Driftwood Jewelry

These pins were also in my endless pile of slides; they are a bit out of focus, but at least I have pictures of them. I must have sold them all because I don't have them anymore. They are made of small pieces of driftwood, copper tape, and various beads. I like them...maybe I will make some more one of these days when I can get my hands on some driftwood.

The Gourds

I've been scanning all my old slides, and found a bunch of pictures of the gourd containers I used to make. They were finished with paper and painted on the inside, and the outside painted with designs and finished with polyurethane. I sold them in various craft stores in Seattle, but I had forgotten how many I actually made. Some have stems for handles, some have tassels, and some sit on small velvet cushions to keep them balanced. This is just a very small sampling...

This one was a custom design for someone in the music industry, there are several views to show all the figures.

One of my craziest endeavors

Years ago, I took a class in Scientific Illustration and I loved it, partly because it was the antithesis of everything I learned from my "abstract is the only art" professors in college. The point is to draw the item exactly as you see it, in actual size, every detail lovingly rendered, with no interpretation. This assignment was to work on scratchboard*, and I chose as my subject a elbow-length silk knitted fingerless glove from the 1900s. As soon as I started I knew it was an insane idea, but I'd seen people do larger and more complicated works in scratchboard, so I carried on. As much as I love scratchboard and scientific illustration, I doubt I will ever do anything this labor-intensive again.

*Scratchboard is a thin board covered in a layer of smooth white clay, then a layer of black ink, and a pointed tool is used to carefully scratch away the black ink and reveal the white underneath.