Jewelry in everyday things

Is it me, or was there a pearl earring in that lamp post?

Text and images

Working with newsprint gives one a whole new perspective on words and images.  Both become patterns, fields of color, purely visual.  They are seen for their potential, to be built up, layer upon layer.  Links and connections, secrets obscured and revealed.  A locket and chain in the making.

Many thanks to all who stop by….

For more on this project, see the challenge here, individual photos in this weeks photoset
or all the One-a-Week posts here.

Inspiration Strikes Again

A new season of Project Runway has finally started again, and Etsy Metal is hosting one-a-week jewelry challenges this time.  I can’t commit to the whole series right now, or to finishing in only one week, but I couldn’t resist episode 5: Fashion Headliners. The unconventional materials challenges are always my favorites, and this time the medium was newsprint.  Click on the pics for more notes at Flickr, or see the whole set here.  Stay tuned…..

Sometimes progress is silent

Wow, away so long!

But things flickering and growing. Slowly, beneath the surface.  Ripening.

More soon.

Simulacra: Fragment Necklace

Outside my Window

Day 2: Le Grand Chapiteau, originally uploaded by kaitschott.

If there’s anyone who doesn’t already know, (I feel like I talk about nothing else lately!) Cirque de Soleil is setting up right outside my window. Like a little kid, I am super excited! We’ve been taking some time lapse films of the tents going up, which you can see at Flickr. Yay!

1,2,3…GO!

Ritual.  Habit.  Hard Work.  Twyla Tharp’s outlook on creativity is pretty simple in it’s essence.  It’s a perspective that appeals to me greatly.  Motivation?  Ideas?  Not a problem.   Buckling down and being productive?  Well…maybe, once I figure out which exciting thing to do among the zillions swirling around my head and then once I figure out why I didn’t already do it, and then maybe after I wash the dishes, ’cause I need to do that to clear my head too.  Oh, yeah, and I need a coffee, since I worked really hard at the day job, and I had to get up early so I’m tired, and I deserve it, and hmmm, I probably need to have some lunch too ’cause I’m feeling  a little light-headed and….

“Turning something into a ritual eliminates the question, Why am I doing this?…The ritual erases the question of whether or not I like it.  It’s also a friendly reminder that I’m doing the right thing. (I’ve done it before.  It was good.  I’ll do it again.)…In the end, there is no one ideal condition for creativity.  What works for one person is useless for another.  The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself.”

“Make it easy on yourself.”!!!  If there’s anything I need to be reminded of, it’s that.  I’m not sure if it’s so much that I’m a procrastinator, or more that I’m an over-thinker.  Maybe over-thinker is just a specific sub-species of procrastinator.  Either way, I am highly skilled at doing everything but the work and yet convincing myself that it is absolutely vital that I do x,y, and z, in order to get that creative work done.  Got to clear out email. Got to read blogs.  Got to upload to Flickr.  Got to update Facebook.  Good lord!  That stuff may be worth while, and vital to other important things, like maintaining friendships and gathering inspiration, but it’s not vital that I do it before I can make something.  I need some short cuts.  I need to stop thinking about why I don’t get things done, pare my actions down to the briefest list necessary, and get going.  I need a trigger.  1..2..3…GO!!!

P.S.  I will say one thing about blogging as a prod to making stuff.  If you’re someone who thinks that posts work better with pictures, and you’ve got nothing to take pictures of…well, you’ve got to make something, don’t you?

Flickr Favorites

I may not have been getting into that white room too much lately, but I’ve been chucking inspiring things in through the window, as it were.  These are actually from a while ago, but when I started looking to update them, I decided they were just too good not to share.  For some more great stuff I’ve found since, check out my favorites here, for instance this and this and this….

1. close up, 2. OAW #1 – Liked the back much better, 3. Masdevallia constricta, 4. Cavansita, 5. Flowers in the shadehouse, 6. Remote Possibility, 7. Diamond Teardrops, 8. Sealing howtodoit 5., 9. pirites, 10. Campo Ligure in winter, 11. middenvingerconstructie, 12. OAW Final piece – Rachelle, 13. From the side, 14. Untitled, 15. Frames 2, 16. IMG_0653, 17. Frank Gould and wife at Helen’s wed. (LOC), 18. Untitled, 19. Bright Glass Collection – Spring / Summer 2008, 20. Lichens for a new piece, 21. via rail, 22. Sun Printing, 23. Bright Glass Collection – Spring / Summer 2008, 24. “Geek Bling”, 25. Untitled, 26. Top Of The Hat Rack, 27. armreifen – bangles, 28. ., 29. The Parlament from the “Halász Bástya”, 30. dust, 31. damascus with agate, 32. “…de sangre”, 33. Ghostly Gown, 34. Untitled, 35. brrr, 36. * i got tiny tools, too

Not everything else is junk

In the interest of clarity, I might say that I don’t think that everything which is not directly related to jewelry making is junk getting in the way.    I’ve never been that kind of obsessive.  I’m more of a ‘looking-for-balance” type than a “got-to-get-rid-of-all-else” type.  My white room isn’t really empty, but I need to be conscious and deliberate about what I want to put in the room, what to line the path to the door with, what to keep in view from the windows, as it were.

Plants and gardening get a fair amount of time lately.  Growing food, digging in the dirt, getting outside, slowing down to the speed of plants, doing the constant work of weeding.  All this feeds my brain, or perhaps empties it.  The wordlessness of it is clearly rejuvenating and focusing.

I might need to be by myself in the room, but the path to the door is lined with friends.  I am constantly inspired and prodded on by the creative process and work of others, many of who I know only thanks to this lovely thing we call the internet.  One of my latest finds is Pretty Good Things, the blog of Mary P., who makes amazing prints and hats and other fancy things for your head.  (Did you notice my hat obsession has been re-kindled of late?)  She’s funny and generous, and is doing monthly give-aways.  And I won this lovely little trio of cephalopods.  And I love sea critters, yes I do.  Pay her a visit, why don’t you?

There’s clearly a bookshelf right outside my white room and a comfy chair.  If I don’t park myself in that chair and get lost in a book on a regular basis, the door to the white room is stubborn and hard to open.  Sometimes I’m reading something which touches directly on jewelry or craft, and sometimes less.  Shop Class as Soulcraft was purchased and devoured in about a week.  There was an essay in the NYT a few weeks ago, as well as an earlier version in the The New Atlantis.  I highly recommend you get your hands on the book itself if the essays at all intrigue you.  Mr. Crawford makes an argument which is relevant to anyone who feels drawn to do work with their hands and resists the pressure to inhabit a cubicle.  I think that might be a few of us, no?

getting back to the white room

I walk into a white room….

So begins Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.  For Tharp, a dancer and choreographer, the room is a practice room, but every artist has a white room. For the writer, it’s the blank page; for the painter, the empty canvas;  the musician, the instrument not yet played.  For many people, the not-yet-begun is the biggest hurdle, the idealized thing which can’t fall short as long as it is just in our heads.  For me the problem frequently seems to be there’s too much stuff piled outside the door of that white room.  That I’m not allowed to get in the room and play until all my junk is cleared away.  And do I have junk….head junk, time junk, physical junk, piles and piles of junk.

Must clear junk away.

For now, The Creative Habit is my trusty shovel.