getting ready

reclaimed gold awaiting mini-melt

OREGON COLLEGE OF ART & CRAFT
Go For Gold: Start to Finish
Feb 5 - 6
9a - 4p

Go For Gold

I am in the studio today getting organized for my upcoming workshop at the Oregon College of Art & Craft. It takes place from 9-4 on Feb 5-6th, and I am thrilled.

So thrilled that I am inside next to my sun-filled window, instead of out in this gorgeous and sunny spring day here in Oakland. We have had a chilly winter for us Californians, and I am glad to be in jeans and a t-shirt inside the studio, for once...not that I am not used to soldering and filing in a scarf, hat, and vest, trust me!




The class will be one of my favorites to teach, which is incorporating small-scale gold refining and green studio practices into jewelry work. My students will be a mix of community and college metalsmiths, and I look forward to seeing what gets produced. Gold is really just amazing to work with, and I can't wait to turn my own pile of scrap and unused jewelry into something wearable and new. I try to make myself a gold band each time I teach the class, so here is to another!

recent reading

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There is a lot to think about
and a lot to get done, but
to be efficient does not mean to be hurried, and
to be unhurried does not mean to sit in a lawn chair.

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Edward Espe Brown,
The Greens Cookbook: Extraordinary Vegetarian Cuisine from the Celebrated Restaurant

It's Better Than Nothing

Could there be a better reason than this postcard to check out the ART JEWELRY FORUM?

Their website is currently, right this very moment, in the midst of a wicked slideshow of juicy, stark, contemporary jewelry. That is right: our favorite type of eye candy, brought to you direct, by those advocates for studio jewelry we love and know as AJF.

books & hammers

I think that when your books, as well as your hammers, have a home in the new studio, that you can take this as a sign that things are going quite swimmingly. I also am finally able to reach my killer tool drawers to go set that is perfectly made to house my hand files and needle files (love those felt-lined drawers!). In my last studio it was just a bit too far from my bench, and never got fully utilized.


It is vintage, and metal, and heavy, and I love it. You have to be a buff metalsmith like myself to carry it at all, but the idea is that you can bring your handtools with you just about anywhere with this portable drawer set. It made the trip from San Francisco to Oakland with me, at the very least. Certainly I am showing my lack of expertise by not knowing the proper term for this wonderful cabinet, as we jewelers do like to be precise about everything, and makers of all types do love their tools. Ah, well.


I also know that I am settling in quite nicely because I have begun to put my wire clotheslines up on the walls. In my last space, where putting holes in the wall was seen as criminal activity, this solved a basic lease-related problem, but I have enjoyed doing this for some years now. It is a good way to keep samples and ideas and postcards and those little pretty pieces of paper I can't recycle near to me while I sketch and draw and stare at the wall (oh, and work.)

Here is to September, everyone...get out and enjoy your Labor Day, or stay in and do the same.

see you this week-end!

working away

Despite being a bit wiped out from moving shop (and home) across the San Francisco Bay to North Oakland, I have nothing to complain about. I am just home from ten marvelous days in Tuscany, Italy, where I visited my sweetheart, ate the very best artichoke ravioli I have ever had, and yes, it is true....worked in the studio!!
I threw my bag of gold over my shoulder and got on the plane for my first vacation this year. I will have some images before long, but the general summary is that it was an amazing time. I was lucky enough to be a guest artist for the University of Georgia at Athens study abroad program in Cortona, and joined the students happily working away in the very warm, and well equipped, studio up on the top of the hills of this beautiful walled town.

Upon arrival back home, I jumped into preparations for the Renegade Handmade SF summer craft fair at lovely Fort Mason. It takes place from 11am to 7pm on both Saturday and Sunday next week-end (July 31- Aug 1), and I hope to see you there!