Carla M Fox Metalsmith

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.

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.

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

Normally this time of year I am in Portland, Oregon at the Local 14 Show & Sale. This year I am not. For all those who are concerned it is because of something bad I assure you it is not. It is because of something good! I had a terrific show at Art in the Pearl, in Portland. I have very little inventory left.

I had September to restock after Art in the Pearl, but September was booked with other business that kept me from my workbench. Also there was a trip to Peoria, Illinois for a show artist/director conference. I gave 2 presentations as well as learned a lot from my fellow directors. It was great fun.

Afterwards I hurried home to ship promised work off to a gallery in Austin, Texas: Art on 5th. Now I really have nothing left. My goal for the next month is to complete a bunch of commissions, enjoy Fall in Central Oregon, keep biking, and watch the snow fall in the mountains.

And a bit of random humor. Maybe my life in Central Oregon is sheltered. While traveling I encountered a vending machine that offered a wide selection of items that I had never seen before in a vending machine, together. I was going for the M & M peanuts.

Vending machine choices

Carla

If you like my aesthetic in jewelry you may be surprised by my beginnings. I am.

I was rummaging through my drawers the other day trying to figure out what was in them, as most of what I wear regularly was residing on the floor. Why is there no room in my dresser for my clothes?

What I found among many other things was some of my old jewelry from my youth, way before I made jewelry. Eclectic is a nice way to describe my tastes. My favorite watch was a Minnie Mouse (not Mickey) one that I bought in Disneyland. I had earrings with bells, and macrame bracelets, yet not one peace sign. Sigh.

But the thing that made me laugh was the very first piece of jewelry, a pendant that my Dad made for me. It was my pride and joy for many years and I even resurrected it for a party a few years ago.

My older sister’s boyfriend had gone to Hawaii for spring vacation. To show his love or at least to show he was thinking about her, he brought her back a little wooden tiki head on a leather cord. I don’t think she was too impressed, but being 5 years younger I coveted it. She let me hold it and even wear it for a while but then demanded it back.

That was not okay. She didn’t like it much, I LOVED it. I watch where she put it and went and stole it. And we were off to the races. After a few days of this my father got tired of the screaming and yelling. Neither daughter was going to give in. If my sister hid her tiki head, I tore her room apart until I found it, only to re-hide it in my room. She’d throw a fit (much to my delight) and demand it back.

Dad offered to make me my very own tiki head IF I would PLEASE leave my sister’s alone. I agreed. He had teak wood he had scavenged from the beaches of Hawaii during the war. It was off the decks of the military ships. It  had been removed dumped after Pearl Harbor to make them war ready and less flammable. (Or so I was told.)

Taking a chunk of the teak he carved me a tiki head and hung it on a leather cord. I loved it, wore it, treasured it. And eventually outgrew it, to bury in in the back of a drawer.

It made one more appearance in my life in the late 80’s. For unknown reasons I chose to wear it to a party. A drunk with far too many drinks in him came up to me grabbed it and hung on, asking, “What’s dis?” For once in my life I was fast of brain and mouth and replied, “My first husband.” He looked aghast and rumbled off. Here it is for you to enjoy, the start of my love affair with handmade jewelry. How I have evolved….or so we all hope.

Carla

Dave (the hubby) and I like to do things ourselves. Its a point of pride. We have an eclectic background of skills to bring to any task. We’ve been teachers, outdoor instructors, special ed director (Dave), parents, small business owners, community organizers. I have considerable skills behind a sewing machine, Dave carpenter skills, and a life time spent with a master gardener. What we don’t know we like to figure out.

Plus both Dave & I are artists; me a jeweler, him a glass tile person. I sell at shows, he works with architects, designers, contractors, & owners to make his custom tiles. He’s my sous chef in jewelry, I’m his sous chef in glass. And both are part of a wonderful group of artists and arts advocates producing a fine arts show, Art in the High Desert, in Bend Oregon. We figure out tough things all the time.

But, no matter how bold and brave, trained or experienced, inventive, sometimes it is best to NOT do it yourself.

With the help of some talented people we have created a new Fox Glassworks website to showcase Dave’s work.

Our fine children pushed us off this cliff by contracting with a favorite web designer and friend, Keith Buckley to put together a tease of what a new website might look like. Keith then went to work on us asking for photos and words and some idea of what we wanted the website to look like, how to navigate around it.

What looks so easy once done is in reality a series of interconnecting decisions. We struggled, we thought, we tabled it, and then our kids would remind us that they had a stake in getting it up. We could do this, we thought.

Then we had our best idea and we turned to more experts for help. The best decision of all.

Tom Hassler and his stylist Trisha spent a weekend with us photographing a variety of jobs scattered through-out Central Oregon. We added some of our fortunate shots from jobs out of the area burned them to a CD and faithfully sent to Keith. He still had questions. How was he to use them? What words did we want with them, where on the site should they go?

Oh. Wasn’t that all required of us? Pretty pictures and a great product. As good as Keith is, he couldn’t read our ultimate needs and intentions from our mass of photos. Ellen Santasiero proved to be just the person to help us, move beyond this. She writes the words for websites. Short, elegant, to the point, words. She sat down with us and asked many thoughtful questions to guide her words and ultimately the Fox Glassworks website. Her focus became our touchstone.

And so it went. Questions asked, answers struggled for, decisions slowly made. Ideas tried out, more photos taken, ideas considered refined or throw out. Friends finally got into the picture urging us to finish it as they were eager to see it up share with their clients. Thanks Martha.

Finally after several days of me learning way more about how domain names, dns numbers, and web host addresses work, I received a magic email from a very helpful tech and viola! Keith published the new website.

Check it out. If you find any boo-boos tell me. Its okay, we know we have a tweaks to do. But enjoy its’ elegant navigation, Dave’s wonderful tiles and installations, Ellen’s words, Keith’s web design, Tom’s photos, our kids kick in the pants. FoxGlassworks.com

Thanks to all who helped with this. You’re the best. Below are just a few of the glass projects Dave has worked on.

Carla