What's In A Name?

A friend and customer of mine is speaking at the Upper Midwest Bead Society meeting on Monday night. She is speaking about designing, writing instructions, and teaching/publishing, and she phoned me yesterday to ask me about how I name my pieces. It's a valid question. I know people who look at their pieces and never name them unless they have to. I also know that I don't start out with a name, but that the piece (if it is a major piece) usually names itself over the course of making it. And that seems to carry forward from my beadwork into my metalwork and enamel work. Unfortunately, the project that I'm currently working out in my head doesn't have a title yet, so it seems unformed, unfocused, and very incomplete. But I'lll share a few finished projects with all of you.

This is "Summer of Love 1969". I realize that the real Summer was actually 1968, but this was the name that the project wanted, so that's what it got. This piece won a few first place prizes for me.

"Hobby Horse Dreams" was a piece created for a contest that requested a "whimsical" project. The hobby horse dreams of flying away through the skies like an eagle. Although I didn't win a prize in that competition, he had a good lifespan - being accepted into three different competitions and/or display venues in two different cities. I'm proud of "Horse", he graces my glass display cubicles at the moment, managing to get along well with my many dragons also on display.

And speaking of dragons, this last piece - "Emperor's Dragon" - was never really intended to belong to me. I made it for the Beading For A Cure auctions of 2007. But I had a certain dollar amount that I required for it and when the auction didn't reach that amount, I bid the amount and bought my piece back. I've never regretted it - it's a stunning piece. I hope that someday I'll be able to put it back on sale and get the dollars that it deserves. It features a fully beaded front panel over hand-painted silk and mounted onto a leather handbag. If I never sell it, I'll still love it. It's a great piece :-)

So what about all of you? Do you name your pieces? Do your pieces speak to you at all? I doubt I'm that unique, but not everyone listens to those soft whispers at the back of their heads.

Here Comes the Sun

Well, we escaped the worst of the storm, although we did get 4"-6" of snow from it. We didn't even have a customer in the latter part of the afternoon - the roads were icy and traffic was horrific. But we did get a lot of work accomplished and today we will have sunshine. Sunshine in winter is a reminder of how incredibly beautiful a pristine land can be. It is something that we rarely see because most of us are urban dwellers. How did we allow ourselves to turn our backs on our natural world and move into a world of our own making. We alter the world to suit us instead of integrating ourselves into the whole of the world. Even though I would probably be totally clueless about survival in a totally natural, not man-made or man-embellished, world - I think it bears thinking about. After all, we only have 3-1/2 years until the potential end of the world. Maybe that end is the end of technology and the rebirth of an opportunity to work within the parameters of a natural life.

So, today I will take up my snow shovel, shovel out my driveway and my shop, and welcome the sun as a returned, long-lost and beloved relative. I leave you with this wonderful look of sun over a winter stream giving us a golden promise of a future ripe with possibilities. What will you craft today to realize those possibilities within yourself?

Another Day, Another Storm

Spring must be here because we're diving into our snow season. We should be getting 6"-12" of snow today. I'm really going to hate my drive home tonite and I'll probably have to shovel my car out of it's parking space. My DH will have the afternoon off, so he'll at least be able to shovel the driveway out before I get home tonite. I'm SO tired of snow already. I try to be positive about the opportunities that snow allows me to examine the large areas of neutral colors and shadows, and that's helpful. But snow is only pretty for the first hour or so. After then it gets dirty and ooky. I only hope that everyone is able to get home safely through the snow tonite and that no-one looses their power because of too-heavy snow on power lines or accidents into power poles or transformers.

I didn't get as much done yesterday as I wanted because I had to take four hours out of my day to go to my meeting with friends helping me through my mountain of paperwork for the IRS. But I did do a minor bit of shopping, and I allowed myself to take 90 minutes out for me - I went to the Conservatory. What a delightful morning. I took lots of pictures of the lilys and other flowers. I would love to be able to duplicate the wonderful colors in enamel. Something to strive for. And another great thing - all of the Beading For A Cure kits have now been sold, so it's time to start focusing on the auctions. I'll be printing out shipping labels while watching TV tonight.

Looking for Inspiration

So, I have these wonderful beads sitting in front of me. They are the beads that were just released for the 2010 Beading For A Cure charity/challenge project. I have a couple of ideas perched in the back of my head, and I have the enamel colors to make accompanying pieces. I have the copper cut and ready to shape, and I'm ready to go.....except....LIFE IS GETTING IN MY WAY. Instead of being able to spend today shaping copper and trying out colors on small copper bits, I have to spend today cleaning my workspace and going to an appointment across town to discuss this IRS stuff (mentioned in yesterday's blog) with someone who may be able to translate IRS-talk into common speak. How I wish for "clarity and transparency" in legalese-speak. But it's like any other industry - it creates terminology to define it's concepts, and then the invented terminology takes on its' own life and existence. Rather like self-perpetuated hell.

So do artists have their own invented and self-perpetuating terminology? Of course we do. For example, we borrow terms from other fields (hues and values), and we create our own terms and/or definitions (pigments and fold-forming). Over time and with the addition of more technology, our dictionary of specialized terms increases, until it is an entirely new language. Through the morass of moving alphabetic terms, the artist defines the tools of his/her trade.

One item can be defined many ways. Looking at a flower may inspire many things - a poem, a story, a painting, a song, a dance, or in my case, a piece of copper with melted glass or an item made from small, pierced, pieces of glass woven into a patterned sequence. So, among my assigned tasks today is to take some time to find some inspiration while I'm out and about. The weather should be excellent for February, so I'll take a couple of hours for myself and celebrate the Creator and my personal muse, thanking them for my incredible luck and their amazing love. I challenge you to take a bit of time and find your own inspiration. Then work through the terms of your art to bring this inspiration into a new, artistic creation. What terms (methodologies) will you use? Maybe you will invent our next addition to the Artist's Dictionary.

Taxes - I Hate the IRS

I keep thinking that it would have been really nice to have operated a business in the 1800's. The days when the West was truly wild and the government didn't try and regulate everything. Part of the reason that prices are high, people are frustrated, and businesses are stressed is taxes. We have sales tax, withholding tax, unemployment tax, quarterly taxes, annual income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, personal income taxes, taxes for this and taxes for that. It makes me wish that I was facing the person who decided to place our world into tax hell down the streets of Dodge City for a showdown. Either way I would win. Either I would slay taxes, or I would be slain and would no longer need to submit the darned things and fill out hundreds of forms. Hell must be the IRS on earth, and Sauron need no longer build Barad-dur in Mordor. He can just set up residency in Washington DC.

I was supposed to assist a couple of customers last night. I was supposed to relax for a couple of hours and decompress. I was supposed to do a whole lot of things. Instead I ended up spending the entire evening helping my DH to fill out tax forms for his company for a retirement plan that hasn't been active since the mid-1990's that my DH wants to close. All he wants to do is transfer the money from one retirement vehicle to another. That required 2+ hours of work last night, and it will require 1-2 hours on the phone with a consultant today and more time tonite. All this so that we can change the way that the money is invested. And if we don't do all of this? Then the IRS will come after our asses and can assess fines and penalties that are higher than the actual funds that are in the accounts. How did we allow this monster to grow? The saying is that you can't escape death and taxes. I think that taxes lead to early death and are simply evil in so many ways. A simple concept has been WAY overdone and overcomplicated. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lazy Sunday

I had all the best intentions of getting a little bit of studio work done on Sunday. But I ended up spending most of the day playing Lord of the Rings Online with my DH instead. I had a really fun day, topped off by pizza and the Academy Awards. It was a really nice time, very relaxing, and the fact that I didn't get my studio work done means I have to accomplish more in the morning than I had planned. NOT good. Since my mornings are usually pretty intense already. But, I really did need to relax, so that was OK.

I haven't looked over the Red Carpet photos yet, but I must admit that I didn't like most of the dresses I was seeing on-stage at the Academy Awards. Although the styles weren't horrible, they really weren't all that attractive either. I was raised that a dress should compliment the person wearing it and that the person inside the dress should be the star. The dresses I was seeing certainly didn't do that. And I also wasn't thrilled with the colors - on a stage, black and royal blue just look like a blob of dark. I'll be the first to admit that I don't dress like I have a lot of fashion sense, but I am entitled to my opinions :-)