packing up the studio and the Daphne Farago collection

Last night I packed up a good part of my studio to ship it to Georgia - I'm taking a certification class in Art Clay Silver with Pam East next week, and will need a goodly number of my tools and metal clay paraphernalia down there. Since I'm flying and my last couple of experiences with the "inspectors and handlers of checked bags" has been less than stellar, I figured shipping with insurance might ensure that what I shipped got there.

and now my metal studio looks pretty empty - yes, the big stuff , like the kilns and the drill press and grinders are there - and I didn't ship most of my molds or textures, but now through the end of the week, I'll probably be playing with polymer in my spare time, rather than metal clay. not that there's much "spare time", as the real job is intruding into my "free" time this week with Town Meeting - a uniquely New England experience. I'm thinking about an article in the Boston Globe last week about a new jewelry exhibit at the Boston MFA - "Jewelry by Artists: The Daphne Farago Collection"- about 300 pieces, mostly by studio (as opposed to production) jewelers that Mrs Farago collected over a 50 year period - two of the pictures in the Globe really caught my eye - a Calder necklace that is very evocative of his mobiles, and a John Paul Miller pendant entitled Polyp Colony that uses granulation and enameling to replicate the amazing colors and textures of a sea polyp. the MFA website has a interactive preview program at . When I viewed it, a few of the links appear to be broken, but try all 15 screens.

Perhaps in thinking back over some of the artworks I enjoyed in museums around the work, I can come up with a jewelry design that evokes one of them - maybe watery green-blue opals (to replicate the brush strokes in one of Monet's Giverny paintings) in a silver and gold waterlily setting. A good way to spend 4 hours in an uncomfortable seat in a high school auditorium, while those around me debate prudent spending policies.
If you go to the interactive MFA program, be sure to go to screen 13- where there's a Jan Yager sterling silver dandelion that reminds me of the metal clay over botanicals that I do from time to time. Would be interesting to hear how the artist captured the veining in sterling- probably not as easily as we do in metal clay.