Enter: Celtic Knots

I needed some "Muggle" jewelry to stock in the brick-and-mortar gallery that carries my work, and decided to go with Celtic knots.  (Still pretty geeky, yeah, but not as geeky as Gallifreyan.)

I've tried several construction approaches at this point, and they've each had their own problems.  It's relatively easy to cast a solid knot, and there's a lot of those on the market -- in silver, though,  not bronze -- so I wanted my pieces to exploit the sculptural aspect of my medium and be different than cast pieces would be.  That's been... challenging, let's say (instead of the bevy of four-letter words I've used) and has involved a lot of fail (oops, there's a four-letter word anyway). 

Basically I'm building the knot up in layers and wedding the ends before the piece is fired.  But there's a tricky balance of keeping the clay soft enough to be pliable so bends happen without breaking, but dry enough to hold its shape and not stick together in unintentional ways -- I want to maintain the integrity of each layer and keep it separate from a strand that crosses above or below.  The thing about Celtic knots is that they are meant to be a single, unbroken line in a loop, not a lump of a shape.  There shouldn't be a front and back - it should be three-dimensional from both sides.

Once the knot is together -- not a guarantee, I'm running about 50% completion before there's too many breaks and I have to start over -- then I fire it.  Turns out my temperature and timing schedule varies depending on the thickness of the bronze.  Which: d'uh, right?  But in order to clue into that fact, I had to melt a batch of knots first -- they're thinner and more slender than the keychain disks I've been firing so my schedule had to be adjusted.  Oops.

The good news is that when it all works the result is great.  They're exactly what I had in mind when I began this merry adventure, which doesn't always happen.  I'm finishing the pieces off with leather cording and bronze chain; it adds to the ancient look.  There are pictures of different pieces over in a Facebook album if you'd like to see others.  (Or put a note in the comments and I'll send you pictures.)

If you're interested in ordering one of these pieces as a holiday gift, please let me know as soon as you can.  Given the time and complication factor, last-minute orders may be problematic to fill.  Though let's hope the learning curve levels off, yeah?

Mastering the Internets

I'm still working out a sense of what kind of posts to make where in terms of Facebook vs. this blog; it's not quite as intuitive as I expected.

Some blogs don't really encourage participation and feedback, but I wanted to let y'all know that comments here are accepted, if you're inclined to make them.   I'm perfectly comfortable talking to myself (if you know me, you know that's true).  But you are encouraged to talk back, if you wish.

Also, there's a new item up at the Etsy store -- initial earrings.  Here's a pic:

Left: "M"; Right: "Q"

Kiln Report The First

Well, nothing melted. :)

So far my experience with my little baby kiln has been completely positive.  The learning curve has been... curvy, but that's not the kiln's fault.



Let's admit it: life is more fun this way.

The biggest single advantage is the cycle time.  The kiln I've been using was made for glass work, and glass has to be heated and cooled slowly or it cracks; glass kilns are therefore set to slowly ramp up temperature, hold the temp for a certain amount of time, and then sloooooowly ramp down.  All summer, each firing I've done has taken 8-9 hours to get through.  Metal isn't that fussy, but there wasn't any way to change the kiln's basic set-up.

MY kiln, on the other hand, has a jillion pre-set programs, including separate menus for metal clay, glass, and porcelain.  On a metal cycle, the kiln ramps as fast as it can, holds for as long as I tell it, then shuts off.  The whole thing takes about three hours.  Dramatically increases production time, lemmee tell you.  Also pulls a lot less power, so costs less, which is a yay.
I originally thought I'd hit the right firing temp exactly right the first try -- I put a note in my kiln log that said: all perfect! <3.  Now it says: all perfect! <3 because when I sat down to polish the second batch, the piece I was working on crumbled to little clay bits.  It looked done, and I hadn't pressed hard enough to test it properly.

At least it's only a kiln and not a nuclear power plant.

So then I learned about re-firing, and somehow (!) managed not to over-cook everything and err in the opposite direction.  Delayed win, but still a W.  Also, the convenience of having the kiln in my house can not be overstated.  I had to re-fire some pieces three times... but I still got that done in a day and had way more control than I'd have had with the previous kiln.  I'm sure no one's shocked to hear that in Monique-world, more control = more happy.

I keep threatening to post pics of, y'know, Actual Jewelry, but haven't.  Hopefully that will happen next week.

Have a great weekend!

Kiln!

Vocab first, since not everyone knows the word "kiln".  It's a metal box, similar to an oven, which is used to fire pottery, glass, or metal, depending on the type of kiln.  The formal pronunciation is "kill", though recently it has become acceptable to include the "n", and that's how I say it.

The primary medium I'm currently using is a formulation of bronze that needs to be fired in a kiln in order to finish.  Up to this point, I was using the kiln in my university's Art Department through an Independent Study class.  That magic kiln-for-free time ran out early August, however, and I've been kiln-less.

No longer!


There are many kilns like it.  This one is mine!

The fun part is that I spent a good couple of weeks slagging pieces in the Art Dept kiln whilst figuring out the ideal temperature range, which varies from kiln to kiln.  I haven't yet begun the testing process with this one yet, and am not particularly looking forward to scaling the shiny new learning curve, but it must be done.

(Yes, I'm the sort of pretentious ass who un-ironically uses words like "whilst".  I'd apologize, but I'm not really sorry, so...)

Hopefully, I will soon be posting pics of new work, and hopefully those pictures won't be mis-shapen lumps of bronze.  There's a couple of special orders I need to get in the mail soon, and it would be nice if I didn't have to sculpt them multiple times.  My experience with art, however, is usually that getting it right the first time is not the best goal.  Far better to play around until you like it than to set unreasonable expectations.

So that's the latest: KILN!  I miss the days of setting my hair on fire with my acetylene torch (oh, calm down, it was just the bangs, and only a few times) but contained fire is better than none.

It is, sadly, not larger on the inside.

KudosCon

Short note -- KudosCon is a convention specifically focused on fanworks, and will take place in January in Minnesota.  Funds are being raised via Kickstarter, which is the only way to register.

Logo Talk

I've been asked two questions about the ARTxGEEK logo several times, so I thought I'd talk about that a bit.

The first question addresses the legality of using appropriated images.  Long Answer Is Long; short answer is that it's my understanding that it falls under the umbrella of fair use.  I work at a university and am also a grad student; a couple of semesters ago I took a writing class on hybrid and experimental forms and we spent a lot of time discussing appropriation and collage-style art.  We'll talk more later about appropriation and collage and "derivative" art (it's not only a hot topic in certain circles, it's a personal passion)... but that's part of the long answer. 

In the meantime, yes, I do believe I can legally use the images in this way.  However, if any of the companies in question tell me to stop, then I'll change it.

The second question concerns where I got each letter.  "I don't recognize..." so here's the list:

A = (Star Trek) Uniform badge, TOS design.  ST:TOS captured my heart as a girl.  I remember writing little stories about the characters on my own, literally decades before I ever heard the phrase "fanfic".  Also, Captain Kirk was my first-ever tv crush, but... have you met James T.?  He's totally crush-worthy.  I am not ashamed.

R = (Batman mythos) Uniform insignia, Robin's costume.   The "About Me" doesn't lie: I learned to read by reading Batman comics.  ("Mommy, what's homicide mean?")  I also attempted to draw a life-size Batman by my bed that year, beginning with gluing seven feet of pages from my Big Chief tablet directly to the wall.  Mom was not amused and the project was aborted before the crayons came out.  Censorship!

T = (Torchwood/Doctor Who)  Torchwood logo.  Jack conveys his regrets that the Doctor could not be here himself, but assures us all that in the event of an actual emergency, the Doctor will be notified.  (You probably won't be, but trust that the world's in good hands.)

x = (X-Box)  Hi, my name is Monique, I'm a video game junkie.  I'll tell you almost anything about myself in excruciating detail... but I will not reveal the hour-count on my Oblivion, Skyrim, or Dragon Age characters.  That information helps no one.

G = (Stargate)  Broken stargate.  Stargate: SG-1 was my first experience with online fandom.  Over a decade later, I still have friends from those listserves.

E = (Firefly/Serenity) Partial ship's logo from the Serenity exterior.  Because: Joss.  I had to have one of Joss Whedon's shows represented; his body of work has affected me greatly over the years both as a viewer and as a writer.  (Also: Browncoats Forever!)

E = (Star Trek) Partial ship's logo from the Enterprise exterior.  Gotta admit, I don't like how this E looks; it's a bad screencap, and I will have to replace at some point. 

K = (Highlander) Conner's quickening after killing the Kurgen.  If you've spent any time at all in the Highlander fandom, you know the joke already.  For the rest of you -- the word "immortals" got shortened to Immies by the fans, and then so many of the bad guys had names beginning with K (Kurgen, Kronos, Kallas, Kane, etc.) that bad-guy-immortals came to be called Kimmies.   There can be only one!

Allons-y!

Welcome to my little corner of the internet!  Pull up a chair and feel free to help yourself to whatever's in the fridge.  (Don't expect "food", but there should be beer.)

Hi, my name's Monique, (hi, Monique!) and I'm a huge geek.  If you're going to hang out here -- and I hope you do -- expect fandom jokes and squees about whatever show I'm watching and rants about whatever tempest is brewing on the convention circuit these days.

Oh, and you can expect talk about jewelry and art, too.  Sorta the point.

The thing I love about fandom is that joy and a spirit of community are the foundation of the experience.  Fans love out loud.  We get a lot of crap for that -- love always looks a little silly from the outside -- but we long since ceased to care and instead concentrated on having fun and taking over the world.

Fans aren't content to watch a show, turn off the tv, and go eat supper.  We want more -- we want to interact with the art that's been created: touch it, taste it, make it our own.  We want to discuss plotlines and character arcs, dress up in the clothes, listen to the actors and show creator commentaries on our DVDs, play versions of the characters in role-playing games, and argue about the Kobayashi Maru.  We want to write fanfic and knit Jayne hats and latch-hook ourselves a carpet in the shape of the Enterprise. 

Case in point: a couple of Doctor Who fans, inspired by the TARDIS set graphics, designed a code for Circular Gallifreyan, the written language of the Time Lords.  As soon as I saw it, I was captivated.  I love Doctor Who, language, and strong geometric graphics... I was immediately scribbling circles and figuring out how to turn it into physical art.

The end result was my Etsy store and bronze keychain fobs.  I picked fobs because they are a unisex item and the Doctor Who fanbase doesn't have much of a gender bias.  Keys and fobs take a lot of abuse, however, so I decided to work in bronze.  I also like the fact that the bronze lends itself to the "alien artifact" concept -- it looks ancient, which I emphasize in the designs.

Future posts will feature pictures and specifics, but for now let me say again: welcome.  I'm glad to have you. 

Let's love out loud together.