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These pieces are brooches and rings that are enamels, bezel set in sterling silver. Enamel is glass fired onto metal. Mine are mostly torch fired, although I occasionally use the kiln for a firing or two. Enamels in this series usually go through at least fifteen firings to build up a complex surface. Pieces are sometimes hammered after the first few firings to expose shards surrounding raw copper. This may happen repeatedly. Gold leaf is added in the last few firings. I prefer gold leaf to gold foil because it breaks into textrues that evoke both erosion and growth. Sunrise, sunset, and crepuscular light are suggested. It is the time between the sunny world of daytime and the dangerous world of night. Lumps of thicker glass are sometimes added, then allowed through repeated firings to erode into complex shapes. The pieces not only evoke growth and erosion, but exemplify it, additions being growth, the accidental occurances being erosion. The effects of heat on glass achieves surfaces that I was never able to approach in oil or acrylic.
Think of these new pieces as tiny wearable sculptures. They have a rough, brutal form that contrasts with the refinement of finished stones and pearls. The smooth machined shapes of commercial jewelry, and even most studio art jewelry leave me cold. The precious metals are highly workable -- I want my jewelry to express this instead of hiding it.
Pattern bores me if it is repetitive; I prefer Berg to Bach, the forest floor to a parquet floor, and the movements of an amoeba to the movment of an automobile.
Play is instrumental to the task. I work with arrangements of fabricated parts. Metal's workability allows the parts flow together in places. Forms develop through repeated fabrication and destruction.
I forge, grind, stamp, engrave, etch, and carve the pieces throughout their fabrication. The result is a wide variety of textures and metal colors across the piece.
Many pieces approach but break symmetry. Imagine the piece as it would be if it were symmetrical. Did you ever visit the ruins of a past civilization? Remember how you had to reconstruct the buildings in your mind?
None of the new pieces are cast.
I use a micro torch (center) for fusing and texturing.
Enamel (glass melted onto metal) is also
torch fired.
These are silver bars at an early
stage of forging after being poured into an ingot mold.
They have been hand hammered into rectangular sections from the cylindrical ingots.
I seldom buy sheet these days because I begin developing texture of the piece
from the earliest stages. Some of these will eventually be hammered into sheet,
but it will not be of uniform thickness like commercial sheet.
