Here's the most recent post I wrote for the
Heat-Exchange blog...I had to take a short break from enameling to devote time to other things including planning classes and my upcoming European trip and also to teach a chain-making class. Once I returned to my assortment of samples I felt like it might be time to start considering how the pieces could work together, what steps I needed to take to move forward, whether or not I needed more samples, and so on. ( I start teaching a two-month class in less than two weeks here at Penland and I know my time will be extremely limited then. It really is time to shift from making components to making pieces.)
I am imagining collages or compositions of several elements: an enameled shape, some found steel, a rusty piece, a copper or brass hollow form. These pieces will be held together with rivets, bezel or tab settings, and/or some stitching perhaps. I work well with lots of elements in front of me. I enjoy the process of moving things around 3-dimensionally until a composition feels right, balanced, interesting, complete…I imagine the work as a series with similar but slightly different components. The images I have posted today are a group of sketches. I’m looking forward to seeing how things change once I begin constructing the pieces. Oh! And they will be large brooches!
The enameling is fairly simple as you can see. It’s mostly atmospheric, but I do like the stark quality each has and what they do for these initial compositions.
Thanks so much for reading.
here are the two brooches i made for masaaki shinko using his ceramic pieces for the latest "artist-to-artist" project. he asked for a brooch which i was delighted to hear - the brooch is my favorite type of jewelry to make these days. i ended up making him two different ones that feature one object each. i tried mixing the pieces together but in the end i felt they needed to stand alone. you can see more images on flickr. 
thanks for reading.