Oh so busy!

Wow. Things have been super busy at the gallery!! The town of Skaneateles had it's annual sidewalk sale last weekend and the shop was booming! I sold my scarab beetle which was designed after an ancient Egyptian piece of jewelry. Artizanns gallery sold one of my cicada pendants. These are cast in solid sterling silver from the body of a real cicada and the wings are hand-pierced and are moveable. These are two of my very favorite pieces, time consuming to make, but so fun and unique when they're done. There is a lot of sybolism behind the images of both these insects. The cicada is an ancient symbol of "immortality, resurrection, and spiritual ecstasy". The french often give something in the form of a cicada as a housewarming gift.

On August 21 &22 I'll be at the Sonnenberg Gardens Arts at the Gardens show in Canandaigua, NY. http://www.artsatthegardens.org/. This is my first year there. I'm very excited as it is a big juried show with a very good reputation, not to mention that it's in a beautiful historic setting. I'm really looking forward to it, but I need to work work work until then so I have a good inventory for the show!

sweet birdy!!

This is part of a series I've been working on this summer. The bird was originally hand-formed in wax, then cast. He (or she!) is soldered to a cast twig; the original was picked in my front yard. Each one is a little different. This birdy is my favorite. The long skinny beak reminds me of a kingfisher.

day one!

Today I start this blog. I want to provide a place for friends to have insight into the creative process behind my metalwork, to see projects finished, in process, and the journey of creating them. This blog will for now be in place of a website, and I encourage communication, questions, etc..

I sometimes think about design aesthetics of many different mediums, and how they relate to each other. For many years I was a pianist. (I'm terribly out of practice now). I'm fascinated by the relationship of sound to visual design, how the two are so closely linked. I think that the same elements and patterns that are found in music are also found in the visual arts, architecture, design. Maybe this seems very abstract. I spend a lot of time pondering rhythm, balance, symmetry, and asymmetry. Do these elements when applied to sound, design, or for that matter, stories, narratives, even life patterns, all evoke human reaction in essentially the same way? For instance, if a person is attracted to discord, will that person seek the same rhythms of discord in music, art, and the rhythms of their life? I think that many questions like this can be explained in mathematical terms. For instance, Beethoven, certainly a genius, had a divine ability to create. His music is a journey through symetry, asymetry, pattern, rhythm, discord, etc, and all these relate to the intricate psychology of human pleasure, and human struggle. Clearly he was a tortured man, but out of his struggles he created intense beauty. So what does this have to do with math? I think that the rhythms of life are in a sense mathematical. But in this context, math is not reductive, but infinite. This is what I woke up thinking about. Now I will have more coffee and work on some metal...perhaps with a Beethoven cd to keep me company!