Melding past and Present Techniques

I love those moments, when as an artist, you discover something that brings you so much joy.  That is how I feel about beading.  It brings me joy.  Picking out the materials and then putting it all together in a way that makes you sigh at the end is what I strive for. And when everything else is perfectly in place you end up with something you are really happy with.  Sometimes during that process you remember things that you learned before and how to incorporate them into the present.

I took a class a few years back at an amazing place called Haystack in Deer Isle.  A friend of mine called it a treehouse whee you could drink all the hot chocolate you wanted.  It is true.  But more than that it was a place where I learned to immerse myself into metal folding which soon transformed into a life experience of unfolding and opening.  What we present to the outside world and what we fold into ourselves and keep secret.  I made leaves in copper for days.  Hammering, cutting, acid washing...until copper became a medium I understood and I longed for another metal.  The shop, on the premises, happened to have a small sheet of silver which I promptly bought.  I looked at it for a long time not seeing leaves but unsure of what it wanted to be.  I cut out some circles and triangles and hole punched them and folded them thru a crank machine.  But still they were not quite right.  So I started with a shape that i then folded and unfolded and it became...a pea pod, a different leaf.  opened and exposing crystals and pearls in their center.  It became the metaphor for unzipping to see the insides. What lay underneath the layers as you peel them back. The only thing I had packed for the trip to work with was a box of pearls and crystals.  They were perfect.

So, today, while making this necklace I remembered how much fun hammering and copper were,  I got out some wire and an old hammer.  Twisting into shapes and hammering softly on different rocks outside.  This is what I came up with.  The perfect clasp for this necklace.  I feel as if I have turned a corner and learned how to meld past and present into something that speaks from gentle taps of a hammer, copper wire and a rock.  It brings me creative peace.  I have put a few pics of the leaves I still have and a peapod as well as the necklace I spent the morning making.  I hope you enjoy it.

This is a piece of Tasmanian Atlantisite that I bought recently at a fossil shop. It is a rather large and dramatic piece and was strung with seed beads and some chunks of dyed turquoise and vintage black faceted beads from my stash.