Wing on Wing

These earrings and matching pendent are my tribute to the sailing maneuver often referred to as “wing on wing”. It is a down wind set that is both beautifully symmetric and deceptively calming and still as the vessel glides thru to seas at very nearly the same speed as the wind. It is ironically also one of the more tense sets for the captain. The slightest change in the wind can cause the boom to “sweep the deck” as it snaps to the opposite side. Only the keenest eye and constant vigilance by the captain to the wind and sail can avoid a mishap.

Both the earrings and pendent have been “roller printed” with fine brass screening to bring out the canvas detailing in the 18 karat green gold sail. The other sails and the rest of the pieces are hand constructed of argentium sterling silver. The “mast” in this series is solid metal that has been turned to create the round tapers you see here.

“Wing on Wing” is also available in all argentium sterling silver both as earrings and pendent.

Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2009

Always a delight to attend, the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival was held this last weekend in absolutely beautiful weather. My wife Pat and I helped host an exhibit by Michael Berman at the Pope Building waterside of the harbor. This exhibit, which also included "Transatlantic Passage", was called “Wooden Boats and the Sea”.




Michael Berman is a talented marine photographer with an uncanny knack for capturing those quintessential moments in a sailboats’ run. His exquisite images frame some of the West Coasts finest wooden boats with the magnificent coastline of Washington. On occasions I have been fortunate enough to pilot the craft he uses as his photographic platform. This leaves him free to bound from side to side, fore and aft taking images as he calls out piloting instructions. It is no easy task to be in the right place at the right time among these canvas and wooden behemoths of the seas.

I sailed a “day sailor” many years ago and love the science, math and engineering involved in sailing. Piloting Michael’s craft and seeing these wondrous schooners from his point of view has rekindled my interest in sail power. The pureness of form and the romance of the sea together with the regal ness of these grand old dames of the maritime are emotional investments that demand a revisit by me. I look forward to what new pieces of jewelry these new references will inspire.

the beach rocks garden art..."beach stacks" hose guards

the beach rocks garden art..."beach stacks"...these are the hose guards that we make to keep the garden hose out of your plantings when you move the hose from place to place. They make the cutest little squeak when they spin. I will be posting more about how these are made as well as additional images in a few days. The “beach stacks” are our little tributes to those cairns that you often see people building at the beach. But, in this case we have drilled a hole through the middle of each rock so it will spin on a long secure stake when the hose touches it. This causes the hose to glide by, accompanied by a chorus of squeaks and avoid the garden. We have topped each stack with what we call an “improbable”. That’s because it is very improbable that you could get a rock to stand like this without some serious help. As always, the beach rocks are collected from various places on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.
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"and water cuts rock"

This Saturday’s Port Townsend Market was of particular interest to me. I was able to introduce a piece I call “and water cuts rock”. It is a bit of a play on words as many of my titles are these days. It recalls the old game of “paper, rock, scissors” but it is a tribute to the fact that given enough time…a river of water will cut through a mountain of rock. This simple geological fact still fascinates me.

The argentium sterling silver in these pieces has a texture called coining. The highlights from this texture remind me of the shimmer of sunlight on the surface of rapids. The beach rocks have been cut in to two pieces then tilted and separated by a wedged shaped space. The pieces are reassembled using the “post and pad” method. This means that both side of the beach rock has been drilled to receive a post of argentium and it is also attached on a pad. This is the preferred method for securely attaching fine pearls to findings and it seems appropriate here as well.

I found it gratifying that about 25% of the visitors went to these pieces first. Both pieces are on they way to a new home in Tacoma, Washington. I have several other beach rocks already prepared for this same treatment, one of which is a turtle back rock. I can hardly wait to see how they turn out.

"the beach rocks" Argentium sterling silver rings

I have started making a line of straight forward “the beach rocks” rings. They all have a round wire shank and a fully closed back made of argentium sterling silver. The bezel is made of fine silver. I have gone to great effort to make the finish on the pieces as fine as possible. The result is that people that handle them often use the word “buttery” to describe them. These rings feature beach rocks found along the Olympic Peninsula here in Washington State. The backs of these beach rocks have been ground flat to make them much more stable in the mounting. But other than that, they are just the way the ocean offered them up on the shore.

The ring in the middle of the above photograph is set with what the people on the “West End” of the peninsula call a “turtle back jade”. It is a relatively rare find to see one this size, as they are usually found much larger. It is well to note that this beach rock has little to do with the gemstone “jade” apart from the color.

2009 Sequim Arts Artist Tour/Lavender Festival

Wow what an intense three days. Lavender Festival 2009 was a huge success for us in spite of the festival coinciding with this year’s second biggest and longest windstorm. We had four days of 15mph plus winds all day long with Saturday’s winds gusting to 28 mph. Oh well.

At least nothing serious was damaged and …well it didn’t rain. An early bit of good news was that because I got up so very early each morning to get ready…I eliminated two of my garden gophers. Those fellow gardeners out there will quickly realize how gratifying a morning that can turn out to be.

The rest of the good news is that we were blessed with a steady, constant and inquisitive group of visitors. The Sequim Arts Artist Tour is all about allowing visitors an opportunity to visit a working artist’s studio and see the environment in which the art is conceived and produced. Many of the artists had demonstrations and all had open studios.

Ours, Dungeness Studios introduced a new group of pieces we called the “Coin Series”. This new group features very heavy texturing on various areas of the earrings. I have always heard of this type of texturing referred to as coining. It is often seen on the side of metal money pieces to detect if anyone has attempted to “shave” any material off the coin. We have modified the technique to bring out some sparkle. It reminds me of the play of sunlight over moving water. This series of earrings also includes colored gemstones like “Madeira citrine, peridot, tiger eye and rhodolite garnet.

I first went to art school to be a furniture designer. I dearly loved the warm sensual look of carefully oiled and hand rubbed wood and the idea of creating an object that interacted so closely with the human experience intrigued me.

Things seem to be going along fairly well and although I still had not found my “voice” by any means at all…I was still slowly evolving into a look of my own. I had devolved a small fledging vocabulary of lines. I was just beginning to see the lay of the land before me when I started to notice a disturbing common physical trait among the instructors and visiting artists I was studying under. They all seemed to have bits and pieces of their hands missing. Nothing really horrific but the end of a digit here and a long scar along a finger there but it was a definite common thread among these individuals. They would belly laugh and joke amongst them selves about how they almost lost a hand in the 12 inch planner or how the grinder had “snatched” the wood chisel out of their hand and impaled it into their chest. Well those images along with the incessant high-pitched scream of the power tools had me looking for other artistic avenues to express myself. Wood working for it time honored image of being an extremely laid-back art form was way to fast lane for the likes of me.

After my wood working experience I had a brief but extremely intense sojourn into the world of one off glass blowing. Glasswork is still the most “romantic” art form I have ever encountered. I wanted to be drinking red wine, eating cheese, hard breads and fruit from a red and white checked bandana the whole time I was in the furnace room waiting my turn at the dance before the oven. Working with hot glass those days meant having someone that cared about you showing up every few days to make sure you were still okay and to refill that bandana. I’d still be there to this day but for President Jimmy Carter getting into a “pissing match” with the Soviet Union over us selling them wheat and who was going to sent teams to the Olympics games in Moscow. This international conflict resulted in a dramatic spike in natural gas prices. The sky rocketing cost of fuel had the university shutting down the ovens in just a few days. By the time six months had gone by and the price of glass melting fuels got back to normal I had found my way into the jewelry studios. Which at that time were called the metals labs.