Today I sent 12 pieces to the Museum of Contemporary Craft sales gallery, in Portland, Oregon. Christmas is coming and it's been a while since I sent them work, they were running out. These are some of the new earrings I sent:

photographing a stupid bronze vase

I photographed this piece yesterday. I made it in grad school in 2005. It's cast bronze, about 6.25" high. This was probably the most difficult piece I have ever photographed. This photo isn't that great, but it's the best I can do. I photographed it back when I first made it, but the pics were terrible. The problem is it is reflective and dark. Normally if you have something reflective, like polished silver, if you photograph it in a light tent, which is all white material, it's ok. The white reflections on silver look ok. But on a dark piece like this, light colored things reflected on it look terrible. The main problem I was having was the backdrop I was using, this big piece of paper that goes from white to black. The white and gray in the foreground were reflecting on the piece and making it difficult to see the patina. So after messing around with it for a while I decided to move it to a darker area on the back drop. I no longer had the reflections and the patina looked good, but its difficult to see the shape of the dark piece on the dark background. I gave up on photographing it and decided to try to work with what I had on Photoshop. I have limited Photoshop skills, just like I have limited photography skills, but I was sick of taking pictures. This photo is what I ended up with. Its dark, but it shows just how the patina really looks. If I really wanted a good photo the thing to do would be to send it to a professional photographer, but this piece really isn't worth it.

brass vessel

Sunday I took a break from commissions and stuff for galleries and made this piece. It is cut from a sheet of 12" x 12" 22 gauge brass. The finished piece is about 3 3/4" high x 4 3/8" wide.


I used almost the same design as a different piece, but made the neck longer and scaled the piece up to fit the larger piece of metal. Doing the design with CAD makes it so much easier to scale the piece to fit the sheet of metal.


This is right before I started drilling the holes. I used a highlighter to mark the borders of the areas where I will drill.




Finished except for the patina.


It is the same design as the smaller piece except it has a longer neck.

CraftForms 2008 part 2

I emailed one of the CraftForms organizers Saturday about which piece was accepted. I got a reply today. It was this copper vase, which is what I thought.

CraftForms 2008

I just found out today that I was accepted in the CraftForms 2008 exhibition. Of the 711 entries, 109 pieces by 94 artists were chosen.

I am very happy to get in because they have rejected me twice before, in 2005 and 2006. In 2007 I didn't enter cause I didn't have any good work available to enter.

Embarrassingly, I have done it again with the untitled pieces. They have told me my entry Untitled was accepted.... both my pieces were untitled. I did this with Cheongju last year too. And even mentioned it in this blog and said I should start titling my work for this reason. But I am pretty sure I know which piece was accepted.

clean bench

Last Wednesday I spent all night cleaning my bench and the area around it. It was really bad, I hadn't cleaned it thoroughly in months. I feel much better now that it is clean. I'll try not to let it get as bad as it was before, but I know as soon as I have a deadline it will go back to being a mess.

an update

There has not been much worth writing about lately. I have just been working on commissions. More lock picks, mostly the same design as the photo I posted Sept 19th, just different colors. It's kind of boring making the same thing over and over, but at least I know I am being paid for them. When I make a new noncommissioned piece it might not sell, it might not be accepted into any juried exhibitions or competitions, and it will end up sitting in a box. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a waste of time, but I like to get something out of my work, like money or recognition. Sure I get satisfaction out of making something, but satisfaction plus money and/or an award is better.

I was going to take a machine shop class again this fall at the community college, but decided to take a vessels class in ceramics instead. I used to love working with clay, and it's been about 9 years since I have worked with it, so I was really looking forward to it. Since the class was only 2 credit hours, it was scheduled to start Sept 22, which is about a month after the semester starts. So I went to class on Sept 22, and no one was there. I called the college the next day and found out the class had been canceled. And since it was already a month into the semester it was too late to register for another class.

I got the exhibition catalog from The Ring Shows the other day. It's small, thick and spiral bound, which is different from most exhibition catalogs. I don't really like it.