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?

Design and color

 I've been thinking design thoughts lately.  Partly that's because one of the things I miss from my rugweaving days is working with color.  And partly because I've started adding some gold to my pieces and the price dictates that I get maximum impact for the colored (i.e. gold) tubes I use.
First conclusion I've reached--always subject to change--Where a piece has a really interesting shape, and particularly an interesting outline, like the first piece shown, it works quite well in just oxidized silver. I could add areas of color if I wanted, but I don't have to. This would apply to my charm pieces as well.  But where a piece is really regular some color helps to break things up, like in piece 2. And I tend to like having the color offset, not at the center of things.
The next issue--placing the color.  If I use a lot of colored tubes, I can do whatever I want and it will show well, but the problem arises when I don't want to use so many tubes.  My regular and mathematical mind wants to use them to highlight the geometry I've spent so much time creating.  But doing that usually means distributing a limited amount of color over the whole necklace, and sometimes it sort of loses it's impact. In the 3rd picture I have a piece where I think that spreading out the color really works.  You just wouldn't see how the arms of the pinwheel spiral without those gold tubes indicating it. But more often I think that massing it, as I did in the piece with red tubes, is a better bet.  I'd love to get others' opinions on this.  What do you think?

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.

Back to geometry

   First of--apologies for the blurry pictures; I didn't haul out the tripod as I should have.
    I've been playing with structures of tetrahedrons again.  Last September I did a post or 2 about some necklaces I made using really long bugle beads to form chains of tetrahedrons (tets).  I liked them but got concerned about the sharpness of the edges of the bugle beads.  Even adding a seed bead at the end of each bugle, I was a bit worried about the fireline fraying.  I decided not to use magnet clasps because I didn't like to be pulling the necklace apart as you do with a magnet clasp, for fear of cutting a thread. 
  Anyway, I started in again, but this time using the oxidized copper tubes I've been using lately.  If you just keep adding tets in the most logical order they make a circle.  I think ( if anyone knows for sure, I'd love corroboration or correction)  that tetrahedrons will tile infinitely in space with no gaps the same way that cubes will.  But they do it in a very curvilinear way.  For example, 20 tets form an icosahedron, which is essentially spherical.  Still, if they'll tile in 3 dimensions, there had to be a chain of tets that would curve  gradually, or even go straight.  But I was having a hard time getting a chain of tets that had a shallow enough curve.  The chain I had used with the 30mm bugles last fall, didn't work with my 22 mm tubes.  The curve was too tight, and I ended up turning it into a bracelet instead of a necklace.
     I spent lots of time coming up with the second structure.  I found a chain of 8 tetrahedrons which didn't bend much.  Then I marked the last tet with a piece of yarn and started adding tets to the chain so that that marked tet was the center of a symmetrical chain of 15 tets.  Then I moved the yarn and extended the 15 tet chain to 29.  I'm sure there are computer designing programs that would figure out something like this for you, but I'll admit I learned alot using this seat of the pants method.  And I got a chain that curved just the right amount.  I've even found a chain that goes straight.  It makes a gentle spiral as it goes, so it's pretty cool.  I don't have a picture of it yet, but I'll post one when I do.  All in all, it was a fun endeavor.

Asawa pendant

I've been thinking about Ruth Asawa and her work.  If you're not familiar with it, you can find it at ruthasawa.com.  She made gorgeous sculptural shapes out of knitted wire (although I keep seeing it described as crocheted, surely it's Viking knit).  Often there are spheres or cones interlocked with other spheres or cones.  That's what I wanted to play with.  It's made me realize, more than I had, how much geometry is in her work, to get smooth curves and progressions.  This was my first attempt at interlocked spheres.  I wish I could overlap them more, but since in my spheres there are fewer points of entry than in a knitted structure, there were limits to where I could make one sphere go inside another. For example, I couldn't pass through a 5-bead circle, because the hole in the middle isn't big enough to get a bead through it.  I had to just use the 6-bead circles. And if I had done my interlock through the next row of circles, the 2 green balls would have bumped into each other in the middle of the turquoise ball.  I have some ideas about getting around these problems, but that's for future work.  The 2 outer spheres are based on the 90 bead buckyball, but modified to "sprout" a tube at one end.  The 1 in the middle is a 120 bead sphere.  Following my usual path, now I'm working on another version that's a bit less symmetrical.

triangles necklace

I thought that since I'd posted the early stages of the design of this piece, I ought to post the final product. Here it is. Once again simplicity and symmetry won out. To even things out, I'm working on a funkier piece next.

New bead shapes

I haven't posted much lately, but I've been working at the beadwork, trying to expand the vocabulary of shapes I can create. This is one, using a graduated set of diamond shapes in gemstone beads and graduated egg or oval shapes with the nickel silver beads. Obviously it's totally symmetrical. After doing that one, I did another, mixing up the shapes and colors a bit more. This is that one. I really like working with the stone beads, and putting that sort of color in the work. In one way, it's a pain because the holes are so much smaller than seed bead holes. But I like the soft colors alot.

nanotube necklace

Here's another in my series of explorations of nanotube forms. It's quite symmetrical, and I'm now working on one that's asymmetrical, but both are based on my attempts to make tubes that curve and get bigger and smaller to create a design. I just read Cindy Holsclaw's post on her beadorigami blog about chiral forms in DNA, so I'll mention a bit about that. The beaded molecules blog shows chiral and achiral forms for their torus structures. Generally the chiral forms seem to make the smoothest curves, which I like the look of. However, unless I make a necklace long enough to fit over a person's head (which I'd like to do, but haven't) I need to be able to endcap the tube, or at least to have it end smoothly so that I can put in a clasp. That seems to require an achiral tube. I've also found that I can change the diameter of the tube as I go around a curve, for example I can go from a 6-hexagon circumference to a 5-hexagon one. If I try to do it on a straight section it sort of bumps in on one side, and doesn't look good.

Flower necklace

I was pretty pleased with this piece. I love these metal beads. the piece is based on some of the work in the Japanese site that is referenced in the beaded molecules blog. It's http://horibe.jp/Gr2F.HTM, and has lots of cool stuff. I actually intended to more or less copy a shape that's in it, except to change it by turning 2 of the bump-outs into cylindrical chains that would be the actual necklace. Actually I ended up making a slightly different structure, because I started from a torus with a larger inner diameter than theirs. After several false starts I ended up making a plain torus so that I could look at it to figure where and how to make the bumpouts on the second one. I'm working on another one where the symmetry will be broken up by having bumpouts of different lengths and configurations.

Another Icosahedron

Here's another of my spheres that I call offset icosahedrons. It's a bit bigger, 3.5" in diameter, where the 1st one was around 3". Also I made the change I was talking about earlier. The end faces (8 beads) of each strip of cubes is a side face in one of the other, different colored strips, so they share a whole face. Each strip is added on to the adjoining ones as if the whole thing were a flat piece. It's just when you pull 5 strips together into a pentagon that you force a curve into the shape. Doing it this way made the piece firmer, so I could make it bigger. Each strip of cubes is 8 cubes long, where the other sphere used strips of 6 cubes.
One thing I forgot to mention that worked out really well, in both balls, was that I found that if I used 5 colors I could arrange them so that I never had 2 of the same color next to one another.
Seems like now I have to do something asymmetrical. Every time I try to work my way out of symmetry, I find myself coming back to it. Actually I like symmetry too, and I think you probably have to work out the symmetry of a structure before you can play around with it, and do something asymmetrical.