Thanks to the Northeast Times and to Metro Philadelphia for their coverage of my current art exhibit, Home Waters at Glen Foerd. Check out the articles linked below!
https://northeasttimes.com/2024/07/04/new-art-exhibit-at-glen-foerd/
Glen Foerd exhibit showcases wearable sculptures by local jewelry artist
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.
I saw a tiktok making fun of the fact that people always say “I can’t believe it’s November…” Yes, my friends, despite arriving at a regular and predicatable intervals, November always seems to take us by surprise.
There’s no question that 2021 has been another year of not-quite-normal. But here we are..November. And the many year end holidays are here. If you have been watching the news, you may have noticed how the supply chain from Asia is having big trouble and panic is setting in about whether you’ll be able to buy what you need for holiday gifts.
The solution is right here. Buy local, buy from small businesses and buy from independent artists.
Check out CraftBoston holiday online to see my work alongside the work of other independent artists. This online show opens Friday November 12 and runs all the way to January 30. Time enough for all of the many different winter holidays all the way into 2022.
And keep an eye on my shop as I add new and different products through out the season.
Happy Diwali!
Did you know I make jewelry inspired by Bharatanatyam Dance? I’m on the board of Usiloquy Dance Designs, a non-profit dance company in Philadelphia?
And if you are out and about in Philadelphia tomorrow Nov 6, 2021, get to Cherry Street Pier by 2pm and see Usiloquy Dance Designs in person!
The Smithsonian Craft show is online this year and that means you can see all the incredible juried work without a trip to Washington DC. We are thrilled to be part of the show this year and don’t want our community to miss out on this opportunity.
My online “booth” will feature a number of one-of-a-kind pieces as well as both Ripples, Ships and New Energy Ripples pieces. Get yours before they are gone.
Join us online!
After a few major snowfalls this winter, it’s been lovely to finally welcome Spring to the Philadelphia area. With the changing of the seasons, I’m thrilled to be participating with the Society of Arts and Crafts special online show Studs + Drops! This show feature many different kind of earrings, which are probably my favorite kind of jewelry to design. I’m excited to be showing seven of my most popular designs in this show.
Check out my work and the work of many other talented artists including Ellen Sisti and Julia Votto from Tyler School of Art MJCC.
Well it’s January 5th, the 12th night of Christmas.
Most years I celebrate the season from the Winter Solstice straight through to the 12th night. Of course this year was different, no parties, dinners or gatherings. One thing that wasn’t different was the steady stream of orders from my websites, custom work and online shows. I’m grateful for the opportunity to exhibit my work online, from my home and to complete a number of different custom pieces, from my niece Katie’s wedding rings early in December to a set of anniversary keychains that will be presented later this week.
A highlight for me were the pieces that finally arrived at their recipients today, who are parked at a goat farm in Arizona, just in time for the last day of Christmas.
See, my kid and their best friend, Coriander who is really more like a sister, have been off traveling the country in Gerti, their RV, for the last six months. It’s an interesting story, but it’s their story, not mine, so if you want to learn more about their grand adventure follow their Facebook group, the Cryptid Camper Crew .
For Gwen’s gift, I got to a long imagined redesign of my puzzle ring and since the kid has been wanting my hand wrought version for a number of years now, I sent the first version of the new design to them. Now me and the kid are wearing matching rings.
Coriander told me about an idea for a ring last summer. It’s been on my mind for a while and I managed to squeeze it in with all the other work this holiday season. Her ring says, Be Curious Be Kind. Coriander wrote a post about its meaning on her Patreon page. Which I highly encourage you to join if you love to look at beautiful art adventures. Both of these rings will be available for sale.
Happy 12th Night!
Moments like today I feel a deep gratitude for my tools and their history.
There are times when I can’t believe I’m working at my mentor, Leonard Wilson’s jewelry bench. Using his old torch and pliers used by his hands. The holidays always bring back memories of working in his store in Bristol, having a holiday drink which usually resulted in many broken sawblades. Lesson learned, Barb doesn’t have a drink until all the sawing is done. Ah, to be in my twenties again.
While cleaning up castings this morning, I needed a rough file to start and noticed it was a Disston file. Made right in the neighborhood here at Disston Saw Works in Tacony, this was one of Jack’s dad’s or granddad’s tools. I’m grateful to be in the house Jack’s dad purchased brand new in Fall 1941. Jack wasn’t one for fine tools, he was more a duct tape and epoxy clay kind of guy, but his father and grandfather’s tools were here in the house, along with wooden home made tool boxes made in the 1930s. I hold this file in my hand and feel it’s history. It’s still a very good file.
I had a little incident casting last night. I allowed too much metal for the button and the nose of my crucible fused to the button metal. I had to break the nose off the crucible to get the flask free. Not the first time it happened and certainly not the end of the world.
I cut the castings off and in order to free the crucible nose out of the silver, I would have to break it up. I pulled out a hammer made for breaking mortar. It belonged to my grandfather who was a brick pointer. I have many childhood memories of his work, his truck with the old English lettering he did himself, helping my dad build new steps at our house in D Street. Grampop supported a family with 11 children by brick pointing. I remember especially his emphasis on keeping your tools clean and cleaning them promptly. Eventually my dad inherited those tools and he used them to point his entire house. They’ve been sitting unused in my dad’s workshop since he passed away and knowing their history, I figured I’ll take them. Some of them I can use once in a while like this morning. I may be able to purpose some others into jewelry tools.
Or maybe I’ll just learn how to point bricks.
Each year I try to attend the annual conference of the Society of North American Goldsmiths aka SNAG. Since the first time I joined this group, I’ve felt like they are my art jewelry tribe and each year my friendships there deepen. This was my fifth time, so I did a few Instagram posts to cover the highlights, follow the links in the images to see more.
I’m really excited looking forward to next year when the SNAG conference will be taking place here in Philadelphia!
I usually describe myself as a jewelry artist and educator. There’s so much to the many jobs and roles I play in both my personal life and my community. In the last year my life has been shaken up a bit on the transitions of life.
Losing my friend Sophia spring gave me a wake up call that our life can end at any time, a lesson we all come to learn at some point. My father’s illness dominated most of Fall 2018 with my sisters and I attending to his direct care on a daily basis in addition to keeping up with our own lives. He passed just after New Years and the fragility of my mother’s condition immediately moved to the forefront. Several hospital stays, heart catherizations, weekly blood counts and she seemed to stabilize about mid March.
Then a call from Florida that rocked our world. My former husband, Lary passed in his sleep, a tragic surprise to everyone that knew him. We have not been together for fifteen years, but this loss hit me in the heart, both for my kid and for me. He was such an influence on my life and although we were no longer a couple, I thought of him as a friend.
With all this going on in the background of my life, my work continued. I’m continually refining my offerings of Fair Winds Jewelry and designed a new line of earrings based on the shapes of ships hulls during my father’s illness. I exhibited at CraftBoston Holiday in December and then the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore in February. Both shows were successful thanks to new pieces that were both hand fabricated in sterling silver and hand-dyed in 3D printed nylon.
And of course teaching continues to be a vocation for me. I taught Digital Object Design at Towson university this past Fall as well as CAD (Computer Aided Design) II at Tyler School of Art. In the Spring, I taught CAD I & CAD II at Tyler. I’m constantly inspired and impressed by the imagination of my students. I’ll post some of their work shortly.
I have continued to be the coordinator for Tacony LAB Community Arts Center. Scheduling and teaching classes, facilitating open studio times, organizing exhibitions and continuing to engage the community in arts is my daily mission there.
I hope this summary of where things are rolling with Fair Winds Jewelry and myself will serve as an introduction to the good things to come. Keep on reading!
