Timeless

Well, it sure has been a while since I posted and I have no excuse except that as the saying goes, " life is for living". To my knowledge no one ever said, " life is for blogging", so there's my excuse. I been living! Art school at PNCA ( much drawing, some painting), jewelry design( yes I'm still at it so look for a post next week about my upcoming December shows) . Oh yes and parenting two teen boys. Whew! That's the real work and I love every minute of it ( on good days).... Please look at this incredible video my husband Mark Brody made for our 20th anniversary which we celebrated this August. My eldest son had a party for us. We were not invited. I digress. The pictures in "Timeless" are mostly mine. The editing genius and musical timing is all him.... I love you Mosaic Mark!  

Silver Lace--new line for December

  I landed on the idea of lacy silver accidentally, when I was fooling around with Precious Metal Clay(PMC) in a syringe. This is a form of PMC that is most often used to repair cracks in metal clay work or to join one piece of silver to another. I like the look I discovered after squeezing the clay out in long squiggly lines to form irregular and lacy patterns. The best part comes after the clay has been fired in the kiln, necessary for "sintering" or fusing the silver particles together and burning off the organic clay binder. After firing, I work harden and texture the lacy fine silver pieces at my jewelry bench. Hammering is wonderful for stress relief and has the added benefit of making divets and grooves in the metal in which to concentrate the darkening or oxidation. I darken the clay using the organic & very smelly product, Liver of Sulphur (neither word is nice alone and together, well, can you say STINKY??)   I had the chance to see some actual lace work in Brittany on the West coast of France this summer and I was very inspired to incorporate some of it's delicacy and beauty into my own metal work. The most remarkable manifestation of Breton lace is the "Bigouden", a tall cone of white lace that sits atop the head of traditional Breton women. Apparently the height of this extremely tall bonnet has kept getting taller and taller through the centuries, topping out in present day style at a foot tall!   The local costumes of Brittany are one of the many charming things about the region and I recommend a visit, especially the perfectly preserved medieval market town of Quimper, where we visited the family of our former exchange student. The cathedral in the town center is thought by many to be more majestic (certainly easier to gain access to!) than Notre Dame, it's contemporary.  

Mt. Tabor Art Walk Is Coming Up

  How do I love Studio Tours? Let me count the ways: 1. You can peek into other artists' houses. 2. You can peek into other artists' houses. 3. You can peek into other artists' houses.   Seriously, walking around different neighborhoods is always interesting, especially in a city with as wonderful neighborhoods as Portland has. But when you add the added bonus of having a map which shows you dozens of artists' homes that are open to the public, with artwork for sale and working art studios cleaned up, and demonstrations of their work process happening, this is the simply the most fun that I can think of!   Mt. Tabor, my neighborhood for the past 12 years, is a leafy, elegant old 'hood with loads of classic bungalows and other cool architecture. Mt. Tabor Artwalk has been an event for the past 7 years, but this is the first year that I have shown my jewelry! My husband, Mark, has been a part of the art walk for many years, showcasing and selling his mosaics and it has been a great time to meet and greet neighbors and art enthusiasts as they walk from artists' home to artists' home, checking out (and buying) art.   If you live in Portland, please make time to jump into the Mt. Tabor Art Walk and make sure you visit #8 on the map! That's us Brody artists, making good use of our huge bungalow basement, cranking out jewelry, mosaics and other works of art! See you on May 18th and 19th! Visit the Mt. Tabor Artwalk website and download a copy of the map today!

Go-oo--od Morning, Bloglandia!

[quote]I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see.

-John Burroughs

[/quote]  

I am an enthusiast of life. An irrepressible optimist. A storyteller. A collector and a connector. I hope that this blog will be a tasty side dish for my website and for some of you, the main entree. Here will be a place I can recount the thoughts I think as I work and play in Portland, present you with images from walks I have taken, retell in my own voice stories I have heard. I will definitely rhapsodize about the friends I see each day and tell you about the cool things they are doing in the world. It’s not ALL about me, after all.   I plan on musing pretty heavily about my passions for jewelry making, old and rare bead collecting, printmaking, creative healing and holistic living. I might sometimes mention my cats. I am sure to brag a bit about my family, especially the teen rockers who share my hallways and my artsy husband who makes mosaics with his own unbridled passion. I look forward to your comments and can only imagine my retorts. I’ll see you here, in Bloglandia!

I Love Old Beads!

Sometimes beads get a bad rap in the jewelry design biz. There are so many beads in this world, a vast swath of them crappy and cheap, that their value can seem diminished. I am not ever going to talk about the cheap, crappy beads here. I will only ever talk about the rare beads, the sexy beads, the old beads and the stunning beads. I will tell you about the time I paid too much for this one, or the odyssey I went on to see the place where that bead came from. Beads are a form of armchair travel, not just geographically but through time, stretching back thousands of years, to Neolithic times. If you have ever wondered why so many beads have a magical eye staring back at you, or would love to peek into a window on women in Mauritania making polychrome Kiffa glass beads using their own spit, I will take you there!