Category: Inspiration

Posts about what inspires my work

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Home Waters at Glen Foerd

I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. The Delaware River has been a part of my world as long as I can remember. My parents’ car drove over the bridges into New Jersey. Back then I though all the boundaries between states were rivers and bridges. We visit the USS Olympia where it was docked on the River in Fishtown where my father’s family lived.

When I grew up and got married I lived in Bristol Borough, also on the Delaware River. We launched our first sailboat onto the Delaware and realized quickly the challenges of having a sailboat without a motor on a river with both commercial shipping and a swift current. We moved it to a nearby lake in Tullytown, but the Delaware remained my home waters as our next couple of sailboats grew out of the confines of nearby Lake Van Sciver.

I’m so thrilled to be having an exhibit of my work at Glen Foerd. It’s a gilded age mansion in Northeast Philadelphia located on the banks of the Delaware. The first floor library looks out onto the river through floor to ceiling windows and is the perfect place to show my work that is inspired by not only the shapes of ships, but my own time living on the Delaware river on a sailboat. The exhibit will be on display from June 30, 2024 to July 31. It can be view during Glen Foerd’s open hours and I’ll be giving an artist talk about my work on Saturday July 13, 2024 at 1:00pm. I do hope you will join me.

 

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Navicella Fibulae at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

It’s no secret I’m a boat geek. I admire the lines of a well-designed vessel from ancient times to the present. Center of Effort vs Center of Lateral Resistance is the naval architecture jargon for it, however such a techy phrase translates to the graceful movement of a boat harnessing one natural force- the wind to move through another natural force- a body of water.

Of course it was inevitable that my Masters of Fine Art Thesisexplored the idea of vessels becoming wearable by interacting with the human body and I have continued this work in recent pieces as well, such as the Viking Ship penannular pin. I constantly find connections between jewelry and boat design. So naturally I’m delighted when I find more of these connections.

Medusa
Tiny Pendant in the form of a gorgoneion from Cyrpus 450 BC

Yesterday I found myself at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. My best friend, Patty and I try to go on an immersive “artist date” at least once a year. The Met is one of our favorite venues and we both have enjoyed looking at the images of Medusa in art history together so we decided to make sure to see the special exhibit Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art. It was a small exhibit, but we enjoyed it.

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The Middle Eastern Puzzle Ring

Middle Eastern puzzle rings have been a part of my life since childhood. My father purchased two of them in Pakistan in the early 1960s when he was in the merchant marines. They bore the rough texture of sand casting in several places and they were very thin in the back.

Mom's puzzle rings
Puzzle Rings purchased by my dad in Pakistan in the early 1960s.

So thin in fact that I had to repair them for my mother several times over the years even though she rarely wore them. This was a design flaw in my opinion, but perhaps they were produced for tourists like my dad. After all, he only paid one American dime for each of them. He immediately threw away the instructions and entertained himself on the ship by trying to figure out the puzzle.

My mother called them “trick rings” and kept them hidden away for the most part. (With five children, I would do the same.)  In my early jewelry career, I wanted to recreate them and asked to borrow them. They had such sentimental value to her that she wouldn’t let them leave the house. So I spent some time drawing each individual ring as well as how they were assembled. It was necessary to study the “puzzle” of how they fit together – taking apart and reassembling them many times. Then I went home to my shop and spent about 12 hours creating my first puzzle ring. Continue reading The Middle Eastern Puzzle Ring

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My heart on your finger

Humans have expressed themselves through personal ornament for as long as we have existed. The way we dress, wear our hair and mark our bodies are all ways for us to communicate, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways.

Jewelry may be the oldest form of  art and personal ornament with the very earliest artifacts going back to the dawn of humanity. Ancient jewelry of beads and bone held meaning that we can only guess. But the tradition of assigning meaning to the jewelry we wear has continued.

Color Inlay Ring

Custom word ring 14K

The poesy ring was popular in Medieval times and was engraved with words or phrases that held meaning to the wearers as a token of love and esteem. I became interested in the idea of words and rings about the same time I became interested in jewelry making as a career.

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The Anti-Aggressor Battle Fan 3000

This past Fall I tried something different to market my work and exhibited at a boat show.  It seemed like a good fit and that experience itself will be the subject of its own blog post later, but part of the experience helped launch a different project.

Coriander Woodruff is an artist, photographer and the daughter of my best friend, Patricia Woodruff. She was helping me out at the boat show, along with my good friend Anita, former proprietor of Sparkle’s Jewelry of West Melbourne, FL. We are three people experienced in sales of this kind, yet it was astounding to us the amount of “free advice” we gals received from the male businessmen whose booths surrounded us.

The interior of the vending tents was stifling for October. Coriander carried a metal framed martial arts fan that we all shared at times. First it just seemed like a sturdy accessory that helped to cool us, but then we realized that it could act as a barrier and deterrent to the “man-splaining” we were finding ourselves subject to hearing.

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Sophia & the Hose Clamp

During the late 1990s I lived on a sailboat docked on Toms River in Pine Beach, NJ.  It was a beautiful place to live, but I was feeling a little isolated from friends and family. I was able to connect online with a group of women that eventually formed the core of an intentional family for me. We met in diners, each other’s homes and sometimes on the beach to celebrate the seasons. It was a magical time that lasted almost three years. As time passed we scattered, but all of these women still hold a special place in my heart.

Sophia probably wandered the most, moving to the UK for several years and then returning to the US to settle in Maryland. Sometime last Fall she returned to her native Ohio to be with family and start anew. I was delighted to hear from her in November.

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Jewelry of Ideas

Lovely awning detail at the entrance to the Cooper Hewitt.

About 4 years ago when I returned from a study abroad program in the UK, I realized that part of what made that trip such an amazing experience was the fact that where ever we went, we found jewelry to look at. In galleries, museums, schools and artist studios. I missed that and, upon my return, suddenly realized that it didn’t take a lot of effort to continue that experience here in my own country.  Since then, I’ve tried to make an effort that whenever I travel, I look for museum exhibits and galleries that feature art jewelry, innovative craft and opportunities to connect with other jewelry artists.

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Is Hand Made Jewelry really made by hand?

The artisan jewelry market is growing in recent years with more and more people turning their jewelry making hobby into a side business. One only has to walk through the craft section of a book store or the jewelry making aisle in your local craft store to see how popular it is to make jewelry.

So what is hand made jewelry? Continue reading Is Hand Made Jewelry really made by hand?

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Where does inspiration come from?

The inspiration for jewelry design can come in many different areas. Nature, architecture, even the human body itself can offer ideas and forms for creating a piece of jewelry. Because the jewelry is usually an expression of the person wearing it, design is as varied as individual people.

The nature of wave forms and my visualization of the way they travel through water and air has inspired much of my work in recent years. Doodles and sketches in the margins of my notebooks end as a labyrinth that grows organically to eventually take over a the entire page.

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