Final enameled pieces

These are my two final, and probably most ambitious, thin-metal enameling samples. Not to be content with the only relatively unstable pieces I had made so far, I decided to do a ridiculously flimsy one out of painfully thin metal, and fire it about ten times.

This first one is all of my sketchbook scribbled fantasies come to life, namely, me on my future lyra. My class notes are messy with sketches on me on a hoop, it made a lot of sense to turn it into an enamel piece.

This was the last one I did, yesterday. Again, born of idle sketching and figures that tend to crop up in my drawing. I'm not thrilled with it, but it felt good to get one final piece out before I had to say goodbye to enameling forever.

Eye Teeth- Final

Eye Teeth, in its final, completed iteration. I put the last coats of enamel on the mask on Friday, and created the barbed wire choker/title today. I vacillated a lot on how to display it, but I think having two white styrofoam heads on either side of the full mannequin is going to balance my final show well.

I wound up doing the nose bridge and the head attachment with braided wire (Claire's idea to braid it, mad props to her). I tried to keep it wild and organic, leaving some loose ends to curl around the sides and back.

I mimicked the wild feel of the mask with the choker, braiding it loosely and wrapping bits of wire around the connections like barbed wire. I hammered out the title piece with thin copper, so the letters are really deeply recessed. If I had had the time I would've enameled it the same colors as the mask, but I just hit it with some liver of sulfur and called it a day.

Side view- there are layers and layers (17, to be exact) of subtle greens, browns and reds in the mask, but they're mostly lost in the picture. I enameled the spikes of the eyes and ends with opaque black, which is again, too subtle to be really picked up by the camera.

Close up to give some idea of the colors that went into the mask. I built up more enamel in this piece than I ever have before, mostly because it took that long for me to be satisfied with it.

I'm really happy with this one as my final major piece of metal working. Tomorrow's the last critique of the term, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else's been up to.

Enameling! You're probably sick of it by now, but I'm sure as hell not

Following my tentative experiments with enameling thin metal onto pieces yesterday, I threw myself into it with absolutely no thoughts of how cut up I was about to get today. Octopods! Sparrows! Other iconic images that are easily sheared out of metal! The list goes on.

I initially approached it like cutting out stencils, but I quickly realized that because metal /= paper, there was no need to avoid going into negative space by cutting through connections. Which is good, because piercing and shearing out metal that thin would have been a hassle.

Doing the colors on the octopus was entirely too fun. I almost made it purple, but I restrained myself.

This one I made with my aerial teacher, who goes by Sparrow, in mind. The wing tips got a bit banged up because of the fragility, but it's holding together surprisingly well for being so delicate.

The Medusa is the first piece I did with two layers. I wanted to distinguish between the snakes and the profile, so I built up the snakes with a few layers of wetpacked enamel. I even left my transparent enamel comfort zone and touched it with some opaque to get the depth.

Tomorrow- this madness, in its finished enameled form. And meditations on the end of my relationship with the fine metals studio.

Enameling samples

New enameling pieces! I've been working non-stop in the studio because this is the last week we have open hours before it shuts down until fall. I was too sick to put these up yesterday, so today I'm posting the first and second layers of these two little sets.

I made the freaking cool discovery that I could enamel pieces of thin metal to a base when I was messing around, so all of these are experiments along those lines. I cut the tree out of 22 gauge, and fluxxed it to the base.

Same for this one- every subsequent layer of enamel adheres it more strongly.

And this was mostly an excuse to use up my leftover scraps of thin metal.

Day two! I've done about 5-10 layers on each of these pieces at this point.

The tree turned into an experiment with painting on klyrfire in patterns and tapping off the excess enamel.

I wetpacked the fishy to give it some dimension, and messed around with creating a blue gradation.

And with this one I just kept fluxxing it to build up dimension.

Apologies for the brevity, my sinuses are interfering with my writing-brain. Possibly I will cast myself a new nose in studio today.

Eye Teeth Mask- Work in Progress

This is my final mask for class, in all its eye-eating glory. I've been wacking at it (read: smithing) to try to get the shape right all today, and I'm fucking wiped. Also, thanks to all my work doing masks this term, I really hate noses. Useless, pointless facial mistakes. I tried to avoid the Nose Problem with a little piece of chain mail, but that still didn't totally solve it. Ideas, world?

It's still very much unfinished- I have the rest of the week to pour into it- and the way it sits on my face needs to be tweaked. Right now I've got a single-link chain attaching at the side spike and in the back, but that's not doing what I need it to.

The one element I really like and am running with is the bowl-shape goggle look. The eyes are very recessed behind the teeth/spikes, and it makes for a nice deep shadow.

One last profile shot because my eyes look creeeepy underneath this piece. All my work thus far in the term has involved on putting dangerous things by my eyes (sharp pointy metal, broken glass), but I think this is the only one where I've deliberately made spikes that came IN towards my ocular cavity.

I'm planning to enamel these, probably with a dirty, fluxxed white-to-red color gradation. I like the idea of red coming down the points, because my work clearly isn't disturbing enough without those implications.

Enameling=love

Oh, I heart it so.

I've been making leetle enamel samples for the past week, all with drilled holes for potential jump-ring necklace attachment. One of my classmates has been making these gorgeous luminescent pieces with layers of transparent enamel, which encouraged me to try firing with less enamel.

The PROBLEM with enamel samples is they're so deceptively easy. I get lured away from my projects by the kiln to slap a couple of layers on a scrap of copper in the morning, and the next thing I know the studio's closing and all I have to show for it is these little glass bits and pieces looking up at me all innocently from my desk, next to the work I was supposed to be doing all day.

The back of the above, rocking two layers of transparent turquoise and starting to develop firescale because I really should have used more counter.

I was a little annoyed by my lack of foresight with the other skull (absence of jump ring for awesome jewelry purposes), so I decided to do a cloisonne one using my silver wire. Unfortunately, I put it in the wrong kiln without thinking and melted silver all over the damn piece. I cleaned it up a little yesterday, but it still looks wonky and matte.

Cloisonne-thulhu. The old ones made me do it.

This was the most obnoxious, finicky piece to finish, which is appropriate I suppose. All those little tentacles are hell to wetpack, but I did like leaving it textured a bit instead of all glossy.

This is one I did for my friend Wes, who runs the circus barn where I train. The text is from a tattoo he has that I've always loved.

And the back, with his name on it so I wouldn't be tempted to keep it for myself. I want to make a few more pieces to give away to my friends, particularly the circus folks I train with who I can really easily imagine translating into enamel art, personality wise.

One last one, a tiny ouroboros that I made with Shira in mind. I'm really pleased with how I got the cloisonne to spill over the edge of the metal and still be able to hold enamel.

More sexy glass metal to come! I've got another month in the studio if anyone wants to commission an enameled piece. Text (like the fuck love make art piece) is particularly easy to make happen, cloisonne is much more complicated and labor intensive. Let me make your ideas into artstuffs!

Artificial Tears- Final

Done! Enameled seven times, affixed with broken glass, stuck on a styrofoam head, critiqued and worn by half my classmates, and DONE. I used acrylic paint (thanks to Erin having some to lend me) on the chain to get the color to match, but everything else is enamel. Or broken glass. Or something in-between.

I'm really happy with how it hangs on the face- I made the teardrops out of 10 gauge metal with loads of enamel to get them heavy enough to draw the chain down and keep the cheek pieces anchored.

Side view with the tear drops. I had to sacrifice the articulation on the original hanging tears on the cheek pieces, so I liked the fact that the tear drops by the ears swung.

I'm exhausted from trying to knock out my research paper (on facial jewelry), hence the brevity. With luck I'll have some time to shoot myself wearing the piece and articulate more thoughts on the piece then.

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.

Anti-VD Heart piece

Slightly belated, I know, but I spent Valentines day being unbelievably romantical, which is so completely out of character for me I never got around to posting my yearly anti-VD art piece. This year I was experimenting with enameling, and was shooting to do a stamped letters under transparent enamel heart. That...obviously did not happen. And hence the recent obsession with making technical samples before slapping enamel on projects.

The good thing that came out of this project was that I learned a hell of a lot about wetpacking and manipulating wet enamel. I redid the lettering about 10 times before I was satisfied, and by then I felt I really had a good handle on the process. It still feels unfinished to me, and I'd like to enamel a thick chain of some sort to the spiky handles when I have some time to kill in the studio.

This is the back- I used clear flux as counter enamel, which is what I really should have done to preserve the original stamped text in the first place. C'est la vie.

Mistakes are learning!

Science by fire- orange enamels

One of the cool things about enameling is how you can manipulate the texture through firing time. Over-fired pieces get an "orange peel" texture (check it out!), which can be good or bad, depending on what you're going for. In this case, I was going for Science, so it's all good. I used orange enamel because I've been dying to see what it looked like, and I harbor a slightly paranoid distrust of the existing enamel samples in the studio.

This was one of my first solder experiments I did last term, so it's fitting that I effectively destroyed it to experiment with enamel now. I cleverly forgot about how the kiln melts solder like marshmallows in a microwave, but I managed to remember as soon as I peeked in and saw the piece collapsing. You don't really learn things until you fuck 'em up anyways.

In the spirit of "it's already fucked, let's fuck with it", I sprinkled on a little flux, and painted some heat resistant liquid on the solder joint, but no dice- it still melted like fondue. But now I know!

It's a good thing I did this one before I went on to destroy this piece, which was next on the enameling chopping block. I'm still eyeing it for potential, but I think it'll escape the kiln this time around.

Enamel samples- bloo

I did a series of blue enamel samples on scrap copper to test out colors for a piece idea I'm currently fooling around with (working title- artificial tears). I'm usually crap about testing things out well in advance to making a piece, so these little pieces of glass with the enamel number and color dutifully recorded in sharpie on the back are kind of a big deal for me.

Turquoise, 326

All of these are transparent, because I'm still experimenting to understand the properties of transparent enamel. My first piece using transparent enamel completely covered up the liver of sulfur etched text, and I am going to find out why. With SCIENCE.

Blue bluebell

I overfired this one deliberately, since it was starting to look clearer the longer I left it in the kiln. And I wound up with firescale in the middle (?!). MORE SCIENCE IS NECESSARY.

Cascade, 2510

This one was also overfired, resulting in the blackened edge. But it's also the prettiest out of all the samples.

Cadmium Blue, 321

This one was fired perfectly, so I had to crack the glass at one point so the others didn't get jealous. Also I wanted to see what happened.

SCIENCE!

East of the Sun, West of the Moon Enameled Bird Piece

Enameling metal is my new significant other.

A little bit about this fresh love of my life. Enameling is the FREAKISHLY COOL process of firing glass to metal. You can do seriously awesome things with it (you can also make godawful kitchy crap, but we're going to avoid that.) It appeals to me because you can add deep, rich, textured color to metal, it's a deceptively simple process with huge amounts of potential, and it takes about 1/5 of the time as anything else in the metal studio.

The really nice part of enameling for me is that it's a perfect side project. I can fire up the kiln, do a bunch of test pieces, and not waste too much time away from anything big I happen to be avoiding. And I wind up with all these bright, shiny, colorful pieces of metal on my desk to toy with!

This is the first serious piece I did using enamel. I had a pierced strip of copper that I was trying to make into a collar with a bird suspended over the throat left over from last term. The bird is suspended by a little jump ring, as you can see from the movement. Not firing enamel over the hole for the jump ring was hell and a half, and I wound up covering the bird's hole (snerk), so the jump ring is just bent into the divot that the enamel left.

This is the other side of the piece- it's got a slight curve to it so it stands up independently. This was the only decent shot I got of the white side, because the glass reflects light so glossily. I might try to take a few others to do it justice. Enameling metal requires using both sides of the piece so that it's equally weighted and doesn't crack the glass, which I was deliberately designing for.

The title refers to one of my favorite fairy tales, because of the whole White Bear, black night, transformation bit. God, I love that story. I wanted the piece to evoke a fanciful, storytale, shadowbox without being too blatant about it, and it think it's my favorite thing I've done so far this term.

(You really have to hold it and watch the little bird twist and turn from black to white to appreciate how much I'm in love with it.)