ACK! I just committed to doing another 'A Day' challenge. Ok, it's been 5 years since the last one -Ring A Day | This one seems so do-able, it's not even a pair of earrings... it's just one single earring, how hard can that be? It's also very freeing not to have to make 2 earrings that look alike... it's hard to experiment when you do that. So for January 1, day one. I thought I would start with a spiral. The direction my art has been evolving had been towards 'origins.' I've been working on a project called personal icons, where I have combined images from when I was little (mostly religious icon type things, in addition, to relics, superstitions, etc.) with styles from some of my favorite artists like Andy Warhol and Jean- Michel Basquiat. The other direction my art tends to find itself is primitive and organic, so I am working at getting those 2 directions more on the same path. Hence, my spiral earring. |
My first thought was to make a spiral earring... I've made them before... wire twisted into a spiral, then hammered, generally using 16-20 gauge wire. Probably about 20 minutes worth of work. Of course, I can't keep anything simple. Instead of 16 gauge wire, I thought it would be cool to use 4 gauge wire which is .3249" or 8.2515mm. Let's just say pretty thick. So curving that into a spiral after forging took a while. Then I wanted to add a thicker piece of sterling and forge it down for the ear wire and that took awhile too. Then there was more texturing followed by polishing followed by adding a heat patina. Then there were the photos and listing it on Etsy (cuz that's part of the challenge) and posting it on FaceBook and posting it on Flickr and then blogging about it here. | Let's just say it took longer than 20 minutes! |