The End

 I started this blog in 2007 to document my metal work. That was a completely different time in my life. A few years later the things I was doing in my life completely changed. I took a break from metalwork to live in Korea for a year. One year turned into five years. I tried to keep up the blog, but I had no interest in writing, and not much to say. I spent time learning CAD, but that's not very interesting to write about. I came back to the US and was working in metal again, but writing about it felt like a chore. Instagram and Facebook had become popular. I liked posting on Instagram better than writing in this blog. I moved away to Taiwan and kept posting on Instagram and Facebook. Several times I tried to start posting here again regularly just because it's my blog and I've had it for a long time, but it just feels like work and I know no one reads it anymore. 

It's time to just call it finished. I should have ended it when I moved to Korea, but at that time I thought I was just taking a break. I had no idea my life was changing completely. As I close out this blog, I am still living in Taiwan and spending most of my free time making lock picks and designing jewelry in CAD. I will be returning to the US this summer and will be doing metalwork full time. 

You can find me on Instagram and Facebook (search "ratyoke lock picks) or my websites www.ratyoke.com or (eventually) www.jonmryan.com. This blog will stay online, but will no longer be updated. 

The end.

Mailing list for Ratyoke Lock Picks

I will be more active this year with my lock pick business, so I set up a mailing list. Click the link below to sign up.

https://mailchi.mp/55b3d3337e81/ratyoke

Boxwood handle lock pick I made in 2011.

What I've been up to

I haven't been doing any metal work for more than two months. In September I bought a Onewheel, a sort of one wheel electric skateboard. A few weeks after getting it I crashed and fractured my right humerus near the shoulder. I couldn't do anything that involved my shoulder. So metal work was completely out. 

Onewheel XR+

Hand and elbow worked fine, so I could write if I used my left hand to put my arm on the table. So I decided to use this time to re-learn calligraphy, which I have always been interested in, but was never willing to commit the time to doing. I took a calligraphy class at the U of Iowa in grad school and enjoyed it, but stopped after the class ended. Right now I don't have much application for this skill, but I am enjoying practicing it. This practice sentence below has a lot of problems, but I have improved a lot in the two months of practicing.

calligraphy practice

My arm is still not 100%, but it has healed enough that I was able to polish some lock picks on Sunday. There was no pain except for when I had to reach for tools. I think I am ok to start doing more work now.

polishing lock picks at home in Taiwan

polished lock pick blades

Scooter

A few days before my trip to Japan and Korea I got a scooter. A 2018 Kymco Racing S 150 ABS.

It makes life here much better. I rarely drive to work, and I don't drive to Taipei, but I love it for other things like going to some stores that take a long time to get to on the train or bus. And having grown up always having a car, I just feel better having my own transportation.

Aside from the time I rented a scooter in Myanmar for a few days, this is the first time I have ridden one, so I am still getting used to it. After I am more comfortable on it I would like to take some trips around the island on it.

I need more time

I had been worried about my skills coming back, but the real problem turned out to be what to work on first now that I have a studio again.  While I was away I had a lot of things I wanted to do, designs I wanted to make, and techniques I wanted to improve.  And here I am with limited time to work on my own things, plus spending time trying to keep up my Korean and Japanese language study, and I just don't know where to start.  So far I have just been practicing nunome zogan and flush setting. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to do everything I want.

2014 review

2014 flew by, I don't know what happened.  It was not exactly a fun year like my previous years in Korea, but I was mostly productive and don't feel the year was wasted. 

Last year I moved to Yongin and started working at a middle school.  It's much better than my previous school.  However the city is not better.  I was very close to Seoul in 2013, now I'm in kind of a rural area.  

 

This area isn't so bad though because I spent most of my free time doing CAD by myself, and much less time hanging out with friends.  I spent a lot of time doing ZBrush.  Much less time with Rhino.  I put Rhino on hold for several months so I could concentrate on ZBrush, and just started using Rhino again regularly in November.  Right now I can do a lot with Rhino, but still have a lot of limitations.  I also started learning Modo a little, but I think I am going to spend more time with Rhino before I spend anymore time with Modo. 

Since I am only doing CAD I don't have any new finished pieces, but I did have pieces I made years ago published at least twice in Art Jewelry magazine, and had two pieces published in a patina book.  

 

In April I finally started taking Korean classes in Seoul.  I took them till December.  I think I made a lot of progress till about September when I started feeling sick of it all.  Right now I'm completely unmotivated.  I think I will take a break from studying for most of January.

Last January I visited the US for about 2 weeks.  It was my first time back in almost 2 years.  In August I went to Japan for about 2 weeks.  I went to Yakushima, a place I have wanted to go for about 10 years.  I also went to Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara, all places I have been to before. 

I found out at the end if December that I can stay at my school another year.  I'm happy about that.  I am planning on this being my last year in Korea. 

One more year in Korea

Just what the title says.

USA trip

Last month I went to the USA from the 14th till the 27th.  It was the first time I had been back to the USA since I left February 29th, 2012.  I mostly spent the trip eating food I can't get in Korea, meeting friends and shopping for clothes.  I also got a new driver's license.  Mine expired over a year ago so I had to take the driving test again, which was silly.  It was good to drive again, I just wish my parents had a more fun car to drive.

I made 2 new lockpicks while I was there, which I just sold last week.  The handles are tulipwood.

I was too busy to make anything else while I was home.  Making these picks felt no different from when I used to make them.  I mean I didn't feel my skill had diminished at all.  Although with something smaller and more precise like stone setting, I'm sure I have lost some of my skill.  I don't know, it's just my guess.  

2013 review

2013 was OK.  Mostly a good year.  It went by very fast.  In March I started a job at an elementary school in a different city near Seoul.  This job doesn't allow me all the free time like my last job did, but I get paid overtime, and this city is in a much better location than my previous two cities. 

I took two trips this year.  Hong Kong in January, and Indonesia and Singapore in August.  Neither trip turned out to be very good.  Hong Kong because I was really sick the last two days, so being sick is my main memory of the trip.  Indonesia/Singapore because of poor planning on my part and the time I had available to go was not good.

This year I started thinking more seriously about what will happen when I go back to the US, and trying to prepare for it.  I haven't been to the US since I left in February 2012.  All I miss is food, my studio, and being able to easily find clothes in my size.  If I can stay in Korea one more year I might be back to visit in January or February.

I got back into doing some jewelry work this year to prepare for when I eventually move back.  I started relearning watercolor rendering and was doing more wax carving at the beginning of the year, but slowed down with that when I started my current job in March.  In September I started learning CAD and completely stopped with watercolors and sketching.  I don't have a studio, so of course I didn't make anything new, but I managed to get 1 piece published in a book and 2 pieces in the permanent collection of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art this year.

This was not a very good year for learning Korean.  Because of my busy job and working on jewelry stuff I had less time and energy to study.  I've also been feeling bored with my study.

2012 review

Not much happened with my metal work in 2012.  Just look at the number of postings by year on the side of this blog, I barely wrote anything.  But even when there was something I could write about I didn't.  I have gotten so out of the habit of writing here that I usually don't even think about it. 

I spent the first two months of the year in the US.  Most of the work I was doing was just little things to make money, like lockpicks and aluminum training blades.  I finished a commission for a belt made of silver scales, but most of the work for that was done in 2011. 

I finally went back to Korea at the end of February.  And just like my first year in Korea, I totally stopped working on stuff once I got to Korea, even though I did bring my carving tools.  I finally started doing a little wax carving in the summer and continued working on things occasionally the rest of the year. 

Near the end of 2012 I decided to start doing watercolor jewelry renderings again.  I took the jewelry design course at GIA about 12 years ago and learned to paint with watercolors, but it was so long ago I think I need to relearn it.  I had my parents send me my drawing and painting supplies from home, but at the end of the year I did not have all the things I need to start yet. 

This year in Korea was even better than my first year.  Better school and better apartment.  I've been studying Korean almost everyday but I'm disappointed that my ability is much lower than I expected after studying in the country for almost a year.  I really wanted to stay at my school a second year, but there's no money in the school budget for me.  From what I've heard, almost all foreign teachers will be gone from high schools in my province in the next school year.  I want to stay in Korea one more year, so I am looking for a new job now. 

Back in Korea

I came back to Korea March 1st.  I'm teaching at a public high school in Pyeongtaek.  It's about an hour south of Seoul.  I'm really glad to be back.

2011 review

2011 started out great, and stayed good for about the first half of the year, after that it really started to suck. 

Korea was really good, I came back to the US at the end of April thinking I would be here for 1-2 months.  Now it's the end of December and I'm still here.  

Traveling was good this year.  I think of my time in Korea as an extended trip.  I took a three week trip to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia in January.  In May I finally went back to San Diego to visit after being gone for over 6 years. 

I didn't complete any interesting pieces in 2011.  I wasn't really able to focus on making new work because I was too stressed and thinking too much about going back to Korea.  I made lockpicks, aluminum training blades, and some small pieces.  I am working on a belt made like the scale neck piece I finished in 2009.  I'll post photos of that once it's done. 

I'm glad 2011 is over.

a summer update

I'm still in the US. I had a couple false starts, thinking I had a job but they ended up not working out. So I am still looking for a job in Korea.

In the meantime I have gotten back in the studio. Mostly I am working on lockpicks. I am also studying Korean quite a bit lately, usually a couple hours a day. And I try to exercise every day, but the past week I have not been doing much.

Despite all my talk about making a vessel for the Cheongju Craft Competition I never did it. I just didn't come up with any design I felt was worth using a $900 piece of silver on (a 12" x 12" 22 ga sheet of sterling from Rio Grande would cost $903.67 today). I don't get nervous about using expensive materials anymore (except for fragile stones), but I just didn't spend enough time working on designs and making prototypes and felt it would be a waste of the material.

I'm home

I got back to the US on Saturday (4/23).

I unpacked enough of my studio to start working on some new lockpicks today. I was kind of burnt out with my work when I left for Korea last year, and I was hoping after a year off that I would go back to the studio feeling good and ready to work again. But I really don't feel that much different. It doesn't feel like it's been a year, and I don't mean that in a good way. I mean it like, I needed a break, and after 1 year I still don't feel like it was enough of a break. I'm planning to go back to Korea for another year this summer, so maybe I will feel better after that.

I'm not really happy to be back here. I wanted to come back to the US for a while, I just hate the Chicago suburbs and wish I could spend my time someplace else. I was ready to leave this area after being here for less than a day.

Anyway, while I am here I am going to make some lockpicks and a silver vessel for Cheongju. I can't believe the price of silver, $47/oz. I'm glad I have a lot of silver I bought when it was cheaper. I bought the 12" x 12" sheet of sterling I will use for my vessel when silver was around $10/oz.

2010 review

Not much happened with my work in 2010. 2010 was mostly about Korea. I thought I would be leaving in January or February, but I ended up leaving in mid-April. That gave me some time to get more work done in the studio, but I still couldn't finish everything. I was really rushing in the end and I think I just ended up working on too many different things instead of focusing on one thing at a time till it's finished. But I have always worked like that.

I got two of my brooches in the permanent collection of the Racine Art Museum around the beginning of January 2010. I was only in one exhibition last year, the CMAG members show, which was not a juried show, but I got honorable mention for one of my vases. I also found out I am a finalist in the 2011 Saul Bell competition and there were 2 books on anodizing published last fall that had photos of my work.

So while I had some stuff happen this year it's all just stuff that carried over from the previous year or involving work I made before 2010.

Korea has been good, but I didn't really do any work since I came here even though I have wax and wood carving tools. I have been working on some designs for a piece for the 2011 Cheongju Craft Competition, but I feel kind of stuck and don't know what to do for that design.

In the fall I had been told by my school that I could renew my contract to stay here a second year, and I was planning on doing that, but at the end of December they told me the school did not get funding for a foreign teacher next year. So now I am looking for a new job for this spring.

2010 was a pretty good year, just not really for anything involving my work.

nothing going on

I've been in Korea 4 weeks now. I still feel like I just got here. All my tools and things are in two drawers. I haven't tried to organize anything yet. I have a kitchen table I can work at which should be ok for carving. I haven't done any work since I got here. It's really easy for me to stop working in a situation like this where I am in a new environment and I have a lot stress and other things on my mind. I have been thinking a little about what I should make, so I think soon I will start working.

I'm in Korea now + a new blog

I arrived in Korea Monday April 19th. I'll be here for a year, teaching English at a high school near Seoul.

My studio is all packed up. I brought some tools so I can do wax carving and wood carving here, but not much else.

I'm going to keep this blog for writing about my creative work and start a new blog about what I am doing in Korea:

http://jonmryan-korea.blogspot.com/

moving to korea

I mentioned at the end of 2009 that I might be moving away to take a new job this year. Finally, after having some long delays I'm going to do it. I'm moving to South Korea to teach English for a year.

I have been planning on doing this since last August, but I procrastinated for a while. Then I was going to apply at a private English language school to try and start working by the end of 2009. In November I found out public schools were hiring for the spring semester and decided to wait and do that instead.

Assuming there aren't any more delays, I will be leaving Sunday, the 18th. I have a lot to do before then.

random things

I have been busy and had a lot of things on my mind lately and haven't really been giving much thought to writing posts about what I am working on.

I got the CMAG Spring 2010 newsletter today. I found out it was my copper vessel that got honorable mention in the members exhibition. They have posted photos of the exhibition on Flickr.

Last Monday I made an announcement about a major change that will be happening soon, but by Tuesday I found out there would be a delay, so I took down that post. So if anyone read that and is wondering what happened, I will still be doing what I said, just a few weeks later.

triangular earrings

I finally finished those triangular earrings I was talking about in a post last month. I put them in my Etsy shop the other day along with my 1 yen bracelet.




I had finished these not long after I wrote about them last month, but some how one of them got scratched, so I had to remove the anodizing to re-anodize them. After I removed the anodizing I got distracted by something else and they sat on my bench till a few days ago when I re-anodized them. I redid both of them because it is difficult to match the color if they are not anodized at the same time.

I have a couple more pairs of earrings that are almost done that I will put on Etsy later this week.