Lizards, Lizards, Lizards

 Drew this iguana like creature when I lived in Nevada City in the early 1990's. Don't remember what got me started on it, my fascination with textures maybe. The rock like forms it is sitting on were inspired by a trip to Joshua Tree and the amazing rocks there. After years of doing smaller drawings 8x10 or so I had started doing some larger ones, the iguana is 22x30 inches. The top iguana necklace was done for one of my best bay area customers who had a couple of pet iguanas. Took me about 5 years to get it done finally, I'm not very good at special orders sometimes. It was large and a little over the top but she loved it and said she got lots of compliments on it when she wore it. The bottom lizard shape was one of maybe a half dozen cousins I did between 2000 and 2010 I think. May make another one soon. Sometimes a series of jewels will go on for many years, each one at least a little different but related.

 

 A lot of our jewels are unique, one of a kind pieces but we create a lot of what we call developmental series. In this creating mode we start with a design and when it finds a home, we make another that shares aspects of the first design but changes in some aspects, size, orientation, gemstones, textures, metal mixtures, etc. Sometimes making these series goes on for a great number of years, even decades. Sometimes there are years in between designs in the series. The series I'm focusing on here is called Spikes. I've been making these designs for about 15 years or so, have probably made 12 to 16 or them. The original Spike was inspired by a number of martial arts tattoos I saw on the internet. I just sold the last Spike that I've made at the onlineVirtual Fair a couple of weeks ago. I'll be making the next one in the upcoming month or so, I haven't really started thinking about how I'll change the design but I will soon. View our latest jewels on our Eventeny page at:

https://www.eventeny.com/company/?c=11060

An interesting side note. We've sold our work at a very nice art fair in Salem, Oregon a number of times in the past 12 years. When we did it in 2013 I had just finished a Spike pendant that I was very happy with. The show went very well as it usually did and on the 2nd day a well dressed young woman came by our booth and spent some time looking at our work and trying on jewels including Spike. She liked several pieces including Spike as the last and I was surprised when I saw she was going to leave without buying one. After she had turned around to leave I said "that last one you just tried on I call Spike." I was just continuing our ongoing conversation but I saw her stop and turn around and return and say "I'm going to buy that pendant because it's called Spike. And she did. Below is a collage of some of the Spikes that I have made. 

Sun Bracelet

I've been making sun jewelry for a very long time but I think that this is the first sun that I have put in a cuff bracelet. Just finished it before we went up to the fair in Chico to sell our work on Dec. 14th and 15th. It didn't sell there but a lot of other pieces did. It will find a home on a wrist next year I am sure. Most of the bracelet is silver but inside of the silver ring on top is a layer of heat colored copper, the sun form is silver and the dome on top is 14k gold.

Bead Obsession

Back about 20 years
ago or so when I first
got into making cold connected mixed metal beads, it became an interesting obsession for a while. I remember once that I could hardly make any other jewelry form for 5 or 6 weeks which is unusual for me. I would walk around with 10 or 12 beads on a chain and show them to anyone who stopped to look. The first ones were just a bead on a chain like the one at the upper left in the collage here, but soon I started looking for other ways to use them because I liked making them so much. And also they started selling quite well at art fairs that I was participating in. I have sold hundreds of them at this point. I started putting them in earrings, bracelets, as parts of more complex pendants, even a couple of rings and anything else that I could think of. It was truly play time for me. These pictured are just a few of the pieces that I did. I still make a few beads now but not like before although, who knows, the obsession might strike again at any time.

Puffy Heart Pendants

These are two sided pendants, front on the left, back on the right. One could wear them either way though. I made a template out of plexiglass in the shape of the hearts on the left and then, using the hydraulic press raised it into a puffy shape. The textures are from pattern plates that I stamp on nickel silver and then roller print on copper. I sometimes enjoy creating a design on the back of pendants, you could wear it that way but sometimes it is just a private aspect of the pendant that the wearer can just show to special people. I did a series of about 5 or 6 of these a few years ago and just ran across the plexiglass template so am thinking of making another and seeing how I can change it some. Mixtures of silver, copper, gold and brass with fresh water pearls.

Sun, moon , star

It's sometimes fun to mix stars & moons with the suns that we often make. Here are some examples of that. Pieces made by both Carlie and Jima.

The Jeweled Sun

At some time around 60 plus years ago I started drawing flames and suns on the margins of notebook paper in boring junior high school classes back in Lawton, Oklahoma. This led me in two directions, towards doodling and drawing and painting art which I still do today and also to making a great variety of sun designs in jewelry pieces which I have done for almost 50 years. To the right is a collage with a small selection of jewels incorporating the sun motif in the design. This is still going on and I expect it will as long as I continue to make jewelry which will probably be as long as I am alive. Most of these pieces were made entirely by me but the long hinged pendant with the lapis at the bottom and the abalone shell at the top & the pair of earrings were a joint project of Carlie and I for which I made sun shaped cutouts for the top and Carlie incorporated them into her design. I'm currently working on the latest couple of pieces in the ongoing series of sun designs.