BMAC ≠ Big Mac

BMAC = Buyers Market of American Craft

Every year at this time, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania hosts the Buyer's Market of American Craft, a wholesale arts fair aimed at bringing artists and buyers together. Both groups are from all over the country.

The premise is simple: artists from America and Canada bring handmade goods (jewelry, ceramics, glass work, fiber arts, woodwork, furniture, home goods, paintings, photography, sculpture, and multimedia art) to the Pennsylvania Convention Center and set up booths to entice buyers (gallery owners, buyers for major store chains like Anthropologie or L.L. Bean, etc.) to, you know, buy.

This year, I had the great pleasure to visit the Buyers Market as a visiting artist. I got to see some fabulous art, and learn a ton of information about what it takes to make it as a wholesaler. Good times had by all.

For more information about the Buyers Market and all the awesomeness, please visit their website: http://www.buyersmarketofamericancraft.com/

A Moment of Clarity

Believe me when I tell you this: it is incredibly difficult to write a poem of brevity AND beauty.

But here I give you Don Wentworth, a Pittsburgh poet who writes Haiku-like poems that are both stunning... and short. I heard him read recently, he called them "poems of a single breath." Poems located both here and nowhere, he writes lines that have incredibly immediacy... moments of clarity in a single breath.

His chap book, Past All Traps, can be purchased on Amazon.

So you know exactly what I'm talking about, here is my favorite:

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mistake after mistake
after mistake, adding up
to just the right thing.

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A New Word For Your Vocabulary

Cloisonne: noun [kloi-zuh-ney]: enamelwork in which colored areas are separated by thin metal bands fixed edgewise to the ground.

No offense to Dictionary.com but that isn't much of a definition. I actually make cloisonne enamels, and that definition confuses me. Seriously, "fixed edgewise to the ground?" What does that mean?

Let me give you my definition.

"Cloisonne" comes from the French word "cloisons" or compartments. So, the enameling technique called Cloisonne specifically refers to the use of these cloisonne wires to create the compartments or cells that can be filled with different colors of enamels. Although, the term "cloisonne wire" is slightly misleading; cloisonne wires are really thin strips of fine silver, about 1mm tall and .2mm thick.

So, when Dictionary.com says "fixed edgewise" that means that the .2mm thickness is what's touching the "ground," the bottom of the piece. And these wires create the walls that make using the different colors possible.

Moonlight, Light, Light: the finished pendant

Here it is, boys and girls: the finished moonstone pendant.

I really enjoy how this piece turned out. It really showcases the moonstone with the boldness of the larger scale circle and the subtle ghostliness of the etch.

I feel kinda weird talking myself up, but I do so love it when a piece comes together and it's even better in reality than it was in my head.

Dammit, Why Are You So Sexy?

Every time I finish a marriage-of-metals piece, I promise myself that it is the last time. But I am always sucked back in because marriage-of-metals is just so damn sexy!

Just in case you've forgotten (or, you know, never knew to begin with :), marriage-of-metals is a process of combining different metals via solder to create a single sheet of metal. For this piece, I decided I was going to make a flower, so, I cut the silhouette of the flower out of sterling silver. Then I proceeded to fill the silhouette back in with my other metals, in this case copper and nickle silver.

For this process to work properly, the pieces must fit together perfectly, snugly... you are after all making separate pieces of metal into one piece. If the puzzle pieces do not fit together properly, then your solder will pit or there will be gaps in the picture. Nothing ruins a piece of jewelry faster than shoddy craftsmanship, and unfortunately for marriage-of-metals, there are infinite ways to mess it up.

That's why I try to give it up... every time! But I am forever drawn back in by the siren call of sexiness. I swear, every single time I solder a marriage-of-metals picture together and start sanding... when the picture starts to free itself from the puddles of solder used to put it together, I wanna go all "Risky Business" and start dancing around in my underwear. It's just that awesome.

Forget the Passion

Passion Purple from Thompson Enamel, that is.

I can't seem to mast this color. There are a couple rules of thumb when it comes to glass enamels: oranges react with copper and become dingy, reds and some purples react with silver to become dingy.



Case and point, the picture of my balloon pendant that never made it out of "process" and into "finished pieces." That camo-green color at the top of the pedant is actually Passion Purple... and you can tell from my picture of the color sample that Passion Purple is not a yucky green but actually a very nice lavender color.

The way to avoid this reactivity is to lay down a non-reactive enamel underneath so that the reactive color does not touch the metal. However, no matter how much clear enamel I lay down underneath the Passion Purple always turns on me. So touchy!