liked it. so I did a second tet in which all the tubes had beads at the ends.  I liked that better, even though the lengths weren't quite right.  On my next 1' tube I lengthened the individual tubes just a bit and got just 13 tubes out of a foot, but the length was better. 
  Actually, I need to work on getting tubes of a consistent length.  The red ones were better than the gold filled ones I did a few weeks ago, and the last red tube I did was better than the first,  But they're still not as consistent as I'd like.  Rio Grande sells a tube cutter that you can set to a length, and that should improve both consistency and speed.  I want to play around with the lengths of the tubes, but it will be trial and error as to how a given length affects the geometry of a piece, and I can't do much trial and error without wasting beads, so that's a problem.  I imagine there are CAD type programs where you could  play with  polyhedra that have sides of various lengths, but I don't know what they would be.  The only other thing I can think of is to buy unanodized aluminum, which is really cheap ( something like $.35/ft) and play with those.  That, of course, is expensive in time.  Anyway, for now I'm having great fun with my new red tubes.

tetrahelix

   I haven't posted in  while, but I've been playing with a spiraling structure of tetrahedrons that I mentioned a few months ago. In the interim, the beaded molecule folks talked about the same structure in their blog, so now I know it's called a tetrahelix, i.e. a helix made of tetrahedra.  I borrowed their idea of accenting the spiral-ness by using different color beads for the 3 outside edges of the helix. 
   I've been thinking for a while about using different tubes to contrast with the oxidized copper.  To do that I have to cut my own tube beads, but that opens up lots of possibilities too, because I can vary the length to alter the structures.  I suspect that soon I'm going to wish I knew some trigonometry.  My only memory of trig is looking up 4 digit decimal numbers in tables in the back of the math book.  This was, of course, in the bygone days before calculators.  But now I find myself wanting to know things like what angle I'm creating between 2 faces, or  2 beads, and I think that's the realm of trig.  One of the nice things about doing this stuff with beads is that if the angle is close to what you need, you can make it work.
   In this piece I didn't play with angles and lengths.  Learning to saw the tubing was a first step and that was enough for starters. I bought gold filled tubing and cut tubes the same length as the long copper ones I've been using.  I like the effect.  Another possibility is stainless steel tubes ( which are actually hypodermic syringe tubes), or anodized and colored aluminum.  The stainless would, of course, be much harder to cut, and I like the idea of colored aluminum, but the tubes I've found so far are much fatter than the copper ones, so I'm not sure they'll look right if used in the same piece.  So much to learn (and such fun doing it!).

evolution of a design

I've been trying to get into better shows with my beadwork, and while I'm improving, I'm still not getting into some of the shows I want to ( as if that isn't always the case).  Part of my problem is that for years I've been applying to shows, with the rugs, in the fiber category, which is generally one of the less competitive categories; now I'm applying in jewelry, which is always one of the most competitive.  Anyway, I've been using the oxidized copper tube pieces, because I think they're the most uniquely my work.  But I wanted another piece with some color, and since some of my pieces are rather irregular, I wanted one that was more controlled.  Hence the top piece.
  I like the piece, but, for a jury shot, I thought maybe I had moved too much in the direction of repetition.  I wanted a piece that was controlled, but

not quite so predictable.  Also, although I had color, still it had a lot of browns and neutrals.   I decided  I wanted to make 3 changes:  more color, copper tube pieces that were octahedra like the ones in the first piece, but irregular octahedra, and more interesting shapes than the ovoid ones in the first
piece.
     The second pic shows me playing around with shapes till I got one I liked, sort of a fat crescent.  Incorporating the other changes gave me more the sort of piece I was looking for, controlled, but just s bit unpredictable.  I still have to work on getting a better picture of the new necklace--it's really brighter than this pic makes it appear.

Addendum

    This is sort of an add-on to my post earlier today.  I have a couple of local art festivals coming up, so I may not do any blogging for a few weeks.  So I thought I'd take a quick picture of the straight, but spiraled string of tetrahedrons I came up with.  I think it's kind of cool. 
    By the way, thinking of festivals, if anyone will be in the Chicago area, I'll be showing my jewelry at the Highland Park (northern suburb) Festival of Fine Craft the last weekend in June.

Scaffolds and pods

A few posts ago I showed a piece where I alternated strings of interlocked cubes with oxidized copper tube scaffold-like structures.  I had started out to make the necklace entirely of the cubes, but found it was getting too massive and dense.  The areas of copper tubes opened it up and I liked that better.  Even then, though, it was pretty big.  Not something I'd wear myself, although I'm trying to get beyond limiting myself to the sort of jewelry I personally wear.  Anyway, I wanted to do something a bit less massive.  So I made these 3-sided "pods" in shades of purple, blue and gray.  They have right angle corners at each end, so they interlock just the way the cubes do, but they have a narrower profile, so they don't bulk up so much.  Also, I liked the colors of the pods with the almost-black of the oxidized copper.

interlocked cubes and scaffolds

Several months ago I did a few posts about some work I had done with interlocking cubes made of seed beads.  The last post (In May) was about a set of cubes with rounded corners that I had done.  At the time I said I'd like to do a whole necklace of them. There were 2 problems with that, though.  One, it would have taken forever.  I do lots of things that take forever, though, so that probably wouldn't have stopped me if I'd been really happy with what I was getting.  The bigger problem was that it was so very dense, I had the feeling that wearing it would be sort of like wearing those high starched ruffs that Spaniards used to wear.  Lord knows I like a piece that has some 3-dimensionality to it, but this was just going to be too much.  So it sat on my work table, partially made, for several months.  Then I thought about using my oxidized copper scaffolds to open it up.  That's what I did here, and I think it's a big improvement.  On most anyone's scale, it's still a pretty dense piece, and it won't be to everyone's taste.  But to my eye, the open areas break it up just enough that it doesn't seem like you're drowning in it.  If anything, as I look at the picture, I think I might go back and make the scaffold at the 4 o'clock position a bit longer to open it up just a bit more.  Anyway, I'm glad I waited and stared at it for a while.

Oxidized copper and stick pearls

This was a fun piece to make.  I did a necklace a while ago that had some stick pearls in it in place of the oxidized copper tubes.  But I used dark gray pearls and I only had 10 or 12 of them, so they didn't have as much impact as I'd hoped for. This one came out more the way I intended.  I've found that if I alternate 1 or 2 octahedrons with  what I guess you'd call a triangular prism, you get a blend of firmness ( from the octahedrons, since they're all triangles) and flexibility (from the prisms, since they have squares for the sides with a triangular cross section) that works pretty well.  Anyway, I enjoyed making this. 

Oxidized copper lozenges

Since I started playing with adding small  (#11) seed beads at the ends of long bugle beads, I've started experimenting with adding them to the oxidized copper tube structures too.  This necklace is an example.  It's a sort of a remake of a necklace I made in late 2011 and posted about at the time (Doing too much, posted in December 2011).  It has quite a different look, though, done in tube beads instead of seed beads.  Much airier and lacy looking.  Also, since the "lozenges" were all the same color, except for different colored seed bead accents, I felt I couldn't mass them as closely together.  So they're spread out more on the RAW chain.  Now I think I'd like to work with more brightly colored accent beads, and see what I get. 

bugle bead structures

   A few days ago, I wrote a post about the trouble I was having making structures out of long bugle beads, because of the sharp edge of the glass bugle fraying the fireline.  Gwen commented saying that when she uses bugle beads she adds a seed bead at each  end of it and treats the group of 3 like a single bead.  I said that might be an answer. Actually, though, it sounded to me like too many seed beads.  I was adding a single bead between each bugle, so as to make a slightly truncated tetrahedron.  The small flat face (a triangle of 3 seed beads) at each point of the tet added a bit of wobble, but not too much.  But it seemed to me, thinking of the first triangle you'd make in the tet, that doing it Gwen's way you'd be adding 2 seed beads between each bugle, and so you'd be adding that many more seed beads, and it would get more and more crowded where several tets meet.  Gwen, I hope you read this, because you were totally right and I was totally wrong.  Turns out that as you keep adding tets, it actually gets less crowded. I can't explain it, so I took a picture.  There are 2 structures, each consisting of 3 tets  The 1 on the left was done "my" way, making truncated tets.  The 1 on the right was done the other way.  Each one has 3 seed beads at each point where 3 bugles meet.  So that by even thought your 1st  triangle has 6 seed beads in it instead of 3, by the time you've finished a whole tet, the total number of seed beads is the same either way.  More importantly when 2 or 3 tets share elements ( in these the bugle bead in the center is part of all 3 tets) the structure done my way has 7 beads at the top and the bottom of that central bugle bead, and you can see they kind of bunch up.  When I did it Gwen's way there are only 5 and it all fits together much more neatly, even using #8 seed beads.    That's good for me, because, especially when I use the 30mm bugles, using #11s at the ends just doesn't look right to me.  To my eye a bugle that big needs a bigger accent bead.  Even here, with 20 mm bugles, I like the 8s.

   Once I figured that much out, I started thinking of my oxidized copper tubes.  Not that I need to protect the thread there, but I knew that sometimes it would be nice to add a bit of color.  The pic on the left is an earring (unfinished, obviously) using #8 beads in several metallic tones as accents to the dark gray tubes.  Here I may actually end up using smaller seed beads, as the diameter of the tube is small.  I don't have many #11s right now, so I used my usual 8s, and I think that it works.  I'll try #11s next and compare the results.  Anyway, this has all been fun.  Thanks, Gwen

Before and after

    I was talking in the last post about using a photo to look at a piece in a new way, and see a problem with it.  Cindy Holsclaw (beadorigami.blogspot.com)  and I talked a bit more about it, and it got me thinking about another piece.  This was one I recently finished that was based on the cage idea, but instead of repeating a single structure in a single cage, it was a looser version, with various seed bead shapes that are sometimes enclosed by and sometimes act as links between larger oxidized copper scaffolds.  I made the piece pictured on the top, and I really liked it a lot.  I worked hard to get a good picture of it, and have already used it as a jury shot once. 
    But the more I looked at the picture, the more I thought that right in the center front, where you want maximum impact, I had a blue shape that was so dark it didn't contrast much with the dark cage.  Also, it was completely encased by the cage.  So this morning, I took the blue piece out and replaced it with a pale pink and red one that extends beyond the frame of the cage.  I think it's a big improvement.  The second picture isn't as good--I like the lighting and the camera angle better on the top one, but that's easily fixed.
  

Cage pieces 2.0

 I find that when I'm trying out a new idea, I usually start out with a very regular, often symmetrical, piece.  Sort of like what they sometimes call a "proof of concept".  As I get more comfortable with the idea, the pieces lose a bit of that.  In mid-June I showed some new work I called cage pieces, with a bead structure loose inside a cage which was an octahedron made from tube beads. I wanted to make 3 changes for my 2nd version of the idea.  First I wanted the inside structures to be brighter, for more contrast with the dark gray cages.  Second, I wanted the cages to be less regular.  And, third, I wanted to eliminate the cages st the back, because they poke into your neck just a bit.     My first try at this was the picture on top.  Mostly it achieved what I wanted.  However, in making the cages irregular, I also made them smaller.  That is

because the original cages, which were regular octahedrons, were made entirely from 1" tubes.  In order to make the cages irregular I substituted 2 or 3 short (1/2") tubes in each cage, which inevitably made the overall structure smaller.  More importantly, though, the 1st piece used 1/2" tubes between the cages, and I forgot that and used 1" tubes in the 2nd one.  So the new cages were both smaller, and more widely spaced.  I didn't really notice the difference till I took a picture.  When I looked at the picture, there was just too much empty space.  So I took out the 3 middle cages and redid them, with much closer spacing.  That'e the bottom picture.    I think it was an improvement (although until now I didn't notice that the necklace in the bottom picture isn't centered properly in the picture).

Oxidized copper and pearls

     I went to a bead show several months ago.  I don't get to do that much, as I live in the boondocks, so I do most of my bead buying online.  It's so much fun to look at actual beads.  Anyway, I saw these dark stick pearls, and thought how great it would be to mix them in with my oxidized copper tubes.  They've been sitting in a bag for a while, but I finally got it done and I like the result.
    Another thing that I liked here was the photography.  2 things I did differently:  I used a flash, which I usually don't do, but it lightened the shadows alot.  Also I took the picture from a very shallow angle, which brought out the 3-dimensional-ness of the piece. 

Cage pieces

     I love the idea of a bead or beaded shape caged within another shape, loose enough that it can move around but not get out.  I did it once with seed beads.  It was a bright colored dodecahedron caged inside a clear buckeyball.  I liked it but have never done another.  These oxidized copper tube bead shapes are ideal for that kind of treatment, and it's been on my to-do list for a while. an individual large bead caged in a structure would be nice, but you'd want it to be undrilled, so not really a bead at all.  I've thought of a marble.  Problem is I only have access to 3 sizes of tubes (and one is quite short, to it's effectively 2 sizes), so you need to be able to size the inside piece to the cage, so that it's small enough to move, but not so small it can fall out.

    Patricia Madeja does a really nice pendant with an undrilled pearl captured in a gold cube.  But I can't use a cube because a 4-sided shape isn't rigid when done in tube beads.  Also the sizing between the sphere and the square has a pretty small tolerance.  I found the same to be true if I used a tetrahedron cage, i.e. if it was big enough to not fall out it couldn't move much.  An octahedron, though, worked really well, as you can see.  There's lots of  room for the inner balls to move.  In the bracelet and the back of the necklace I used RAW cubes inside octahedrons made of 12 mm tubes.  In the front of the necklace I used dodecahedrons inside 22 mm shapes.  All the inside shapes are made from 4 mm stone beads. 

   There was just one minor problem with the necklace.  The point of the oct is toward your neck as you wear it, so it feels just a bit prickly.  It's not bad; I wore it all day, but I noticed it just  bit.  After this picture was taken I added a small bead at the inner and outer points of the octs, but it didn't really change anything.  It's not any sharpness in the tubes themselves that creates the slight prickliness, but just the shape of the oct itself.  It wasn't noticeable at all on the bracelet, where the weight is evenly distributed. Both pieces are quite lightweight, it's just that in the necklace whatever weight there is is concentrated in 4 points on your neck.  2 possible answers: reposition the octs so that there's a triangular face toward you instead of a vertex; or leave out the octs at the back of the necklace altogether.  I'm experimenting with both.

oxidized copper and stones again

    I'm enjoying this combination of the oxidized copper tubes and multi-colored stones.  I don't do much that's dainty or "feminine", so for me this was a bit of a change.  Admittedly most people wouldn't think of oxidized copper tubes and 4 mm stone beads as exactly dainty, but for me it is, just because it's relatively small shapes, symmetrical and it's a short necklace.  Not a choker, but quite a bit shorter than I usually do (it's a bit over 18").  Another example of trying to get beyond just designing for myself.
    I spent a bit of time with the photography here too, and ultimately I'm not too happy with it.  A lot of the problem is that the shadows of the tubes are pretty much the same color as the tubes themselves.  Partly, I think, that's because it was a dark and rainy day today, so even in front of a window there wasn't much ambient light beyond the 2 lights I have for photography.  It made the lighting too harsh I think.  I find these pieces hard to photograph, though, because if I put them on a white background it gives it a harsh look, but as I go toward a darker background, the tubes don't show up as well.  Biba Schutz is a wonderful jewelry artist who mostly works with very dark oxidized silver, so I'll have to look at her website and see what her pictures look like.

Oxidized copper and stones

Just finished a new piece.  I've been moving toward adding more color to my oxidized copper tube pieces, mostly with gemstones.  This is the latest.  I have a tendency to design for myself--i.e.something I would wear (or sometimes something I would wear if I lived a life that included dressing up, which I mostly don't).  That keeps the work relatively conservative.  This one is a bit bigger than I would tend to wear myself, but I like it a lot.  I think the mix of stone shapes based on molecular structures  and copper tube structures based more on engineering forms works well.  Particularly since it corresponds with the mix of color and no-color.
  I think my next step will be to combine the 2 kinds of beads more closely--like a polyhedron where some of the beads are round gemstones and some are copper tubes.  This is tricky because generally the long beads need structures made mostly of triangles, or else they're too floppy, and I tend to avoid triangles with the round beads.  That's partly because too much thread shows in a triangle made from 3 beads, and also because I like the more open look you get with bigger circles of beads.

Oxidized copper earrings

Just a quick post.  I've been getting ready for a show in Atlanta (the Atlanta Dogwood Festival in Piedmont Park, if you're in the area).  The oxidized copper tube beads I've been working with lend themselves well to making structures for earrings, so I've just finished several new earring designs.They're all just combinations of tetrahedrons and octahedrons, but by using different length tubes you get interesting structures.  The ear wires are oxidized sterling silver.  I like to do the kind of post that needs an earring back to hold it on.  That's because the earrings are so open that I don't want an extra wire hanging down behind the ear, the way you'd have with something like a French wire.  So far they all have mirror image pieces for the other ear, but I'd like to do some where the 2 earrings are close, but not identical.

more metal beads

    Just finished this one.  I went back to my oxidized copper beads, but I now have round ones as well as tube beads.  The round ones are a pain to use, though.  These are 3.5 mm.  The holes are quite small and hard to find.  But, more than this, since the beads are hollow, your needle goes in one side of the bead, and then has to feel its way around the wall on the other side till it finds the hole to get out.  Actually the same is true of the nickel silver beads (the bright ones in this piece), but their holes are much bigger in relation to the size of the beads.
    Despite the griping, I like the way this one came out.  I like the asymmetry, as well as the way the tube beads in the chain open the piece up.  And they do speed up the weaving, so I probably shouldn't complain about the time it took to make the major shapes out of the round beads.