Gemstone Ring Workshop Details!

Tubeset Gemstone Ring Workshop with Adrienne Grafton:
Learn to set round faceted stones in tubing to adorn rings, brooches, necklaces and more.
In this workshop, you will complete a silver ring with a tubesetting. The instructor will
provide a kit for each student that includes burs, tubing and three 3mm faceted stones.
The cost of this kit is included in the cost of the class.

Metalsmithing experience required, you should know how to solder and fabricate with sterling.
Please bring your own silver sheet and wire and your favorite small handtools, like pliers and files.

cost of class: $100 (includes kit)
class size: 5

Adreinne's Biography:

Adrienne M. Grafton earned a MFA in Metal Design from East Carolina University in 2005 and a BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2000. Her recent work, inspired by dreams and metaphors, is fabricated sculptural pieces made of copper and silver, often enriched with gold leaf. Adrienne received the Judy Cheteyan Education Scholarship from the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, PA in 2004. She has shown her work at the NC State University Gallery of Art and Design in Raleigh, NC and taught metals workshops at the Society for Contemporary Craft and Pullen Art Center in Raleigh. Her work has been published in The Art of Enameling, 1000 Rings, 500 Necklaces and 500 Earrings. Adrienne worked as the Metals Studio Coordinator at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC from 2005 to 2007 and is currently living in Warren, PA working full time in her studio.

The Gurls in my Posse

My girls...
kickin' it in lower metals at Penland this summer in Joost & Dianne's class.... Adrienne, my former roomy and my girlyfriend Marion. I missed this class at Penland and could kick myself!!! Met Joost and Dianne at the Avetts concert in HOB-Chicago in '06. Uber cool couple.....
Don't miss Adrienne's workshop in my studio this September!!!
She rocks.....

Joost was a previous Saul Bell Award winner.
Here's Joost working:









More of Joost Durlings work:
http://www.newbedfordopenstudios.org/spgm-1.4.4/index.php?spgmGal=Joost_During&spgmPic=1&spgmFilters=#pic

Workshop with Ace!

Newsflash! Adrienne Grafton -aka Ace, and I are cooking up a workshop for you metals junkies! You! Yes you, can spend Tuesday September 11th from 6-9 with the awesome Adrienne in my studio making a ring with a tube set faceted gem. Some soldering and basic metals experience is required. Adrienne was the Metals Studio coordinator for Penland School for the last two years. Her resume and metals teaching experience are extensive. She is a fabulous teacher, you won't want to miss this. More details to come.

Saturday Luncheon

Well! I think our luncheon went well. There were six of us and we met and talked mostly about what we each do, and why forming a metals group is a good thing. Everyone is in agreement, sharing our stories, or experiences, commiserating and pooling resources can only benefit ourselves and the community. We agreed that educating our public here in Wilmington and the surrounding area is imperative. Metalsmithing is little known here and largely misunderstood. Banding together for shows, demonstrations and workshops can only help us get better exposure and publicity. The more Wilmington is exposed to what we do the better they will understand and appreciate art jewelry and metalsmithing. That just makes the pie bigger in my opinion. As a group we would also like to pool resources to hire professionals from outside our area to come here and teach workshops. I have some ideas I will put into the works for this one too. As usual any suggestions are welcomed! We want to all meet again. I know there are at least 6-7 other metalsmiths in town I'd love to extend the invitation to. If you know someone bring them next time...or just mention us. If you are shy... join us! Email me! Its a small but very welcoming group because we artists need to get out of our creative caves from time to time.

Meet & Greet

Join us for an informal get together to get to know each other!
Viet Bistro -Saturday July 7th at noon
See you there!

Earl Pardon: Palette Maestro

Like candy.....

More with Earl

It was so wonderful to see Earl Pardon's work up so close.
I got a kick out of this ring.

Earl Pardon

Another fantastic show was at Delta Axis in a small room downstairs. Earl Pardon:Palette Maestro was an exhibit of Earl Pardon’s work in conjunction with a presentation by Rosanne Raab with special guest Tod Pardon.

http://homepage.mac.com/tpardon/pardondesign/EarlPardon.htm





Earl Pardon (b. 1926, d. 1991) was born in Memphis, Tennessee. A prolific artist, he exhibited widely and completed numerous commissions, and as a professor, taught courses in jewelry and enameling at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York from 1951 to 1989. His works were influenced by his knowledge of Zen and he often referred to his pieces as portable art. Pardon is regarded as having assisted in the revival of the art of enameling in the United States and expanding its boundaries. Pardon received his BFA from Memphis Academy of Art in 1951 and in 1959 he received his MFA from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. After retiring, Pardon dedicated himself to his studio work.

The New Steel at Delta Axis

More images from The New Steel including this large Harriet Estel Berman piece.


















For more on Delta Axis:
http://www.deltaaxis.org

Powerhouse

The New Steel show continued downstairs at the Delta Axis gallery.
You could overlook the downstairs hall from a balcony.

Steel Sculpture

This was such a cool show.
This sculpture was kinetic and had a crank.
















Me in front of Elizabeth Brim's piece.












Sharon Massey's steel filligree bracelet.

The New Steel Show

This was The New Steel coordinated by the Metal Museum juried by LeeAnn Mitchell and Suzanne Pugh exhibited in Delta Axis Gallery. The gallery building was a coal fired powerhouse that generated power for the Memphis train station next door. It is such a fabulous space!

The SNAG Silent Auction

Sharon Massey and I took over the SNAG Silent Auction three years ago. We co-chair this event which raises money for Educational Endowment. The SNAG Educational Endowment was founded in 1992. Its sole focus is awarding graduate and undergraduate educational scholarships each year. These are prestigious and highly competitive student scholarship awards. A selection committee of three independent jurors determines the awards. The Endowment awards three scholarships each year, and each scholarship recipient receives: $1,000, One-year complimentary SNAG membership, Their work featured on a postcard sent out to hundreds of museums, galleries, and schools. The application deadline is March 15th each year.
Many vendors and artists donate to the Silent Auction, including artists like Boris Bally, Bob Ebendorf. And this year we had work by Halan Butt and Sarah Perkins, as well as a complete set of the Bill Fretz luscious hammers with padauk wood handles. Its good fun and gets really heated in its final minutes each year. We raised around $8300 this year.

Rooftop Party

Well of course its SNAG and there's always a party. So the first night it was on the roof of the Peabody....lovely.
Above is Mara Freidland the newest ECU grad. Below is ECU metals professor Tim Lazure in the rust shirt and his friend Wayne Werner, as well as Adrienne Grafton in teal and Brittany Sondberg in the olive to the right. The ladies were sporting their new plastic gold Elvis sunglasses....

SNAG Vendors

If you have not been to SNAG, the vendor room is the most fun! Getting to touch tools, see them demo'd and handling gemstones is great. I have bought hammers that I wouldn't have bought from a catalog, but once I saw them used and held them I fell in love. I fell for this anvil stand at the Rio Grande booth, but couldn't afford it this time. After drooling all day wednesday over it, I come by on thrusday and my buddy Marlene True was standing there buying it! And my other grad school compadre, Catherine Osgood, was ordering one as well!


Some of the gem dealers including Bill Gangi, who along with John Frei sponsor the band at the final night party each year.















This is Charon Kransen's booth. He is a New York dealer, originally from Amsterdam, who handles international jewelry artists as well as books on jewelry and metalsmithing, rare, used and new. I adore books so I go nuts in his booth each year.
There's a link to his site to the right with the other links.


















The Rio Grande booth.... like a candy store!

James' SNAG pics

Pics from James Thurman's camera at SNAG can be viewed here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesthurman/sets/72157600400404211/

His website:
http://www.jamesthurman.com/

Party On Beale

Well, Beale Street is a non stop party. On Tuesday before the conference starts we found plenty to do!


This is Silky O' Sulivan's, an outdoor bar behind a reinforced old facade. It comes complete with a wrought iron fenced in area for goats who have their own wooden turrent to climb. SNAG members found themselves here each night just hanging out in front by the big girders. Someone said they thought that all of the metal was drawing us like a magnet.

The street is blocked off each night and mobs of partyers roam and drink giant cups of beer that are available through windows that serve to foot traffic. You can also drink your flavored iced daquari from a yard long plastic cup.

Anyone who is anybody

The trolleys in Memphis are wonderful and run on steel rails still.











This coke machine in the hall was poignant, truly anyone who is anybody in the metals world is at SNAG drinking cocktails in the Peabody lobby. some may call them the usual suspects! The Otto Frei guys, Suzanne Ramljak, RonHo, Paulette Myers, Phillip Baldwin, Tim Mc Creight, Tom Mann, Tom Muir, Fred Fenster, Todd Reed, Harlan Butt, Todd Pardon, Sam Shaw, Sarah Perkins, Mary Ann Scherr, Doug Harling, Mary Chuduck, Cynthai Eid, Felicke van der Leest, Elizabeth Brim, Tom Joyce, Betty Helen Longhi, David Huang, Ce Ce Wire, Arline Fisch, Barbara Minor, Melissa Huff, Linda Threadgill, Ken Bova, Jim Cotter, Joe Wood, Sandra Enterline, Marilyn and Jack da Silva, the people From Facere and Velvet da Vinci galleries, Charon Kransen, Linda Kay -Moses, Andy Cooperman....and so, so many more! I even got to sit next to Tim Mc Creight on a flight coming home.

SNAG-Tuesday Night

Sharon Massey the SNAG Silent Auction Chairperson, and Adrienne Grafton metals studio co ordinator for Penland and I head out of the Peabody for dinner and a night on Beale Street.



There are gorgeous carriages each with a coach dog all over downtown Memphis.

















Adrienne

SANG at the Peabody

2007 Society of North American Goldsmiths Conference, was held in the famous Peabody hotel in Memphis.
The Peabody is known for its mallard ducks that spend from 11am to 5pm in the hotel lobby fountain. Evidently in the 1930's two prominent Memphis gentlemen while having drinks in the hotel, speculated that it'd be a hoot to leave some of their live decoys in the lobby fountain. People loved it and the ducks stayed, basically they're a 70 yr old pratical joke! There is a "duckmaster" in a red coat with braids who rounds up the ducks with a special staff. The ducks ride the elevator to the roof each evening where they live in a "palace" ..... well, a pretty nice cage anyway.

Mitzi's Idea

It's all her fault....well...still, many have had the idea but she actually made a move. Mitzi Jonkheer came to see me at work to say she'd long been thinking about starting a Metalsmiths guild here in the Port City. It has also been a dream of mine since the late 90's, when Marcia MacDonald suggested it. When Mitzi mentioned it I thought it was high time. I have been blogging and decided to start a blog for Cape Fear Metalsmiths. I hope you will be interested in joining us in formalizing a community for us to talk shop, compare notes, commiserate and share. We live in such a artistically rich region that is attracting new metalsmiths all the time, why not get together both in cyberspace and in the literal world?

I am adding links to the blog all the time, email me with suggestions. I hope this can function as a spring board.
Please! We want your thoughts! Contribute and comment and help us get the ball rolling.

SNAG in Memphis

Well, I am off to SNAG in Memphis!
I have been assisting Sharon Massey as auction coordinator. Its a lot of work but its been cool to meet the movers and shakers in the world of metalsmithing. Should be an exciting year.

Yahoo groups?

Would you folks also like to have a yahoo egroup?
Mitzi? what do you guys think?

Email subscribe!

I just added the feed burner so you can recieve notices via email!

CFM

So... I sent out emails and the few who responded voted for Cape Fear Metalsmiths so here we are. I need to schedule a meeting in July. I am off to SNAG next week so we'll see if I get a chance to post during the conference. Ciao!

Welcome!

Hi! keep watching we're coming soon!