Cages

I've been working on pieces, mostly earrings, where there's a "cage" made from oxidized sterling silver tubes. Then another structure, usually a sphere of sorts floats freely inside that cage.  I've done spheres of 4 mm gemstone beads, but my favorite, and my best selling one is a dodecahedron (sometimes called a Plato bead because it's a Platonic solid) made from 3 mm gold filled beads.  Lately, though, I've wanted to make a shape that wouldn't stay so much inside the cage, but would hang out more.  I thought what I wanted would be a stellated structure with different points hanging out of different triangles in the cage.  But I found I didn't like those.  The problem was using my gold filled tubes to make a stellated structure.  The gold filled tubes are a bit bigger in diameter, around 1.8 mm, and when you make a stellated structure that's small enough for an earring using tubes that fat, it just looks kind of clunky.  I had thought of using just a cube, which doesn't require

so many short tubes and doesn't have such acute angles.  But a cube, since it isn't made from triangles, isn't rigid the way something like a stellated tetrahedron would be.  However, I found that if I made a cube using my stiffest 10 lb test monofilament, and went around each of the square faces an extra time, the cube came out almost as stiff as something made from squares.  And since it's just floating, and so has no strain on it, it turned out to work just fine.  I love the asymmetry it gives to each earring.

New work

Well, I'm still hanging around the house and making jewelry (no surprise).  It's all going onto a shelf, since galleries are mostly closed or only partially open.  I found out recently that I've been accepted into the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show this coming November, and I'm pretty excited about that, but, of course, it may not happen, or it may become a virtual show.  We'll see.The first picture shows 2 more pieces in the series I talked about in April, with a series of triangles in the center that form the base of tetrahedrons.  For these 2 I wanted to make that base have an inward slant to it by making the top tubes shorter than the bottom ones.  These will be brooches. I also wanted to try 2 different ways of creating asymmetry. The one on the left has asymmetry in the shape of the star.  The one on the right has a symmetrical shape, but asymmetry in the placing of the gold tubes.  Myself, I prefer the one on the left, but we'll see what customers think.

The second picture is something I did with some of the shapes I initially made in trying this structure.  In my April post I showed a picture of several of them.  My intent was to hang each one on a chain as a pendant.  But till I got around to it I just had them all in a pile.  I saw these 3 piled together, and decided I liked them that way, and wanted to join them into a single pendant.  I wasn't sure how to do it so I've been staring at the group of 3 arranged like this for several weeks.  Yesterday I decided it was time to wade in and join them together.  I like the way it worked out, and it means that instead of 3 nice pendants, I have one that I think is way more interesting. 

Brancusi necklaces

 I'm stuck at home like everyone else so, of course, I'm playing with jewelry, and thought I'd post something. A few months ago I made some bracelets based on the 4-sided columns that Constantin Brancusi created.  The first 2 pics here were my first necklaces.  I liked them a lot, for their simplicity.  Of the 2, though, I preferred the longer, narrower one that's on top.  And I started thinking about breaking up the symmetry just a bit.  I ended up taking apart the bottom on #2 and redoing it as #3.  I know that asymmetry in the structure is not what the Brancusi columns were about, but I find I like it.

Developing an idea

 I've been making lots of pieces like the first one here: repeats of a structure like an oct, separated by biggish stone beads.  And I've varied it by using different structures, but always a repeat of the same one.  I've wanted to do 2 things--eliminate the beads and vary the structures.  Leaving out the beads means you don't have the color limitation, i. e. you're not limited to wearing it with an outfit that goes with red. There are 2 ways to do this.  One would be to put a closed ring between the octs (or whatever structures) Or they could interlink directly with one another.  Here I interlinked them. It means that you need to build more structures, as they overlap, but it makes the design tighter. I like this one, and I think pretty soon I'll make another one with the pentagonal shapes done in gold filled beads.
   As with most of my ideas, I start out being rigidly symmetrical, and then later I play with the idea in a freer, asymmetrical way.  Picture 3 shows me doing this design in that way.  I think its my best one so far.  I also think adding the gold makes the piece more interesting, without limiting the colors you can wear it with.  Now I'd like to extend that more asymmetrical, more random approach to some of my very structural pieces.

Playing

On a recent car trip to Chicago, I spent car time building some different structures that I wanted to use as building blocks for a necklace.  I wanted just a few elements and ended up with 3 front ones and a curve around the back of the neck .  I like it, especially the spiral in the front.  But it's kind of a lot of necklace, both long and wide.  On a whim I hooked the hook to the ring that's on the spiral,  leaving out the last zigzaggy element. Here I have (badly) photoshopped out the element that would be left out.  It makes the necklace more asymmetrical, as well as shorter.  I like the asymmetry, but it's probably just a bit too short. So if I do cut off the zigzag, I think I'll add one more unit to the curve that goes around the back, so that the end of the spiral element is a bit farther from the neck.
I'm still trying to decide whether to cut off the zigzag.  If I do I think I'll turn that element into a pendant.  But

looking at the pictures, I like the top one more than I did just trying it on. For one thing I kept trying to shift it around so that the 2 wide points weren't opposite each other.  But now I think that having them at almost the same height, but  also different shapes, kind of works. It's good to be able to line up the 2 pictures together and see how it looks either way (although taking a selfie as a 68-yr-old is not for the faint of heart).I'd love to know what anyone reading this blog thinks--long version or short?

Asymmetrical silver tetrahedrons

Seems to me that I have a way of announcing in a blog post that I plan to do A and then immediately doing B.  Like I'll say I want to get away from symmetry and the next thing I know I've done 3 or 4 symmetrical pieces. Or vice versa. Just a few posts ago I said I wanted to make pieces using sort of stock lengths of tubing instead of cutting custom lengths for an individual piece, because if I get the geometry wrong, I'm left with odd length pieces that don't work and that could  produce a lot of waste. So what did I do next but make the most custom length piece I've made so far.  I'm sure there's a CAD-CAM program out there that could have figured out the proper lengths for me, but, of course, I don't have one.  For this one I drew the inside oval and the outside asymmetrical curve on graph paper, and then drew the triangles it would take to join them.  This gave me an approximation of the lengths I would need, but only that.  Beyond that it was pretty seat-of-the-pants. I've been mostly oxidizing my silver so I don't have to think about tarnish, but for this one I had no choice but to use bright silver, because I was cutting 2 or 3 lengths at a time, and there's no sensible way to oxidize the tubes that way. (If I were still working with copper, I could oxidize as I go, because copper doesn't need hot water to oxidize, but for silver you need very hot water, close to boiling.  I guess I could keep a liver of sulphur bath hot if I used a hot plate, but I just use a pot with a coil immersed in the water, so I can only heat plain water, and when it starts to cool I throw the bath out.) Also if I oxidized a tube and then had to shorten it a bit,I'd be left with 1 bright edge, and I'd have to oxidize it again.  Anyway, I like this one in bright silver anyway, so it worked out alright.  the longest tubes in it, by the way are 62 mm, or around 2.5" long.

Reworking a design

   I think in my last post I talked about liking a sort of controlled asymmetry best.  I had no more said that when I started doing several pieces that turned out symmetrical.  Oh well.  I'm often not sure where I'll end up when I start a piece, and I like that.
  The top picture here (which I think I blogged about earlier) is a tetrahelix using gold-filled tubes spiraling around oxidized copper ones.  I had some problems with the beads, and decided to redo it using oxidized sterling silver instead.  But when my spiral got to be 9 tetrahedrons long, I wondered what it would look like if I just mirror imaged it for 9 more tetrahedrons.  Actually, I like both versions.  In making my sort of pendant-ish necklaces, I've switched from a narrow right angle weave to a hand-made chain using 18 gauge sterling wire.  Learning to make the links (which is actually pretty 

easy) has given me more confidence in doing simple wire working.  One of these days, I really need to learn some more about metalsmithing.

asymmetry versus randomness

 I just finished a piece (the 3rd one in this group) and it got me thinking about some of the things I like in a design.  I actually like all 3 of these pieces, but in some ways the last one works best for me.  It is neither entirely symmetrical, like the first piece, nor as random as the 2nd one.  It's sort of a Goldilocks thing, where you can easily see the symmetry, as well as the decision to break it.  A bit like the motto of Oregon College of Art and Craft--Know the rules to break the rules.  I've always been drawn to that idea.  Anyway, I'm busy making pieces like #3 now.

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.

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).

hexagon shapes

    This turned into a fun project/experiment.  I wanted to create a focal piece for a pendant that was asymmetrical. Something sort of porkchop shaped was what I had in mind.  The part I felt would be hardest was the quick 180 degree turn I wanted at the top.  Looking at some of my earlier samples, I found a way to create it.  From there it was pretty straightforward to create the first shape in the picture.  But it wasn't quite what I wanted.  I had wanted a curvier, rounder shape, not just a series of hard 120 degree turns.  This led me to look again at tubes and shapes I had made in the past. 
   I knew, although I hadn't thought about it too much, that there are 2 different ways to make a tube out of hexagons.  They can be aligned either point-top or flat-top.  That is when the tube itself is pointing up and down the hexagons in it can either have a flat side up or a point (vertex).  The one on the left is made of flat-top hexes.  This is a bit counterintuitive, as they look pointy at the top.  In just the same way, when you do RAW, a "square" (4 bead circle) made with round beads actually looks more like a diamond than a square, and you have to remind yourself to think only of the thread path, which is indeed a square.
   Anyway, if you do a flat-top tube the beads appear to align lengthwise and accentuate the squareness of the tube (in both cases the tubes were made with a 4-hex circumference) and the hardness of the angles. So I decided to try to create a similar shape using point-top hexagons.  With point-top hexagons you get the appearance of rows of beads aligning around the circumference of the tube.  As I expected, I couldn't get as tight a bend at the top (I'm sure there's a way; I just haven't found it yet), but I got a much rounder tube and a more fluid, organic shape.  All in all, more what I was looking for.

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.

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.

Red Gemstone Necklace

Since I've been doing these tube necklaces in nickel silver beads, I've wanted to use the same techniques in a piece made from gemstone beads.  This is the first one.  It's made from brecciated jasper beads (the dark ones) and red agate beads as accents.  I like the way the colors bring out the geometry of the piece.  Stone beads are a little slower to work with, because the holes are so small, but I like them, and will probably do more.  I used fireline for thread.  I mostly have been using monofilament nylon, for the extra body, but it's too bulky in these small holes, and I've found that if I make an extra pass all around the circumference as I end each round of hexagons, I get sufficient body.  By the way, I've experimented with different sizes of tubes, measured by the number of hexagons that make a "row", and for the most part I find a 4 hexagon circumference works well.  That's what I've used here.

Funky scaffold

I think in my last post about beadwork, I said that since that piece was very controlled, I wanted to something funky next. Well, here it is. More and more, I've come to realize that I sort of have 2 distinct bodies of work, one very controlled, and one looser. I like them both, and they seem to resonate with different parts of me. I do the same with my rugs, although there I've moved more and more to the looser designs, with color families instead of single colors, and a more improvisational style. Partly as I get more confident with something, I loosen up a bit, although I still like the controlled pieces too. This necklace is a really simple right angle weave, done with oxidized copper tube beads. I used 2 different lengths of tubes, though, chosen mostly at random, which makes it asymmetrical, and gives it life (I think). I broke one of my rules with it though. I have come up with a general rule for my work that when I'm using round beads I generally create shapes out of polygons with at least 4 sides. I use triangles some, but generally I don't like the amount of thread that shows in a triangle. Mostly I use cubes, dodecahedrons, buckeyballs, etc. But with long beads, those sort of polygons don't hold their shape, so I stick to triangles, which are rigid. I mostly make things using tetrahedrons, octahedrons and sometimes icosahedrons, all of which are based on the triangle. This necklace is an exception to that rule, since most of it uses 4 sided shapes (I can't say squares because of the difference in the lengths of the tubes). If I had made it all with tubes of the same length, it would totally collapse. Because of the irregularity of the tube lengths, it can't quite collapse, and where it does collapse, it does so in interesting ways. At the back of the necklace, mostly to reduce the size, I changed it so that the cross-sections were triangles, and the sides were 4-sided, and it's a bit firmer there. Also at the bottom I added a second row with triangle cross-sections, both to create a focal area and to firm it up a bit. Still it's squishier than most of my work, but I kind of like the squishiness.

geometric shapes

These 2 pieces have been on my mental drawing board for a while now. Finally made them. The green one is mostly about the stones, and the various greens. The other one is me starting to put together some of the shapes I've figured out. I like the look of the stone beads, but it sure is a pain to find the holes in them. Partly it's just that I need a better light, I think. It's OK for most things, but not for finding holes in beads. Black onyx are the worst!

Asymmetrical tube necklace

This is my newest tube necklace made from my nickel silver beads. I was pretty pleased with it. I had to work hard on it to push myself toward an asymmetrical design. I tore it apart several times till I got it where I wanted it. But in the course of it I learned alot about how to make the tubes do what you want them to do.

More links

This is a sort of follow up to my last post. I liked my "Flower links" piece, but after looking at it for a while, I realized that I had gone back to links that were all the same. They were embellished, but all the same way. As I tend toward simplicity and a sort of minimalism, I decided to just keep adding embellishments till I felt it was too busy. The nice thing about these modular links necklaces is you can keep changing a piece by making more links, so you don't have to do alot of ripping out.
First I added some links at the back with smaller "petals" (although I don't actually think of these as flowers, but just as geometric shapes), because I felt the necklace looked better photographed flat than it did when worn. I wanted it to sit closer to the neck in the back. Then I started adding on to some of the links in front. I've done 2 so far, and will probably do one more. I'm honestly not sure on this one which version I like best. In the first version you do get the color variation, and maybe that's enough. What do you think? I'd love feedback.
In the 2nd one I varied the links but went back to my more neutral colors. It creates a more severe look, which I actually like alot.

Asymmetry

I'm working again with symmetry and asymmetry. I got some long black beads, and wanted to make a big chunky black necklace. My plan was a simple chain of octahedrons, mostly end to end, but with hard corners to create the circle you need for a necklace. It was the picture on the left (sorry for the blurry image). I was almost ready start working on the clasp, and I liked the piece alot. Just the size and blackness gave it enough drama, I thought. Then I got talking with a friend (thank you, Connie), and she told me how much she liked my asymmetrical work, so I started playing with the piece in front of a mirror. I ended up lengthening one side alot to the the piece on the left, and I think it's a big improvement. I'm still playing with the clasp a little, which is why you may see some monofilament in the picture.

Asymmetry

I've been trying to do get away from strict symmetry in my beadwork. The links pieces were 1 step toward that goal; this is another. In general my beadwork using copper beads has been my most rigidly symmetrical. I've been trying to create a look reminiscent of bridge trusses or other engineered structures like that. Here I took a big step away from that. The indiividual structures are, in fact, octahedrons, but I made them using a combination of long and short tubes. Each individual unit still has a sort of symmetry, but by joining them together in different ways as I go along, I've created a random look that I like. Then since the structure is so open I've attached other geometric structures to it. They create interest. Also, I find these copper tube bead necklaces are pretty light and need a bit of weight added in order to hang well. The glass bead structures give it that.