new earrings

these are the new earrings that i 'debuted' at the Walker sale. -- they come in 2 sizes...

...in black, red, orange, yellow & ivory...

and in a variety of woods including a new species: purpleheart that i am trying for the first time (upper left)

always concerned with the delicacy of cut-material and brittle-ness of certain woods - i've also tried layering 2 woods.

layering the materials makes the earrings thicker and a little more substantial. but the best part is that they are 'reversible' -- the smaller pair show here is walnut on one side and basswood on the other.

right now i am calling them the DRAPE earring (if you have any better ideas for their name, i'm open to suggestions!)

walker:display

i can't believe it has taken me over a week to post these pictures from the Walker Jewelry Mart! now that the weather is sooo lovely (and we've expanded our vegetable garden by 200%) i'm finding it harder to carve time away to blog --- (i will try harder, though, because the act of blogging helps me feel more grounded in what i've done and need to do)

the Walker Jewelry Artist Mart was a lot of fun this year. it was held in the Cargill Lounge for the first time, and i must say that i liked that space better than the skyline room because it sits between the entrances to two main galleries and it attracted gallery-goers who might not have otherwise found us upstairs. the energy was great and the place was full of people all day long! the added offerings (there were approx. 8 more artists than in previous sales) seemed to bring in more people instead of more competition which was fantastic for me! i had a great day - thanks to all of you who came out to look as well as those who purchased from me. i am happy to report that i sold out of the new BUNCH necklaces !!

i "spiced-up" my display a little this time: using one of our 3ft. trees to display earrings, adding 2 small image boards on each side of the tree, and displaying pricing on formatted cards that included small drawings of each item to keep information as clear as possible. -- i hate having to price each individual piece because tags distract so much from the work itself. it probably didn't save me any time, when all was said and done, but that's OK. i like the way that it looked.

recent press discoveries

we have received a smattering of exciting press mentions in the last couple weeks. an image of my HIVE brooch was included in vita.mn's mention of the Walker Jewelry Mart as well as in a beautiful print-piece from the Walker that my sister-in-law (in duluth) discovered in her New York Times 2 saturdays ago!

my HIVE necklace was included on designmilk.com as part of her guest-curator role on etsy.com! she was asked to pick 15 things to feature that she felt were "inspiring, different, and brave" {i like her even more because she used a comma after different! -- something that i do but others have debated me on...}

i was also pictured with karin jacobson and adrienne grahn in the "face time" section of the start tribune on may3rd for the voltage show. i've always wondered who those people are and now i can say i was one of them!

and i finally got my hands on a bona-fide hard copy of Nordic Reach magazine - expecting to see the same picture from their web-version of my article .... and to my utter surprise, there i was - a full page of me, frizzy-haired, holding my marimekko umbrella in front of the Spoon and (old) Cherry! the article Finnish by Osmosis, is probably my favorite to date. it really touches on my roots both culturally and in terms of the roots my parents gave me.... as a mother, i now recognize how easily a child can be influenced and how hard it can be do a good a job of it.

on the architectural/interior design side of things, we've also been included in Metro magazine as one of 3 firms to watch for (nice!) and my son Silo's room is featured in the Roomology section of Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine. both of these are in the current, MAY, issues of each respective magazine.

we've updated the press section of our website. use the little arrows on the bottom left corner to navigate and if there is an article you want to read, click on the little PDF below the appropriate image and the article should be legible in the larger format.

saturday 11-5 at the WALKER Art Center

re-new ribbon

i've been putting these ribbons around my gift boxes when i send them out to customers -(i've also been known to wrap 1 or 2 baby gifts with them too!)- they are made from the bags that my fruit and veggies ... and other food items come in. i love the structure of it, its screen-quality, as well as the variety of colors and textures that it comes in. if you're going to throw-away your own bags like this and would be willing, instead, to collect and send them to me, i would gladly repay you with jewelry ;)

hand.craft

i will have a few TOPO bracelets in wood at the Walker Mart this saturday. i've been exploring and experimenting with layers, as well as introducing more "handwork" in the finishing details of these bracelets - creating a richness that i am excited to explore further.

...i've also revisited the CHAIN necklace and introduced "handwork" into its connections as well - using leather as chain instead of the metal rings in the previous rendition. the leather turns it into a more casual piece that can be worn with jeans and a t-shirt - where i envision the original version on a woman entering the guthrie or ordway theaters.

derivatives, variations : derivations

when i was first asked to be a part of VOLTAGE, my mind started racing with ideas of new things: new forms, materials, and even processes. i have several pages of sketches that are complete departures from what i have been doing the past 2 years and i was pretty psyched. however, i was *technically* asked to design pieces for another designer's collection, and when i started getting images of the actual pieces and certain details end-up being different than my interpretation of early sketches, i paused and took a step back. if it was a fashion show only about my accessories, i would have blown full speed ahead, but Arwyn Birch's collection was bold in a way that required me to boldly contrast, while also quietly complimenting her. i started revisiting my exisiting work, looking for opportunities to exaggerate it for the runway while also fitting each individual outfit.

these hollow and solid BUNCH necklaces are an example of the derivations from my original designs (example below). in addition to a larger bunch of rings, and their orientation, i used leather strips for the neck pieces and hand-stitched them. (one of the processes i had been trying to incorporate) and in the wood necklace, i oxidized (using eggs) the sterling silver to reduce the contrast between the wood and the metal.

i also found it very helpful to create these visual collages for each outfit -(similar to the types of collages i do for interior design projects)- so that once an outfit was complete, i could free up some of the visual memory in my head .... seeing it "complete" helped me let go and stop thinking about it while i was cooking dinner or doing laundry, and allowed me to instead think about the outfits that weren't done. it also worked out well to print them out and put them on the boxes (shown earlier) to keep things organized backstage at the show.

i plan to have a few of these at the Walker Jewelry Mart this saturday... along with some other new(er) stuff that i will share in my next post.