pearl toast and afros

When I was at NIU working on my BFA, I treated myself to a couple ceramics classes. In 2002 in advanced ceramics I made a pig shaped planter which ,conceptually, is pretty funny. I modeled it after some of my cartoon renderings of pigs. And it turned out hilariously beautiful. Thing is, I never could find a plant bushy enough to grace it permanently UNTIL last week when I wandered into a gardening store to buy dirt for repotting. And there it was. The Irish Moss. For your viewing pleasure I give you ‘Fro Pig:

For many weeks I have found it unnecessary to post the long dormant “Hand Injury Tally” simply because I haven’t had any injuries. I was starting to believe that maybe I finally had a grasp on tool function and was possibly developing skill with them. What a concept! Skill! However, I managed to prove my self wrong this week. With a few fell swoops of idiocy I accrued not one, not two, but four minor lacerations (nothing major, have a seat.) to the hands! FOUR! Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, …

Hand Injury Tally: week 14

• One mystery crisscrossed surface laceration on the back of my hand, probably a result of out-of-control saw blades. Who knows how it got there.
• One half inch long gouge on the outside side of my right thumb from accidentally dragging it across the pointy sharp painful part of my calipers. Felt really alive when I forgot about it and dipped the thumb in firecoat on accident (firecoat consists of boric acid and denatured alcohol. Ouch!)
• One quarter inch split on my right pointer finger, probably due to either a saw blade or file. Hurts.
• One stab wound courtesy of my brand new titanium solder pick.

BONUS injury story: One of my classmates this week managed to drill into the tip of her thumb. That was an awesome explosion of swearing. It was like the 4th of July with bad words instead of fireworks. She was drilling the pilot holes for some stones and instead of using something to hold the ring, like a ring clamp, she used her hand. Bad move. When the drill bit made it through the metal it continued on into her finger about a quarter inch. Here’s the thing. This girl’s tough. I consider myself able to deal with injuries well, but this woman just got up, washed it off, lobbed three band-aids on it and sat back down and kept working. No kidding. It was impressive. I sat there entire time with my mouth gaping open in disbelief (i know you can picture it). I strive for that sort of indifference to pain.

This past week we got to modify a gold ring shank to accommodate two heads for small 3mm stones and then set a pearl. A setting which, friends, involves nothing more than 2 part epoxy-ing the thing onto a rod. Simple enough I suppose. But simple’s not really the opperative word of the (or any) day today. The shady folks in the GIA project torture lab dreamed up having us half-shank the damn ring WITH the pearl attached. So, normally when you half shank a ring like this you would pull the pearl OFF the ring. Even Doug admitted that this was a bit heinous of a task and said "good luck, just dont toast the pearl!"....Why would you pull the pearl you ask? Its delicate. Anything can damage it. Looking at it cross eyed could damage it. So how does one half shank a ring with a pearl attached that would almost never happen in the field? You submerge it in water. What happens when you submerge a stone in water then hit it with a torch? The water likes to climb the surface of the ring and extinguish your flame. So how do you get two solder seams to flow on a ring that’s submerged in a tiny swimming pool with a torch that goes out every thirty two seconds? You put on a larger torch tip and fire that bad boy up as high as it will go and torch the hell out it and hope the water doesnt boil before the solder flows! I also took a tip form a classmate and used some tweezers to help conduct some heat and got those suckers soldered. The tweezers sort of acted like a water deflector. It worked. But it was tedious stuff. I’m glad its over but I’ll tell you what, I heard through a small grape vine that our 5th bench exam is a replica of this ring. Like, once wasn’t enough, so here it is again. Awesome.

Speaking of bench exams, we had our 4th bench this past Thursday. It was a day and a half project. We were allotted 9 hours to complete construction on a leaf shaped pendant with a 3mm set stone. Contents of the project bag were fairly predictable: one piece of silver wire, one head, one sheet of metal, some silver stock, a stone and a pattern. We were also given the parameters for the exam which involved a “job sheet” describing the piece and a counter sketch. And then the only instruction we were given as to how to construct this was a sheet of paper with 6 horribly rendered drawings of what it should look like. Think about the illustration-only assembly instructions you get with a bookshelf for instance. that’s what we got. And you know, ive said before that you cant ask direct questions during these things. But we were blessed with two previously made examples of the pendant that we were allowed to look at to sort of absorb the design. And both of the examples had design differences. So you sort of had to use your instincts to decide what would be aesthetically pleasing to look at and go from there. Anyway the exam was supposed to only be a day and a half. I got mine done in 8 hours and 20 minutes, but I’d say the majority of the class will be extending the exam into Monday. It was probably the most challenging exam we’ve had to date, simply because we had to hand fabricate this entire piece. We were allowed to take some creative liberties with the somewhat uninteresting design, so I did spruced mine up with some fancy filing and gave it some dimension. I think it looks good, but time will tell if Doug does.

We have a total of fourteen project books we have to go through in 26 weeks. We just wound up week 14 and we’re in book 10. That leaves us four more books for the next 12 weeks. You kind of get the idea of how ridiculous these projects are getting and how time consuming this is if you think about it. The project we start on Monday for example involves a circle pendant with 24 (TWENTY FOUR!) prong set stones. And from what I just read yesterday about it, it involves two microscopic prong replacements. Cant wait. So needless to say, they’re getting more challenging (as I expect) but I LOVE IT!! Love. Love. Love. It.

I also got my “spider” pendant and the gypsy ring back that I talked about last blog, so here are a couple pictures of the two. For the spider there’s a front and back shot, and the gypsy is just a quickie I took before turning it back in. enjoy!

To all of my friends and family near and far from me, I miss you all so much. But I think about you all daily and cannot wait for you all to see what I’ve been doing in person. I just feel so lucky to be here. I know I say that a lot, but I do. And when you have this joy and gratefulness in your heart, I think its important to let the people you love the most know it. So thank you everyone for the energy and good vibes and have a beautiful weekend.

Until next week, be well.