Big announcement!

Image of test mock up for my piece in Placement at the Reinstein Ross gallery

Liz and I have a big announcement to make.  Before I get to that I wanted to say that our time here in North Carolina has been majestic, tasty and overall incredible. Boone is an incredible place. It has a small town feel with a lot of incredible people living here. Being that my ancestors settled just two hours north of here really made this place feel like home to me. Being so close to Penland has been amazing. We have re-connected with people I had not seen in many years. Asheville always seems to be a buzz of metal activity. So many things going on all the time. I really think this is a great, safe, beautiful place to live.

I have never met a more passionate group of people than the instructors that work in the Fine Arts department here at App. Maybe because they have to work that much harder in order to be seen/heard here in the mountains of North Carolina. Maybe it is because they care that much more about their students. Maybe, somewhere in the job description it says "must be more passionate and sincere than everyone else". Because of all of this, it really has been a pleasure working here and it makes it is that much harder to let it go. 

I have been offered and I have accepted a full time teaching position at the Rhode Island School of Design. When a once in a lifetime opportunity of this magnitude comes around it is hard to pass it up. I am truly honored and excited to work with the faculty at RISD and look forward to the future. 

We will be around Boone for a large part of the summer but then we will be making swift moves to get everything shoved in a moving truck and on the road.    

I hope to see some of you at SNAG this week. 

winding down to basically wind back up again

This semester has had it's ups and downs.  I have to admit that I believe everything happens for a reason and there are almost never lows without some really nice high points.  My students did an amazing job making some amazing pieces.  I am especially proud of the digital course that basically started with the students knowing almost nothing about CAD/CAM to 3D printing some amazing things in the end.  I will now call them "power- users".  

With my Dad passing away and all the snow days we had, I had a hard time seeing the light at the end.  Now that the end is here, looking back on everything made me realize that the impossible can often produce amazing things.

So here is the short list, I have a few pieces going into the Adorned Spaces pop-up show at SNAG in Boston this year.  I just sent off a piece to Placement at the Reinstein Ross Gallery in New York.  The opening is Saturday May 16th at 6:00 pm if you are around NYC.  I finished grading the projects for four classes (forty projects)! I have to work on making some flat pack cases/display for another show. I have another piece going out for the Contemporary Jewelry Exchange. I have work on its way to the Arrowmont instructors exhibition. I have a bracelet heading off to the Penland Auction. I will be in NYC for a couple of days for a Family reunion and then finally a break for about a week before I have to get ready for my Arrowmont workshop! There is also some secret news that will have to remain secret for a little while but I suspect will be kind of epic.

Below are a few images from all of that including mockups of a huge 3D printed neckpiece which was the collaboration with Skullphone.  A few images of brooch backs from the enameling pieces from a previous post (Smitten Forum 2). A shot of my students doing their self portrait project using Sculptirs and some of the final pieces from the enameling class. There are a couple finals (3D prints) from my Digital class (I especially love the milk crate beer coozie).