Getting it done

So I had recently been invited to do a craft holiday sale. I thought that I would make some cutting boards and knives. I have been doing some research and found a local company to cut the stainless for the knives after which I will grind and finish them myself.  I think this will work a lot better than cutting them from blanks. They gave us a tour of the facility which was kind of eye opening.  I have to admit it is very nice to have this in your back yard. I actually had to kind of shut my brain off for a while so I can focus on knives. There are so many things I would like to make with all of this equipment.

 

 Not only do they have a super laser! They also have a CNC turret punch which is used to cut holes, straight lines, knockouts, louvers etc. For some things it is cheaper to mechanically stamp/shear/form than to laser.  Also aluminum is far safer to stamp than laser because of fumes etc. 

Zoom symposium

Last week I was invited to speak at my alma mater, Indiana University Bloomington.  I was honored to be invited and absolutely thrilled at the chance to come back to IU to visit some of my old haunts (Runcible spoon and Rockits pizza).  

The symposium itself was a blast.  Liz and I met a lot of great young artists from different schools across the midwest.  We also had a great time taking part in the workshops and enjoyed a lot of the other lectures.  I regret not taking part in the round table discussion but I couldn't help getting swept away in the nostalgia. By the end Liz was sick of me being the tour guide. "Thats where I taught 3D foundations!" "We just drove by my old apartment!" "I used to come here for pancakes." 

My conference experience was very intimate  I had a chance to talk to a lot of students and actually have real conversations with them. Liz also had an opportunity to ask a lot of them of what they thought of grad school and how things were going. Being able to tour the Kinsey Institute and visit the Lily Library to see an actual Gutenberg bible was a treat. Honestly, there was a lot to do and really not enough time to do it all.   

It was also nice to visit my old bench back in the grad studio and to visit McCalla school where I spent a lot of my time. 

I would also like to thank the IU metals students, Randy and Nicole for such a wonderful experience.  They worked so hard to make all of this happen and it showed. 

I will be participating/attending/demoing at this years ECU symposium. It will be interesting to see how the two compare.  

The exhibitions where incredible.  Shift, was a great opportunity to see so many great artist's work in person.  The layout was well planned.  Not too crowded and not too spaced out. Often having that much jewelry in one room would mean total chaos but this worked on multiple levels.  I also enjoyed seeing new work from Don Friedlich (3D printed glass!!), Iris Eichenberg and Kristen Haydon. I also appreciated that they decided to use the ipad to display video throughout the exhibition   Two in particular were Melanie Bilenker placing her bits of hair and Gabriel Craig raising awareness. The show itself was intimidating being that there was so much work, but not unapproachable.  I was also interesting to see a range of work in the show.  There were a number of sculptural pieces that were more about jewelry and its relationship to the body.  Caroline Gore's piece Mercurial Silence dominated this category, taking up the entire back wall of the gallery (detail shot above). I am often impressed with the level of craftsmanship that metalsmiths put into crafting other objects. The large "findings" on her wood pieces and the attention to the larger black "pearls" were impressive. 

I was also impressed with Crush II, an exhibition curated by two IU alum, Sara Brown and Galatea Kontos.  Filled with a number of great pieces from jewelers like Iris Bobemer, Julia Turner, Tara Locklear, Bob Ebendorf and Heejim Hwang just to name a few.  I was pleased to be able to actually purchase a piece (fingers crossed). Collect was a collection from a local collector. There were some Alma Eikerman pieces there, which were nice to see in person. 

When I first arrived on campus it was so strange to think that eight years ago I was smoking cigarettes with other grad students and working all hours into the night trying to find my way through school.  I have so many great memories of IU where I really felt I was given an opportunity to be creative and all of the support to be able to do anything I wanted.   Ahhhhh the memories.    

I also had some opportunities to create some new memories having long talks with Michael Dale Bernard, Tara Locklear, Sim Luttin, Linda Hughes and Yevegenia Kaganovich. 

Enough cheese!  Here are some photos from the trip.  Also if you are in the area go see these shows! 

keri and colin's cutting board

My first real cut on my laser was a cutting board I made for two of the best people ever! Kerianne Kwik and Conin Storer. I may start selling these on my Etsy site for the holiday. I will keep you posted.

ipad apps

I love using the ipad as a sketching tool. I often take it on trips and try to do CAD work on it. There are a few apps here and there that are useful but not great.  I have been using touchdraw  and sometimes inkpad 

 If anyone knows of a good vector editing app please let me know. 

 I also use a few sketching apps.  For everything I use the Idonit jot pro 

 Also, I just saw this video for printing out your sketches. Not too bad


 




Also I love their Sketching app.  

Color / Mix it Up from FiftyThree on Vimeo.

Laser: Part....whatever.

One of the things that sucks about the 5th gen is that there is no registration to speak of. You kind of just slap your material into the machine and cross your fingers.  You have to make sure that your material is bigger than what you are cutting.  The machine came with a honeycomb board but really that thing is almost useless.  

There is an upside.  The software has a "run job perimeter" button which will run around the outside edge of your drawing or file.  If you do this with the lid open you will be able to see where you need to place your material and the laser wont fire.  Since it came with a handy dandy laser pointer, this function can show you exactly where the laser is going to cut.  

I decided to take it one step further.  I used the laser to mark a line on the bed of the machine (this took burning through a piece of paper to actually work).  I then bought a metal square from Lowes (inches of course).  It would have been nice to find a metric ruler.  I bought an aluminum ruler so I could cut it in the studio with the jewelers saw.  The max cut area is 20 x 12 and the square I bought was 18 x 24 so I needed to trim it to even fit into the machine.  I cut the square to 20.25" x 12.25" just in case.  

Once I found a corner I adjusted the ruler to match the homing program and used the laser pointer to make sure the ruler was perpendicular.  Once the ruler was in place I scribed a line with a mechanical pencil, removed the ruler, added double sided tape (the thiner, carpet tape variety), set the ruler back in place, pressed down firmly on the ruler and viola! A square edge for registration!  It is not perfect but at least it is close enough to have a reference edge.  It also gives me something to push the honeycomb board against for cutting thinner stuff.  It is also not permanent so if I need to remove it later I can just pop it off. 

The next step is going to be a better table.  My studio is literally on the train tracks.  The table that the laser is on is from IKEA (total garbage but the perfect size).  It could be perfect.  Maybe I can still use the top for the new table.     

silver thing and laser etched maple cutting board