A great video demonstration of cloisonné enameling.

It's in French, but it's worth watching (reading).

An Artist I Admire.

I am still planning to write about the workshop I recently attended... but in the meantime, a bit of a tangent...

My copy of Glass on Metal magazine arrived today, and, well... wow.   One of the featured enamelists is Ewa Buksa Klinowska of Poland.

Some scans from Glass on Metal:

According to her article, she is currently working on mastering portrait miniature painting.  

She also has done very different pieces using other enameling techniques.  Even though the style is very different than the realism of her miniatures, I love her abstract pieces too.

This one is from the book 500 Emameled Objects

This photo is from this site, but it can also be found in the Glass on Metal issue and the book as well.  Not sure how well it shows here, but this technique is called plique a jour (light of day).  There is no backing, so light can come through the glass.

From an article in the Polish newspaper Gazeta.pl Łódź about how the following piece won an award in the International Cloisonné Jewelry Contest held every year in Japan.  

One more, from another Polish newspaper article about an exhibit she was in.

I think her work (that I have seen so far) has a delicacy that really appeals to me.   Did you notice the wisp of hair across the little girls face in the first image?

Beautiful stuff. 

Linda Darty!

Starting on this friday, I will be taking two three day classes, back to back.

Linda Darty: Champlevé Workshop

Linda Darty: Cloisonné Workshop

Both classes are at Terri McCarthy's Studios which I have heard wonderful things about.  I have wanted to take a class there for ages, but I must have had my contact information wrong because I never got a reply to my email.  Or maybe it was just an overly protective spam filter...  Either way, I heard great things about her studio, I just couldn't find specific info on classes.

My mom lives just down the road.  Terri is in Grafton, my mom is in Saukville.  People travel from all over the country to study jewelry-making there, and I have free lodging, right down the road.
I was starting to think I might have to actually go down there to get a calendar.

But then, my Art Jewelery magazine came in the mail, and there was a article about Terri's studio!  Complete with a url.
The author's impression of Terri's studio?
"I have a feeling that I'm in some sort of jewelry-making Shangri-La."

So, all a-twitter, I go to Terri's website... I find the class schedule... and I discover... two classes by Linda Darty! coming up in only TWO WEEKS!
No!  Wait!  I'm broke, I'm sick as hell, there is no way... there is NO way, I cannot possibly afford this class I cannot possibly manage when I'm having all this pain...  I can't do this now...

I signed up for  both.

A couple days later... I got mail... snail mail.  SUPPLY LISTS!  Woot! The classes weren't full.  Whew...

the very best book on enameling

note the author

I've taken a few enameling classes now, and every teacher always recommends one book above all others.  If you get one book, you get this book.  Linda Darty's The Art of Enameling.
She's got a great reputation as an author and educator and she's an established artist, silversmith, and enamelist.

Her website:  http://www.lindadarty.com/
all photos that follow are her work.

She'll be teaching me champlevé...

 

and she'll be teaching me cloisonné.

I'll explain the techniques better another time.  But if the enamel has relatively wide walls of silver between the enameled sections, it is probably champlevé.  If it has thin wires, that is cloisonné.  


I have attempted both techniques, but I haven't been entirely successful yet with either.  My mother and I both took a class called cloisonné on the curve, and well, after that... she swore off enameling forever.  (Mom, the kiln was really glitchy that class, you aren't cursed, it could have happened to anyone.)


I know that once I get there and get settled in, I'll find the zone and spend a week entirely immersed in my artist place.  It really is going to be great.


In the meantime, I'm a nervous wreck.  


So, to remind myself...  
The goal is to learn, not to create a masterpiece.  If my projects are all epic fail, that is okay.  The important thing is what's I leave with inside my head.


*deep breath*


It'll be great.