Back from Indiana

I forgot to give you warning that I was going to be heading to Indiana last week to see my Grandmother. I made it back home last night. Grammie is doing remarkably well. Her health has stabilized for now and while she would rather be in her own home, she has been making the best of her life in the nursing home.

Her roommate is very nice and they keep each other on their toes. I baked them some cookies and took some chocolate covered pretzels from Malleys (a famous Cleveland chocolate company). Grammie and I would take off for a few hours in the afternoon and either go back to her home or out to visit my mom. Grammie was just happy to 'be away from that place'.

So, this weekend I'm off to the SOFA (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art) show in Chicago. I'm helping out at the ISGB (International Society of Glass Beadmakers) resource table during the show and also going to see one of my college roommates! It should be fun (although, I would rather stay home:)).

2005 Ornament

I've created and submitted a new ornament for the Treasures for the Tree Project (TFTP). The purpose of the TFTP is to showcase the works of current Ohio artists and craftspeople by decorating the Governor's Residence official holiday tree. Fifty ornaments are selected (10 per region of the state). My ornaments were selected four years in a row and then last year my snowman ornament was not selected (bummer). Below is the new ornament titled 'Mistletoe' and has over 30 beads wire wrapped onto a metal chain.

Creating a Bra from Scratch....

One of the gallery owners I have worked with in Cleveland sent out a call for entries last month. She asked that artists decorate bras with things like puffy paint, watercolors, or fabric and bring them into her gallery. She would put them on display and auction them off to raise money for breast cancer research. I thought this was a wonderful idea! She had some bras that she was giving to artists the bigger the better he he :).

Below you will see three images of the bra I created.

I wanted to construct a bra out of metal and beads and found a variety of types of copper to use in forming the structure. Using copper tubing and mesh I formed the metal around a female form and literally stitched the mesh, using copper wire, around the tubing in some instances. Because I couldn't bend the copper tubing into a tight spiral to form the bra cups, I switched to glass beads strung on copper wire, which brought the piece together in the end. I didn't start out thinking I would create a bra from scratch, but pieces of it just evolved and using my own bras as patterns helped!

The gallery owner loved the bra! She is going to let me know how the auction goes and hopes that I win the 'viewers choice' award!