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!
Happy Birthday!
For Lord of the Rings fanatics like myself, September 22 is Bilbo and Frodo’s Birthday.
I’ve always felt that my journey as a jeweler started with these books as I first read them back when I was an apprentice jeweler in high school. I fancied myself as Celembrimbor, the ancient elvish smith who made the 3 Elvish rings worn by Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond.
Although this is older custom work, I’ve always loved the visual quality of the Elvish letters.
It is possible to view ancient Viking ships in person in museums like the 
Viking Ship Museum in Olso, Norway. Their amazing preservation after being buried for centuries helps us to understand their construction and design. Although I personally have not visited these ships, many others have and there are many resources online for research which I have used in my work.
In Fall 2016, I was about halfway through grad school and I was working on a body of work based on the forms of traditional ships, I came across an amazing video showing the construction of a modern version of a Viking longship. The Draken Harald Hårfagre was designed using a combination of designs using artifacts in museums along with the shipbuilding traditions of Scandinavia, this ship was built from May 2010 – Dec 2011 to sail the seas in the wake of its forebears. Continue reading An Ancient Viking Ship in Modern Times
I’ve always been interested in inspiration and the creative process. Where do our ideas come from? How can two different artists find different impressions from the same content?
As individual artists, we look at the world in front of us and find the fuel that powers our ideas. But that fuel is processed through our individual experiences and knowledge. It is changed and filtered with the vision of what we have seen and what we visualize.
In grad school I interviewed one of the world’s most accomplished goldsmiths, Giovanni Corvaja. As I usually do when speaking to someone I admire, I asked about his creative process and received one of the most intuitive answers to this question.
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.
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.
Continue reading Navicella Fibulae at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
