Fall/Winter Jewelry at Lansing Art Gallery

 

A few weeks ago, I dropped a fresh color pallet of jewelry off to the Lansing Art Gallery for their Michigan Made Holiday Show. I've been working on pieces for our wedding so much that I didn't realize how badly I needed a color change. As much as I will always default back to purple and green, I was really excited to pack up a whole bunch of new bead colors. I gathered and had to thin down beads for the train ride to Chicago for our honeymoon. I didn't get as much beading done in those 6 days that I thought I would. Which is good, because it means I was not stressed about producing and I was enjoying our honeymoon moments. 

I started with this wide St. Petersburg Chain bracelet, just to get my colors lined up and see how I liked them together. It has some fall colors but still includes plenty of pops of brights that I've been enjoying working with.

Leaf Clasp Bracelet

5-Leaf Daphne Necklace Variation

This necklace can be worn off-center or with the leaves in the middle.

Tiny pod earrings

Hints of muted turquoise are running rampant through my beading right now. I'm sure I'll get tired of it soon. The weather has started to change and I'm feeling like crawling into yarns with my weaving and knitting. If you'd like to shop this collection, they will be at the Opening Reception for the 2022 Michigan Made Holiday Art Market; Thursday November 10, 5-8pm.  I'll be by that night too!

Our Punk Themed Wedding

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

I haven't been blogging because we've been getting ready for our wedding, celebrating, enjoying a honeymoon and then it just wasn't a priority. I'm not the biggest fan of being on my computer/phone/social media when I'm at home. So now I'm backlogged.  I'll start at the exciting part of my year and then bounce around my summer/fall timeline in future blogs. 

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

We got married!

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

I could go on and on about our story and how I never, ever thought I'd meet someone or be in a healthy relationship that was just...easy to be together. After almost 6 years I still look forward to seeing Bryan every day and miss him when we are apart. Life is cozy and there's an ease at home that makes our day to day life fun.

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Looking back on the day, the best part of the wedding for me was our ceremony. It was us, in the space in that we have worked on together in our back yard, at our home.  It was deeply personal. My brother played guitar and keyboard for our "punk" themed ceremony (Talking Heads, Bad Religion, Ben Folds....).  Metro Melik officiated for us and not only is he the biggest promoter of Lansing that I know, he was also our bartender the first time we went out. Our chairs were laid out in ska-checker-style, black and white. The backdrop was the door privacy fence that I'm so proud of.  We also put together a center arbor with 2 glass doors in our purple wedding color and an old exterior door frame with checkered accents.

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

It rained, down poured, beforehand, but cleared for the ceremony. It was perfect. We put our wedding together somewhat quickly (as weddings go) this year. We knew there'd be bumps along the way, then inertia just took over in September. We decided to keep it small and simple. I'm glad our guest list was short because I was overwhelmed with the amount of people we did have. There was so much joy and love and hugs and excitement. 

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Bryan and I hadn't discussed it, but we knew before we even talked about getting married that this relationship was permanent and marriage or not, we were together.  It was really cool seeing everyone excited that we decided to make it official.

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

The reception was at The Avenue where we met. It was so awesome of Ruckus Ramen to cater, Dani, Colleen, Jimmy and everyone who worked to put this together for us. Again, SO we had much love and warmth from everyone who helped with and attended our wedding.

Thank you Alex (from Mirabella Salon) and his colleage Megan for our wedding hairstyles! 

Our phenomenal flower arrangements we created by Britt at Where the Wild Things Bloom:

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Drizzle Cakes and Bakes worked in the most beautiful "dark and moody" cake and cupcakes for us. Britt was able to get our flowers and monkeytail fiddleheads to Jill for the cake. Everything that she bakes is absolutely delicious!

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

We spent time picking out our first dance song together. We don't have "a song", we have a genre.  I've loved ska music since I was a teen and never stopped following my favoirte bands even as their shows got smaller. Bryan brought up ska music while we chatted even before our first night out together. So we found the slower ska song, a classic by Madness, "It Must Be Love."  Speaking of music, thank you Mike, the DJ at The Avenue for mixing in some classic favorite with tons of ska-punk music. It was like my personal playlists were going all night.

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

There are so many great photos that Jena got I just wanted to post a few of my favorites here. Thank you to everyone who was part of our special day!

Photo by Jena Hovey of McShane Photography

Convergence Knoxville 2021: Exhibits with my work

I had no idea where to start with my posts about Convergence this year so I'm breaking posts down into subjects that I'm able to organize better.  This post is about my work shown in 3 of the Exhibits at HGA.

The drive down to Knoxville from Lansing was blue skies and fluffy clouds the whole way!

Convergence is just that, Fiber Art people from all over the world (mostly US and Canada) meet in a city chosen by HGA and we take over their Convention Center, Hotels, Classrooms, Galleries, and anywhere that will exhibit, show fiber work, or let us sit and weave/knit/spin/meet.  HGA themselves host a number of Juried Exhibits along with the local guild exhibits and often local galleries present something fiber-themed. We Converge together and you can tell where your people are by their name tags and the fact that 90% of them are wearing some sort of beautiful handwoven scarf around in July.

Even the Marriott where I was staying had great artwork throughout.

It didn't really hit me completely until I was there telling other convergence attendees that I had pieces in 3 of HGA's exhibits. That's the most I've ever had shown at once at a Convergence Conference, so that's really exciting for me. They were all from the same series: Leaf Me Alone.

I'll be honest, this Leaf Me Alone theme began with my divorce, or need to get divorced back in 2013/2014. With the pandemic, being left alone rose to another level and it became Leaf Me Alone's time to shine. Introverts like myself and Bryan were really cozy not having to do anything but go to work and come home and do our thing. I didn't realized how much I felt being pressured to be busy and social all of the time, pandemic-time was a much-needed reset. I had started making masks during that quiet and the Leaf Me Alone Mask became an obvious, somewhat time-sensitive art piece. It was accepted into the Small Expressions Exhibit.

I had an older, smaller version of Leaf Me Alone (2) in the Leader's Exhibit.  I had shown it at the Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference a few years ago when Cameron Taylor-Brown with the juror. She commented that these smaller ones (10in W x 14.5 L) looked like maquettes, which is true... I do think my word pieces translate much better on a large scale. I also love that word she used, maquette. I had warped for these small Leaf Me Alone pieces to get back in the groove of double weave pickup, and I did have Small Expressions on the brain when I started them. I still have 1 more small one to finish.

Last but definitely not least... Leaf Me Alone (the large version) came into being at the beginning of this year. It's really part of the larger word pieces that I'm picking away at and a sister piece to She Can't See the Forest through the Trees. I was so happy to have this not only finished to submit this year, but it also won an Honorable Mention.  I went to the juror's talk and she said that she felt this piece was "relaxing" which I hadn't really heard of my work before, but I'll take it.

This is also the first time I've won an award exhibiting with HGA, I'm never sure I'll win an award, there are so many amazing weavers and fiber artists in HGA!  I am so honored just to be showing with them.

I started my first full day in Knoxville meeting with Clara who I know from the Lansing Weaver's Guild and has since moved to Florida, it was so good to catch up with her while we perused the exhibits at the Knoxville Convention Center. 

I was going to blog more about the various exhibits and a few of my favorite pieces that I took quick photos of but I started to feel too overwhelmed and will never get these posted if I overthink it. Maybe I'll get to that, maybe I won't, I have a lot going on this year.

Other post subjects on my time at Convergence will hopefully be coming: 
Finish and Exhibit that Piece! (the seminar I presented)
Leader Booth/Sales (and all the awesome people I met)

2022 Spring/Summer Beaded Jewelry

I've had this bag of beads pulled since the beginning of April but I wasn't feeling like making jewelry for quite a while.  Then I had a baby shower to go to that I got to dress up for and made a new earring design for it. From there someone posted a cute photo of herself wearing a pair of earrings that she had purchased from me and it seemed to have lit the spark to get back to making some jewelry. 

I pulled out the bag of bead colors that have been sitting in my studio and went to work. First making some earrings...

Then I really wanted to play with stripes like I have been on the garage, so the above bracelet happened...

And I got carried away with leaves for a necklace:

The corals and greens are reminding me of past sets from Spring 2015. There were a lot of pinks used back with that grouping which I've apparently replaced with bright purple and lavender. I actually cannot get enough of this matte lavender tiny seed bead.  

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the above lavender crystal earrings but experimentation can easily move into other ideas so who knows where these could go.

I've been beading more than I guess I thought I had been. 

Second Knit Crop Top: Black and White Stripes

I am so behind on blog updates, I swear, I'm still creating! As we plan for our dressy punk wedding I keep thinking of things I can make to wear to concerts coming up like Rammstein, ska shows and Riot Fest (our honeymoon) so I decided to try a black and white stripe crop-top.  I got it done just in time for the Kill Lincoln, JER, Dissidente concert in Grand Rapids at the beginning of this month.  

Bryan and I both happened to have Friday off before his birthday and it just happened that there was a ska concert in Grand Rapids.  It's almost like it was my birthday, I promise that I gave him other options of things we could do and left it wide open, he picked the ska show. <3  We switched up our usual dinner spot and I introduced him to The Electric Cheetah which I had apparently forgot existed as it's not as close to the music venue as our usual spot, Luna. Bryan rolled a Yahtzee on the second roll and got his Yahtzee dinner for free, plus a birthday cookie. Ultimately things kept turning up Bryan around his birthday so it was a good week for us.

Back to the newly knit crop top; it held up great through skanking, jumping, dancing, sweating. I knit up My Secret Little Crop last year in a more vintage look and wore it all last summer. Being a crop top it still has air flow so it doesn't feel too heavy even though it kind-of is for warm-weather application. I usually don't think of wearing knits like this in the summer, but I'm learning it's all about the shape and styling at the end of the day. I've thrown a lot of "do's" and "don't" of fashion out the window over the years but nowadays I think I'm just dumping all the rules out and setting them on fire.

I really love this crop top pattern by Jessie Maed Designs.  She has a ton of cute patterns and you should check them out if you're a knitter. I kind-of want to start another summer top but I have way too many projects going right now. Also, thank you to Sally for passing along her late mother's stash to me, I'm finding ways to use it while I practice and improve my knitting.  This stripe top is 100% her mother's stash yarn.

Currently most of my free time has been outside working on our gardens (weeding lots!) and picking away at the very time-consuming paint-job that I'm doing on the garage. I'm just realizing that the garden along the door-privacy-fence is filling in in the way I always dreamed of being able to have a decorative garden. So I guess I'm pretty ok at gardening. The garage paint job is satisfying my need to play with colors in the same way that the door fence and my beadwork does. At the end of the day it's really neat to see how the way I design translates into each other. 

MLH 21st Biennial Exhibit at LowellArt Gallery

It's starting to feel like I'm getting back into my old pre-pandemic-groove. Art-wise at least. Everything else in my life seems to be changing but submitting work to exhibits, going to receptions, seeing my weaver-friends feels a bit more like what normal was.  

On Thursday Bryan and I went to The LowellArts Gallery for the opening reception of the Michigan League of Handweavers 21st Biennial  Exhibition. What a beautiful space they have over there!  This show is always great sampling of what the Michigan fiber arts community has to offer.  I didn't get many photos. I'm really working on being more present with less having my phone out. 

I was pleasantly surprised when the awards were announced that I had received an honorable mention for my Evil Eye Bangle. Thank you Barbra Bushey for the award!

Also thank you Helen for purchasing the necklace that I entered. She already has a number of my pieces so I know the Copper Daphne Necklace will be going to a good home when this show is over. 

I'm reminded and humbled that even though I'm not currently producing a ton of my usual artwork, I still have just enough in rotation to feel like I'm staying relevant and keeping my art career going despite my full-time day job, my big personal yard projects and getting ready for our wedding. Life is busy but very very good. 

Spike Stripe Earrings

Lately I feel like I've been knitting more than beading, but when I was between 2 dresses for a baby shower I decided to come up with a new earring design that would work for them. Both dresses have stripes. I have been searching the internet for spike and punk designs a LOT while getting wedding ideas so I figured it was time to try my hand at a large spike drop.  

Black and White Spike Stripe Drop

This isn't a great photo put it shows the rainbow 

sheen in the white beads a bit better.

The black and white dress is the one I ended up wearing, it's been a while since I've worn it and it was fun to have these as a new matching piece of jewelry.

Navy and Silver Spike Stripe Drop

I've never really had a good piece of jewelry to match the other dress which is navy with white and orange-red stripes.  It's been really hard to find a real navy seed bead in the past and Miyuki seed beads has this wonderful deep navy color now.

Between these earrings and someone posting a selfie on social media wearing an older earring design I've been inspired to get into my jewelry pieces again. I have some fun new bead colors that are calling to me now that the weather is turning warm and bright with our gardens.