Carla M Fox Metalsmith

This last month was literally such a whirlwind of events I’m still spinning. It’s been a rough year for us with weather. Starting with the torrential rains at the Belleville Illinois show we traveled on to Des Moines, hoping for better days. Its one of our favorite shows, we love the town, the organizers are the best, and this year we had a great hosts with a beautiful art-filled home to stay with.

DMAF before the storm

We set up our booth Friday morn, went home and showered and were ready to open it up at 2 pm when the show opened.  We had a great first day on Friday & went home happy to our hosts who had beer and snacks ready for us. We like being hosted.

In the middle of the night our cell phone rang and Stephen King the director told us our booth had flipped and though his staff was working to help out we probably should come down and see what we could do. What we found was a scrambled mess. A freak wind-rain storm snuck into Des Moines and wrecked havoc with the show. Four booths (one being ours) were flipped and the interiors twirled and tossed. The show staff had saved as much art and supplies as they could and moved them to a safe place. Fortunately for us our jewelry was with us and we didn’t have to worry about lost art. But the rest was lost. Our canopy has been torn, torqued, tossed and totaled. Much of our display is broken (all our glass), wet and ruined, scattered, or soaked.

Dave surveying the remains

our wall zipper minus the wall

Is this really OUR booth?!

One of our corner connectors, torn from its leg

The next day we unpacked all the things we had jammed in the van in the hurry of the night before and sorted through things, dried out what we could, threw away a bunch of things. And so it goes. This is a double hit for us as we have display and canopy to replace and we lost 2 days of income as we lost 2 days of sales. Sigh. We bid Des Moines a sad farewell and headed home to redo, replace, repair, remake our booth.

Unloading the van to dry everything out

I must comment on the Des Moines Art Festival staff. They were there when the storm hit and were able to mitigate a lot of damage and ruin through their quick response to the storm. Without their actions things would have been so much worse. They stayed up all night helping out artists and were still up the next day, restoring tents, returning saved artwork to artists, checking weather reports. They also rented tents for all artists who lost theirs should they want to continue with the show. Kudos to DMAF! They were the best.

With the help of friends and fellow artists once home we pieced piecing back together as we have a full show schedule from now until September. And this has been the golden lining in all our troubles. We are surrounded with some of the best people in the world. It sounds hack-eyed, but knowing they are out there worrying, caring, cheering for us has made the recover so much easier. We made it to the Salem, Oregon with our “new” booth and display materials. At Bellevue, WA we were inside a parking garage out of the weather. Never has a parking garage looked so lovely. We are back up and running, still slightly twirled by events, but well on the road to full recovery.

Back up and running with a squeaky clean new booth-Salem OR

Carla

But the in between was grand.

The house sitters were in place, the dog sent to the dot for a vacation, and we hit the road to Belleville, Illinois, just south of St Louis. For two weeks, Dave, the hub, had been giving me updates on the weather in St Louis. “It’s in the 80′s,” he’s been repeating. Sounds wonderful to me. I packed my accordingly, I was tired of a sloppy wet winter-spring.

As we pulled out of Bend on an overcast day I looked forward to driving into warmer dryer weather. Hey, we were heading south. I pulled on some early summer clothes hopped into the van and bid the house and studio a fond farewell. This is what we drove into.

In Laramie, Wyoming-May 12, 2010, they closed all south and east highways. With 500 miles a day to do, sitting on the edge of a snowy freeway was not in the game plan. But it was Mom Nature’s plan. We joined a long line of trucks waiting for the freeway to be plowed and reopened. Sigh.

Our next decision was to go through Kansas or Nebraska? I voted for the southern route as it had to be drier and warmer, but as we checked we found that route had tornado warnings on. Nebraska it was.

No storm can cover a country from the west coast to the midwest, but seemingly this storm did or it was chasing us. We finally pulled into Belleville, Illinois Thursday eve in the rain. And so the weekend went. Rain, some clearing as a tease, and more rain.

View from our booth.

The good news is that Belleville folks are no more intimidated by a little rain then they are  in the Pacific NW. The crowds were out, they loved the art, and best for us artists they bought. Hooray! Thank you Belleville. One can withstand a soggy show if company and appreciative clients abound. We were treated like royalty, given great food, show every hospitality by the 500+! volunteers and even awarded a prize for excellence that came with  $! This show rated as one of our best ever shows, even with the rain!

We packed up Sunday eve, damp, but happy and it was on to our next show. Problem is that it won’t happen for 5 weeks and is in Des Moines, Iowa. We decided that the best thing to do was store the van with the booth and fly home. This good decision turned into a great decision when it rained the last few minutes as we loaded up and all our carefully dried out things got wet again.

Once in Des Moines we rented a storage unit, unpacked and re-dried off our booth and its various pieces, gave our hard-working van a run through a car wash and locked the door on it all.

Drying out the booth - Des Moines 2010

Now we are thinking we’re pretty clever folks. We’ve braved snow, freeway closures, tornado warnings, torrential rain, figuring out how to dry out and store a very wet booth, and we have our earnings and prize money in hand.

But wait….we’re not home yet. We board a plane in Des Moines with a long stopover in the Dallas International Airport. While waiting to fly home we decide to have a meal & we both pick out a healthy, fresh, yummy salad, all sealed up in safe plastic. We arrive Tuesday eve and Wednesday morn Dave wakes me up to say he’s not feeling so good. Hummmm. I’m fine….must be HIS problem. By Thursday its my problem too. A raging case of food poisoning hit us both. No details, ya’ll been there, done that….but yegawds what a homecoming. We both took to our bed and I didn’t pop back up for almost a week. Is this a result of feeling smug and clever, I dunno. But it sure took the starch outta my sails.

Happily we’re all recovered, the rain is STILL coming down, its JUNE for gawd-sakes! and I’m back at the bench getting ready for Des Moines. We will reclaim our booth from the storage facility, repack our van, and go to downtown Des Moines and do it all over again.

I hope to see you there!

Every once in a while someone comes into the booth, regards my jewelry and asks, “Are you making this with pmc?”  NO, NEVER!!!! I want to shout, but I gulp and moderate it down to, “No, all my work is sterling silver and I do my own etching.” Now if they are really foolish they will gaze again at my work and particularly my box clasps and tell me I should use pmc. I am usually less moderate with my next answer.

But what is PMC and why am I not happy when asked if I use it and even less happy when told I should use it? It is precious metal clay that is fine silver suspended in a clay medium. It has a great appeal to hobbyists and people without technical metalsmithing skills. I am neither. Once a piece is made in pmc it is fired and becomes (if done correctly) fine silver. I have “issues” with pmc but that is for another blog entry. Today it’s about what I do to get the etched patterns on my pieces.

First, I always work in sterling silver because of its strength and its ability to accept patinas. Fine silver is not a strong metal and it won’t take a patina. Etching sterling involves a vile chemical process that I have worked long and hard to perfect, plus it’s just plan hard work. Stamping a design on a piece of  metal clay is easy. Etching is a several day process.

Because of the time involved I always do several sheets of sterling silver at one time. This means it’s expensive too, so I go slowly as I don’t want any mistakes. I do have sheets of etched silver that are just downright ugly and unusable. I have learned. My etching starts long before I ever don my acid gear and put on a respirator. First, I must create patterns that I want to etch into the sterling. This usually involves many drafts and finally I scan the final version into my computer where I employ both Photoshop and Illustrator to clean up the final artwork.

Raw artwork before cleaning  it up

Applying resist to sterling

I transfer that artwork  to a resist… something that the acid (or in my case ferric nitrate) cannot eat through. This step is perhaps the most important, as a good resist makes  a good etch. Once made the resist is carefully applied to my sterling sheets. If I should stop here and drop the metal in the ferric nitrate it would eat out what is unprotected, including the back of my sterling sheet. The next step is to protect the side edges and back of the pieces.

Then it is outside to set up the actually table and hardware to etch. Because of the nature of the chemical it is best to etch under a fume hood. I have none. I etch outside. This is sometimes a dilemma for me. Once the day I picked was the first over 100° day of the season. I stood outside in it all day in heavy acid gear. Another year it was cold and damp. Spring or Fall are my favorite seasons to etch, but I seem to run out of material in the winter and summer.

Me in my etching gear

Here’s me in my chemical gear and my etching set-up, on a moderate February day. I etched 8 sheets and it was a day long process, just to do the etching. The prep work was another day. But in the end it was all worth it. I have the etched sheets that I can make into wonderful jewelry.

My etching set up

Finished etch on the sterling

A box clasp made from the etched sterling

And in case you are worried about the vile chemical that I am using. It is a salt, a component in fertilizer,  and I always keep track of it until I turn it over to the folks at the dump to depose of correctly.

Etching sterling silver is a long multi-step process. But I like doing it. I can put my own artwork in the metal, I love the varied textures, and it makes my work more personal, more a part of me. Its one of my hard-learned skills that I am proud to share and add to my jewelry.

I love Scottsdale, Arizona! Though we are back in the studio after a whirlwind trip to the southwest, we are still relishing our time there. We drove like demons to get there, had a grand time, and drove 2 long 12-hour days home, no time for site seeing this trip. The only blessing in this trip is we travel east of the Sierra. Its an incredibly beautiful side of California.

But in between the butt numbing driving, we were in heaven. We stayed with friends in their fully restored mid-century modern home. They are landscape designers so the house is a joy of great design both inside and outside. It was our own personal resort with wonderful hosts, who cooked for us and even did laundry! We were taken on a post show hike in the desert to work out the cricks before we had to climb back into our van for the 1250 mile trip home. This is a rare treat when your guides are so knowledgeable about the desert plants.

When not at our “resort” we were at the show where our booth is always an easy set up and take down. The Scottsdale show is set in a lovely park area, though we choose to stay in the parking lot. We love our “hood” as there are always great friends there as well as new friends to meet in our fellow artists. The weather this year was perfect! Not too hot, or cold, no winds, or rain.

But the best were our customers, both old and new. To quote Sally Fields, “You like me, you really really like me!” As an artist there is a lot of me in each of my pieces. I have spent much time designing, picking the right stones, pearls, walking away-coming back, redesigning, fabricating, finishing each of the pieces. Every time a piece of jewelry walks out of my booth with someone, it is a thrill. Customers take a little bit of me with them and I am always honored with each purchase. Eeeuuww, Enough! I’m getting sentimental.

What’s next? Well, what isn’t next? More commissions to complete. Some old, some new. The show we help organize in Bend, Art in the High Desert, is inviting artists for this year’s show. I must send out invitations, and “sorry you’re not invited”to 438 artists. Always an exciting time as well as sad, as I know how it feels to not be juried into a show. And our weather is springlike, so it’s hard to stay inside. We want to try at least one more cross-country ski day before we dig out our road bikes and declare winter over.

Happy Spring top everyone.  Keep in touch.

Today it’s sunny and Spring-like outside. Its hard to be inside the studio. But when I go outside to walk the dog and enjoy the weather I get all sorts of great ideas and I want to curtail my walk to hurry back to the studio. No pleasing me.

I am working on some pieces I’m excited about. So like the kindergartener I am. Here’s my show & tell for the day.

Unless otherwise noted this are my quick photos of the work. My photographer does a much better job.

First I took my new favorite shape, the Zoa, and made it larger, and worked it on to a simpler, more elegant neckwire. Its hung on 3 strands of stainless steel wire. The hook & eye closure is made to go with the pendant. This particular pendant went home with a wonderful sculptor in Bellevue. I delighted she saw and loved it. Some pieces find the right home quickly.

Zoa multi-strand Pendant

And while I was at it, I made another Zoa pendant into a box clasp. Or a box clasp into a Zoa pendant. This a new direction for my usually rectangular box clasps. I love these white fresh water pearls.

Zoa box clasp & fresh water pearls

This box clasp lead to another idea. What if I made multiple shapes and attached them all together. Would that work?

I think so.

Mookaite Jasper with Circles box clasp

The stones in this necklace come from Australia. One doesn’t see Mookaite often but I’m quite fond of it.

All these pieces can be seen live and in person at my next show in Scottsdale, Arizona. Come by, say hello, and mention you read this blog and I’ll give you a gift and maybe a hug.

I have a new future son-in-law. And, his family!

I went to Bellevue, Washington to sell jewelry at the Induge show (and I did!). But even better, my dear dot and her honey announced they are engaged. Since I love this guy, and he’s a mapophile like me always willing to talk topo maps, gps coordinates, section corners, etc its a real bonus to wrap him into the Fox family. Oh yeah he’s a great match for Sarah.

And after much worrying through Sarah’s pre-school years I am delighted that his family is wonderful! Hooray!  (Am I the only one that looked out on the world of my dear 3 year old daughter and hoped she wouldn’t marry into that family, because I was sure I didn’t wanted to be related to those parents? Well, no need to have worried. She didn’t.)

This is our first addition by marriage to the family so if I’m a bit over-excited by it, that’s  why.

Sarah & Gardner, Seattle Feb 2010

Now its back to work for the next show. Scottsdale 2010. I bought some killer earring cabs from my stone dealer yesterday. Be looking for them at the show and in the website gallery.

I’m currently getting ready for a rare February show. Rare because short of traveling to Florida there are few to none shows in the Pacific NW in the winter. But the Bellevue, Washington Art Museum folks (who also put on the Bellevue Museum Art Fair) have started a new show, just for jewelry: Indulge. Held a week before Valentine’s Day it promises to be great fun. Plus the dot, Sarah is also one of the participating artists.

I’ve known about this show for months. I’ve known I need to get my inventory up after a very successful last show. So why am I now in the last few weeks working like crazy to build up my inventory when I could have done it at my leisure for several months? This seems to be a common thing for artists. While I beat myself up for not doing all things earlier, I wonder about this. And I’ve come up with a reason…that satisfies me for now.

For me, it takes a while to get into the groove of creating. Its a state of mind and will, and frankly once there its all-consuming. The rest of the world must wait while I create. It is not something I can switch on and off; I’m more like the little engine that could. It takes me a some time to get rolling.

I know Dave-the-hub, as well as myself would be much more relaxed if I did not approach work this way. But after years of trying to break out of this habit, I’m still in it. This seems to be an artist thing. Many friends complain of the same syndrome.

Our house is now adrift in the flotsam and jetsam of a show. We’ve pulled out the display pieces to sort and repair. Our old boxes have cracked and Dave purchased new purple ones to carry our traveling retail store from place to place.

Dave & the display pieces & the dining room table.

New purple boxes

The dog wanders amongst the piles. She’s seen it all before. Her favorite thing is that she gets to sleep in the clean laundry that is not getting folded and put away.

Marley in the clean towels

And so it goes. I don’t know whether I should be worried that I can’t compartmentalize better so I can jump from task to task. Or I should thank my lucky stars that I can focus like a laser when I need to.

There are bizillions of blogs out there. And while I don’t think mine will be turned into a movie, I do like to think a few people are reading it.

My web guru has added a feature to make it easier for you to receive my blog. Up there on the right top of my page you will see this:

Click on it, fill out the form, and my blog entries will be sent to your mailbox when I post them. You can easily unsubscribe.

See you soon in your mailbox.

Thanks.

Look what happened while I was gone. A new decade has rolled over. I for one am happy to see this. The old decade was a hard one.

There can be only 2 reasons for such a long lag between posts on a blog. The writer has been to busy to post, or the writer has had nothing to post about. Fortunately I claim the former. October seems months ago…actually it WAS months ago. I could plead the rush of the holidays but that seems too easy.

My energies have been scattered as I’ve been working on multiple projects. My jewelry, commissions, Art in the High Desert, taking a class in Illustrator, making inventory for a gallery,  of course all the end of year celebrations, and my favorite-cross country skiing.

What’s up next? In February, I will be at a wonderful new show in Bellevue, Washington: Indulge.  Sarah the dot, will be there too with her wonderful metal and felt jewelry. I’ve been working on some “man” jewelry in the form of cufflinks. I will be posting these on the site soon.

Here’s to a brand new clean decade.

For years I have tossed around an idea of making a series. I like the idea of a defining set of parameters within which you design and execute your art. I think it leads to something new and wonderful, though I’m not sure what. And I like that “not-sure” part.

Poetry is full of tightly limited creations. The sonnet is a poem of 14 lines with a formal rhyme scheme, and usually 10 syllables per line.  There’s not a lot of leeway to branch out. Yet English literature is filled with amazing poetry in sonnet form. The Japanese haiku (a poem of 17 syllables, in 3 line, of 5, 7, and 5) with a nature theme is something all children have worked on in schools often with delightful results. And of course, limericks are a wonderful example of how rigid limits can push creativity and humor to new and glorious heights.

Throughout history visual artists have also used a set of rules to corral and then turn-loose their creative muse.

Monet had his hay stacks.

Jim Dine-a contemporary painter, has a series on bathrobes and hearts.

Recently a friend, painter-Marla Baggetta, completed a series of 100 images of the same scene. It was her series that reinspired me to again look at doing a series.

Craft artists have also done series.

Pat Flynn has done a series of heart pins.

And one of my favorite series is Kiff Slemmons, Insectopedia. A series of bug pins, based on the alphabet. K is for Katydid.

Carla