Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Cloisonné Pear and Skull


If I kept going with the "enameling is my new significant other" metaphor, cloisonne would be that hot thing they do with their tongue. Or in less sexy metaphorical terms, cloisonne is the technique of melting thin metal strips into enamel to create boundaries (check it out!) that you can then wetpack with enamel. I'm a little in love with it right now.

These were my first two cloisonne tests from today- I've been dying to try it out, but I've been intimidated by the process. I even have silver cloisonne wire to work with, although I did these with thin strips of 22 gauge copper for testing purposes.



Skull! I had this design banging around my sketchbook from last term, and it seemed simple enough to fashion out of thin metal. Gave myself a nice slice with the metal when I was trying to straighten it out with my thumb, which'll show me to use my meat implements on metalstuffs. I spent the rest of studio time trying to keep glass dust and shards from breaching my usually awesome bodily defenses that keep that shit on the outside. Not even my ninja bandaids were up to the challenge :(


This was a fun abstract piece that I decided looked like a pear once I was done. I love how enamel gives me license to play with colors abstractly- I used citroen yellow and olive cuz they spoke to me from the enamel cabinet. I roughly enameled a jump ring to the top of it after I accidentally closed the drilled hole, which I'm going to have to get more careful about.

The back- straight transparent olive enamel on metal, no flux. I've been getting into utilizing the backs of pieces to experiment with colors I'd want on the front and I've been getting some interesting results.

In conclusion, cloisonne and I are going to need some "alone time" with the kiln over the next week. Awwww yeah.

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