back in the sPRing of things...

i will be the first to admit that i've been in a rut since the new year. teaching threw my schedule (and my perfectionist-brain) into a tizzy, our housemates' newborn baby has my mind thinking about my own family, and quite frankly the economy has had me questioning what i'm doing. silvercocoon was founded in the spring of 2001 as a venue for me to sell the things that i make (i've always made things) but after september 11th, i went out and got a job and chalked the two 10-artist-sales that i organized as a hobby. i'll admit i have recently considered looking for more stable work, but i figure i should instead look for the lesson in having taken that route once before....i gained valuable retail & design experience and product knowledge during my years at redlurered and IKEA. taking that route then was the right decision at that time in my life. but i feel now that i am in a different place in my life as well as in my "making of things" i recognize that what i am doing now is essentially what i have been working towards my whole life and i owe it to myself to try to get it right. ..... perhaps i shouldn't always be so hard on myself. it is normal to be cyclical, like the seasons, like the grass that has transformed our yard to green again. rest is as important as action - if only so that we can recognize the difference....

these are the things that have been racing through my brain lately (you understand why i have been holding my blogging-tongue)

so, the VOLTAGE fashion show is tomorrow night. i'm excited that is has finally arrived...am thrilled that i'll be able to watch the show this time, and i cannot wait to finally be able to post images of the pieces that i've been developing for the past months. i see now that the creative process saved me yet again, pulling me out of my fears of failure and back into the joy of discovery: sketching new ideas, testing new techniques and materials, pushing and pulling to transform old into new, like the grass. i'm excited to share and will begin posting next week about them, so tay tuned....

"green" grass for easter

my son's easter basket

acrylic brooches

i'm now able to make {colorful} acrylic brooches to compliment the wood versions i've been making since last fall. i've been sporting this one on my black "puffy vest" .... an attempt to coax warmer (spring) weather back into our region. i am so thankful for the SUN the last two days -- it's a good start.....

creating a meal

it is telling of the excitement in our house these days - that it has taken one week for me to get around to blogging about this little dinner that i hosted for the "IKEA girls" {a small group of us, who worked together at IKEA have continued to keep in touch via a monthly dinner that we take turns hosting} i haven't hosted since our house-mates arrived from finland last august, and given the fact that one of my house-mates was 9 months pregnant on the night i was to host, i took the opportunity to host the dinner in the airstream this time. it turned out to be a cold day, despite glimpses of spring weather prior, so i cranked-up the space heater, cleaned the place up (from a previous "boys night") and did about 15 minutes worth of decorating. wish i would have had time to get some FRESH flowers.....

i kept the menu simple - considering the fact that the food needed to be transported (through the cold air) from the house to the camper, and since i really wanted to host the party exclusively in the airstream, i focused on food that could be made relatively in advance. i whipped-up (no recipe) a SPRING ROLL salad: made with vermicilli-rice noodles, sliced romain lettuce, bean sprouts and julianed carrots, cucumbers and red peppers. i made a simple dressing with vinegar, oil, soy sauce & sugar and topped with freshly roasted/crushed peanuts. and FRIED RICE: i started with fresh garlic and onions in some grapeseed oil, then added some diced sausage and let it cook-up before adding already-cooked jasmine rice to the pan. i then drizzled/squirted a good amount of soy sauce (not enough to make the rice brown, though!) and a bit of fish sauce and stirred to mix throughly, before making a hole in the middle of the rice so that i could see the bottom of the pan. i then cracked 2 eggs into that hole, added salt to the egg, and began mixing it all up so the egg started to coat the rice. once the egg wass evening mixed, i stirred periodically until i could hear the rice start to "fry" ... this is when i added the vegetables, adding a bit of salt with them so they take on some flavor. i added fresh snap peas, broccoli and red pepper this time, but my fried rice is different every time.

for desert i decided to try a new cookie recipe that my dear friend, meg, forwarded to me from parenting.com -- the SUMO SWEETS won the top prize in their recent cookie bake-off bonaza. they are very different from the types of cookies that i would normally make, but they sure are tasty! (so tasty in fact, i made a second batch the following day for a shower i was going to!) things i learned: i prefer cutting the white sugar down - either by half (1/2 cup), or by adjusting both sugars and doing half white half brown sugar (3/4 cup each). i also didn't use nearly as much of the honey as they say you need and feel that could be cut in half (while maintaining the same amount of wasabi powder). perhaps the most important part is with the bake time - follow their instructions - they look a bit under-cooked at the 8-10 minute mark, but they taste better than if you let them cook until they look more "done" -- if they start to get golden-brown, you've cooked them too long. if you put the honey on immediately, it kind of gets absorbed into the cookie, which is really lovely, but be sure you sprinkle the sesame seeds right away so that they stick to the honey before it gets absorbed. i honey&sprinkled them in batches of 3 instead of doing the whole sheet and going back to sprinkle. i must admit, it felt pretty good to see that mine looked just like the picture they provided. YUM> i highly recommend them!

fashion shows

last friday i dropped off a small selection of jewelry for my friend martha who was one of the designers featured in the (first ever) fashion show at gallery 360. i wasn't able to stay for the show but was happy that i got to spend about an hour backstage with martha and the models to test out the outfits and jewelry before hand. i recognized 3 of the models from the fall flair show that i did last fall and just being there before the show got me excited about the next fashion show that i'll be a part of: VOLTAGE is dubbed the biggest fashion show of the year in Minneapolis and is held in main room at First Ave as part of minnesota fashion week. 10 runway designers will be featured along with 5 additional designers who will outfit each of the live bands that will be playing during the show. my jewelry will be paired with one of the runway designers and together we will be showcasing 10 individual looks. the people running the show have proven to be quite organized and apparently have taken a more hands-on approach when it comes to styling the show as one larger entity this year. this means that i am going to get to watch the show this time! as fun as it was being backstage at la bodega - i can't wait to see everything come to life with my own eyes!

honestly, i am so new to the fashion world, i hadn't heard of Voltage until last fall .. but needless to say, i am starting to get excited. i wanted to mention this one early because tickets are already on sale here - and from what i hear it is usually packed .. and a lot of fun! if you are planning to attend, let me know and i'll keep an eye out for you!

release....

i have officially finished teaching my workshop at the University. the final review was on tuesday and i spent about 18 hours grading and giving what ended-up being lengthy comments to each of my 20 students before the last day of class on thursday. it might be obvious from the lack of activity on this blog, how consuming this teaching-process has been for me. but the sure-fire sign is the fact that i started getting sick on wednesday morning - release of pressure after the review? most certainly!

i have touched on this subject earlier on this blog, but because this was my first time teaching, i found myself over-analyzing every little thing. wondering if my intentions for each exercise worked out as i had envisioned. were my students learning anything? when designing the workshop, there were a couple broad notions that i wanted my assignments to provoke and that i wanted my students to take away:

1) i wanted them to have the experience of working through the design process - to have gone through the basic steps so that they could have a point of reference for learning about the tools that work well for them, the steps of the process that could have informed them better, and simply a means for approaching a new project with some insight into themselves.

2) i wanted them to become conscious of the power of editing and consistency in the presentation of their work -- considering the idea of marketing and how the notion of product could be extended beyond a physical object; considering their ideas or even themselves as products.

3) i wanted to instill a practice of allowing time for documentation ... i set a standard format for all of my assignment sheets and used the same standard format (in print and digitally) as the required outcome for all of the exercises leading up to the final project. the last assignment was for them to compile the work they had generated into a 'folio' of sorts - that was mostly about record-keeping for themselves. part of this allotment of time included intentionally scheduling the review for the 2nd to the last day of class so that the last day of class could function as a recap - an opportunity to talk about how they felt the review went and for me to hand back grades.

the recap day (hopefully) allowed my students to put the final review into perspective. as hard as it can be to get students to converse in a class this size, we had a good discussion about the positive and frustrating feelings that came out of presenting their work to guest jurors who viewed it and critiqued it with fresh eyes and professional perspectives. the recap allowed me to share with them the lessons that i felt they should be taking away from both the review and the workshop - and it also evolved into a mini re-view where they gave me feedback on the workshop itself. they all filled out anonymous course evaluations, which i am sure i will see at some point in time ... but honestly the discussion was the very best closure i ever could have asked for. (that and the handful of students who came and thanked me before they left.) i felt, finally, that i could look objectively at the course and see the opportunities for tweaking, but more importantly (for my sanity) to acknowledge its many successes. {s i g h} now i just need to get over this sickness...

custom_brain_work

this is a custom piece that i made for a woman in nevada whose business is all about brains. i had conceived of the piece in a similar way to other two-layer pieces i have done, but the intricacy of the brain's detail was too fragile for it to be a practical piece of jewelry.

i ended-up doing an in-lay (sort of) version that incorporated the "waste" of one piece into the top layer of the original design. it is was a simple move, but one that resulted from the making step of my design process.

sometimes i feel like i am moving in slow motion. that my designs develop through a series of drawn-out steps - from mental pondering, to sketching, to thinking in-scale via autocad, to testing it out my making/cutting, and then tweaking and retesting based on the results - discovering different tidbits with each step. (i am fortunate that i can be hands-on with the laser-cutter, because i learn a lot through the act of cutting my own pieces.) perhaps my process is more drawn-out because i am juggling multiple things and my making simply needs to flex with my schedule. however, i've always maintained that design takes time - whether jewelry or interior design or architecture - some solutions just take time to arrive.

i've been thinking a lot about the design process and the importance of having a variety of ways to 'test' ones ideas. my students are in thick of developing their design projects for the final review that is in about 10 days. i have been meeting with them individually and in groups to review their progress and to help them navigate through the process of developing their ideas and determining the best ways to communicate them. for some the making is a result of a solid idea and for others the idea is solidified through the exploration of making. each of us has our own way and our own collection of tools to discover and express our intentions. it has been invigorating for me to witness 20 different ways, concentrated on a similar problem. learning by teaching and teaching by learning.

mental occupation....

i've been unusually busy and mentally occupied the last few weeks as i am adjusting to a temporarily-full schedule and the added role of "adjunct professor" -- which is intimidating in and of itself. my class {of 20 students} meets twice a week and will last a total of 8 weeks. all in all everything is going well and the students are producing work that meets and exceeds my expectations while surprising me at the same time. the element that i didn't expect is the mental weight that comes along with it. i feel like my brain is constantly percolating with thoughts of what i need to do, what i should have done, what worked, what could use tweaking if i ever teach the workshop again - not to mention the responsibility of holding students to a common standard when it comes to the basic maintenance of attending a class as well as reviewing them/their work evenly. i was pretty stressed the first week or so, but i must remind myself that it is my first time and other adjunct-faculty that i've spoken to all say that it gets easier the more you do it. it's already gotten easier, actually. -- my respect and awe of my friend martha (who has been teaching for at least 8-9 years) has grown immensely in the past weeks, and it was already pretty high to begin with.

some highlights so far:

(1) i brought in local architect, Ralph Nelson, to talk about a side project/product that he and his firm, LOOM, have developed called 12 blocks. you can read about it here. (and see an article about it here.) ralph is unbelievably articulate when it comes to talking about his design perspective and process and did not disappoint with his presentation to my students. he, too, has been teaching longer than i've been out of school, and is someone for whom i have immense respect.

(2) i took my students on a "field trip" to visit the BLU DOT headquarters that are located right here in minneapolis. i've known people at blu dot for many years now (since working "with" them while at redlurered) - but it was really fun for me to take the tour to see how much they have grown and evolved in recent years. the breadth of their product range is continuously growing, the scope of their work is expanding, and the strength of their marketing is becoming more and more reflective of the "blu dot personality" - you can see their catalog as a PDF here. medora was a fantastic host and provided an insightful narrative to blu dot's history and approach to design.

so, this week i'll be meeting with each student to discuss the direction they'll be taking for the final project. i can't wait to see what they're cooking up!

more updates

back in december after the silvercocoon sale, martha and i made a trade. i got this lovely scarf (that i wear constantly) and martha chose the grey version of my single layer HIVE necklace. i love this picture that she posted on her blog!

i'm happy to report that both the grey and black HIVE necklaces are now available in my shop. -- my first intention during the design development of this necklace was to make it a double-layered piece like so many of my others - and i liked the idea of contrasting colors etc. -- but, for some reason, in actuality the double layers just did not feel as good as a single layer version. the lightness of the single layer then required a more flexible neck wire than the ones i had been using. i opted for a small "ball" chain in sterling silver that is considerably less expensive than the the ones i use for other designs, and there is a practical quality to this chain that i really like. all of these moves positively affect my prices, which always feels good -- {for the record, i have been making the wood versions of the HIVE necklace double-layered (like the brooches) on the original sterling neck wires - mostly for strength & durability sake - but they are more in line with my other prices.}

i am a pretty practical person - one who cares about my appearance, but who also has so much going on that there isn't always time to "doll" myself up. this being said, i wear a black HIVE necklace nearly everyday - mostly because it is so light that i barely notice that i have it on - but also because it makes me feel like my boring little self can be "salvaged" when i have it on.

SO - the added ease and practicality that was reached with the acrylic HIVE necklaces got me thinking and revisiting some of my older designs. I have created a single-layer version of the POMEGRANATE necklace with the same sterling chain -- the translucent and red versions are also available in my shop. others are on their way as well.....

red valentine

i've posted some red items in my shop today in honor of valentines day, which is a week and a half away. {red POMEGRANATE earrings will be added by friday} everything that i put in the shop is already made, so that means items ship out within a day of ordering.