Riverfest 2011

Riverfest, our local art in the park event was Saturday. We had a great time and visited with a lot of people and sold a decent amount of jewelry ( sold the necklace on the left, a Labradorite on Hollyhock leaf). My son Sam and his band played a set and they were very good. The event was a little bittersweet for me since I got the event going, along with Nancy Ebbert on the music side and it is getting better and bigger. This was the third year and it will soon become a treasured institution in Lander if the energy can be maintained.

The reports of sales were a bit mixed. I think that the government playing chicken on the brink of default may have had some impact on sales. Also, summer we buy for ourselves, not for others which accounts for the lowered sales compared to the Art in the Afternoon Christmas sale. Also, we must admit that Lander is a small town. 7000 people is not a large basis. We are still working to develop an appreciation for the arts within a larger slice of the population. We do seem to have an inordinate amount of people making art though and that is a wonderful part of our town.

The greenhouse is going great guns (update: installed in early June) with the cukes coming on strong and maybe another week for the tomatoes. Next year we will get the tomatoes in earlier and see what we can do for early crops. Sales have been good in the first two Farmer's Markets with greens, basil and bouquets.

Back At It

Well, I resigned as Director of the Lander Art Center. The job was eating up all my mental space and keeping me up at night. Dannine Donaho, my Assistant Director has taken over and I am sure she has a whole new set of skills to put toward the Center. Good Luck, Dannine.

I am readying myself for the Holiday Sale season with new pieces and several sales. My schedule is:

November 5, 4-6 at the Dubois Headwaters Art Center

November 11-13 at the Nicolaysen Holiday Art Sale in Casper

December 5 at the Art in the Afternoon Holiday Arts & Crafts Sale in Lander at the Noble Hotel

I will teach a class on November 6th at the Lander Art Center called "Metal Clay Gifts" call the Lander Art Center at 332-5772 or go to landerartcenter.com to sign up

Kid Jewelry Class

Here are a few pics of my daughter Annika's projects from the Metals class ( and a little LeafLady of my own). The kids were great. There was only one minor burn from a piece of hot metal. The first project we did was the lentil bead in copper. The kids got to cut a disk with my disk cutter (it will never be the same, I might want to re-think this part), drill a hole, dome both halves on a dapping block, sand the edges flat, solder (this was kid-solder--I was more concerned with the bead holding together and the process of soldering than I was with whether they had a complete solder joint). The kids were thrilled with using the torch, especially the boys. We quenched in water and I gave them the option of pickling or leaving the heat patina. The example here is with the patina left on and some polishing with fabulustre on a very dirty buffing wheel. I find that fabulustre doesn't heat up the work too much so it is a good option for kids who get intimidated by buffing if their work gets too hot while they are doing it.

We then went on to do a hammered bracelet, a letter-stamped bracelet, a hammer textured pendant and a roller-milled picture frame pendant. The hammered pendant gave them experience sawing before we did the inside cut for the picture frame pendant. I tried to do a gesso/colored pencil drawing with the hammered pendant but it was basically a failure--but the kids didn't seem to care. The prismacolors just didn't have enough definition.

I learned a couple of things. 1) Don't let adults into your kids classes. They really need their own level of attention which is always detracting from the kid teaching. 2)Don't let parents accompany kids. They also have their own, adult-level expectations that are difficult to attain with 11 kids going "Lennie, Lennie, Lennie". Also, if the kid is too small to be by his/herself then they are too small/dependent to do a relatively intimidating class like metalsmithing. The kid in point was only 6 so I considered making the class for 9 and ups, but in several other classes the 6 year olds did great and I would hate to deprive enthusiastic young artists just because of one child. In the other class there was a little girl who was 6 who did all the projects with amazing self-sufficiency and went away very proud.

Next week I will be teaching Concrete Animals. That will be a challenge. I did a sample from Sherri Hunter's book and it is way too much for kids so I am modifying everything. Look for examples in the near future

Summer Jewelry Challenge

Well, its been a long time since I last posted, but no biggie.  Anyway, here is my interpretation Mary Hettmansperger's folded earrings.  I was inspired by Deryn Mentock's challenge to do the entire series of projects from Mary's book, "Wrap, Stitch, Fold & Rivet".  The earrings were almost instantaneous.  Just bend the brass, wrap and add beads and my lovely Grandmother's embroidery floss.  I  made the spinner necklace which was pretty easy too.  I textured a piece of brass, and since it was not annealled it bent and went nice and wavy, then I used an overcooked fine silver bezel plate with a Sulphur Butterfly Wing in doming resin, a copper disk left from the kid's metals class I just taught and a PMC bit printed from a rubber stamp.  I think it worked out rather well.  I have been waiting for the correct format to experiment with the butterfly, moth and dragonfly wings.

Tomorrow I will be putting in some of the projects from the metals class I taught at the Lander Art Center.  I had two sessions of 10 kids for a total of eight hours each.  They soldered, forged, sawed, drilled, stamped, roller-milled, and cut disks and domed them.  With a few exceptions it was a success.

This is a mixed necklace to go with Saturday's bracelet.  I love the combination of blue, purple and green with a purple/red spacer.  Hope you enjoy it.

This is mixed turquoise, sodalite, blue quartz and garnet with pmc charms and a pmc toggle.  It is fun to make.  I like a mix of things although there has to be an overall design that makes a mixed piece go together.

Skied again today and worked.  I am very tired.  This real work is hard!

Third piece/third day

I am feeling lazy today so I am submitting this as my piece.  Not very complicated, but it will keep me on track.  It is a Dictamnus seed pod (Gasplant) filled from the inside with PMCIII paste.  One side has a dichroic glass cab and the other has a cubic zirconia, so it is reversible.