Yesterday I took pictures of Melissa for the first time. I am so pleased with the result of these beautiful photos and I am thrilled how good my jewelry looks on her. Every single piece looks just amazing.
Category: Behind the scenes …
Writing poems with Austin Kleon
About a year ago I bought the notebook “Steal like an Artist” by Austin Kleon. After having done some exercises, I put it in a shelf and completely forgot about it -contrary to the explicit use instructions of the author-, who says, that you should always carry it around and do the exercises regularly. While searching for new inspiration and approaches for my work as a goldsmith, the book suddenly fell into my hands again and I was very surprised to see the exercises I had already done and couldn’t remember at all.
“OK. I’ll try again,” I said to myself and started the next exercise! Cross out the words, until you have written a poem, was the instruction for this new exercise. “I can not do that!”, flashed through my head! And certainly not in English! Somehow I then hang onto the words and took different approaches and went several times mentally in different thematic directions.
At some point, a special combination of words prevailed, and it is hard to believe, at the end of the exercise there was left kind of a poem. This was completely surprising for me, because I had never written poems, except maybe once in school when I was a teenager. Something had happened by staring at the words, as if the words had suddenly come out of the context and made up their own story. I was so excited about this exercise that I decided to carry the notebook around with me from now on.
On this day I went full of energy to my workbench and tried out a technique that I had had in mind a long time, but I had repeatedly postponed. The “playing” with words helped me in other ways to solve my blockage.
Folded No. 2
The second pair of earrings of the series “Folded”
Folded No. 1
Creation process of “folded”:
I’m working on a new series inspired by the aesthetics of folded paper. You can easily fold paper to create three-dimensionality. That’s exactly what I wanted to create in the following series, though you can not bend metal easily and it takes multiple, cautious steps to bend the metal. By sawing and filing with a triangular file, you prepare a sheet of metal for kinking. You have to do this with the utmost care, because if you saw a bit too low or you file beyond a certain angle, everything falls together …
“Folded” earring with lemon chrysoprase
Let me die like a mexican!
In Mexico – where I lived for a long time – there is a very special tradition of dealing with death, which fascinated me from the beginning on. The family of the deceased arranges once a year, on the days of the dead, the „Dias de los Muertos“, a kind of memorial altar at home on which all things that the beloved person has liked during lifetime are arranged: good food, music or a certain sport. A sugar skull with the name of the deceased is lovingly placed on it. These skulls are colorful and pretty to look at and by no means frightening or scary.
