Feb 2, 20105 min read

My Start to Art

Updated: Aug 21, 2018

An Overview

I've always been one of those kids that would get into everything and would end up with crazy messes because I always wanted to make something. Whether it was by gluing together random stuff I found on the ground or by making sculptures out of mud I had to be creating something.

By high school I had a variety of art classes to choose from and I loved it. I tried out Commercial Art, Photography, Sculpture, Ceramics and Jewelry. I ended up sticking with Jewelry and took a total of five jewelry classes including Advanced Placement where I entered my work in 3-D design. It's very funny to me that enjoy making jewelry when I don't really enjoy wearing it, I think it's because of the shiny factor. I really enjoyed found object and lost wax casting and constructing hollow forms.

I did pretty well and my teacher had me enter my work in quite a few art shows, high school shows to international shows. The largest show I was in was Rio Grande's Saul Bell Jewelry Design Competition where I entered my hollow form bracelet in the Emerging Artist's category.

I ended up placing third having the opportunity to attend the award ceremony in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to meet jewelry magazine editor's and other jewelers, many of them professional jewelers. While I was there I was able to participate in a photo shoot for a Rio Grande ad that was going to be in the Jewelry Artist Magazine.

http://www.saulbellaward.com/2008-winners-1

Now I'm a sophomore at CU Boulder and am trying to experiment with my style so I have been taking sculpture classes. I thought it would be interesting to go from working very small to very large, but while experimenting with this I began missing metalsmithing. I decided to try out jewelry again and am currently interning at Angie Star Jewelry off of Pearl Street and 18th street.

High School

Ceramics in High School

I literally think this little guy took me a few weeks of class time to make which is ridiculous... I even made the tie and hat band out of textured brass, and the top hat I sewed together out of black felt.

Here is another piece from high school, I love this triangular shape of this container !

CASTING (lost wax & cuttlebone)... some of my favorite techniques

ALL of the below pieces were carved out of wax then cast into silver (except for the cuttlebone casting).

The mask on this piece was carved out of wax, then cast and soldered onto the square wire below it.

These two pieces I also soldered on prongs and set stones in them. *Blingy*

The ring below has a gold prong setting.

This necklace has a sterling prong setting.

With these two pieces, I inlay-ed stones into them. I had to drill holes into them and bend the surrounding metal over the edges of the stone to secure them in place. This is insanely difficult...at least for me.

This is a cuttlebone casting, I carved the design into a cuttlebone and then poured melted sterling into it and cleaned it up.

DOMING to the max

This piece is very complicated...I had to saw out the band to fit the top ring. I also had to form the top ring and file it down with a half round file so that it fit the band. Then I formed a sterling dome and soldered it into the top ring. The last step was to soldered a tube set into the center of the dome and set the peridot gemstone into it. Then to give it a bit more sparkle, I used a diamond bit tool on the dremel and tapped in a texture in a band around the top ring.

This ring was made with sterling wire, sterling sheet, and brass sheet metal. I punched out and domed one brass disc and one silver disk and soldered them together, then I cut it in half and soldered it to the inside of the larger sterling dome. Then the whole thing was soldered to the sterling band I formed.

Here is a ring I made out of sterling and a slice of a wooden dowel. The decorative feature on the ring consists of three sterling domes I soldered together and then continued to drilled a hole through them and soldered a sterling wire though the hole and glued it into the wooden band. To make the band I cut off a slice of a dowel rod, then drilled out the center and stained it. The reason it appears so rustic is because I never cleaned off the fire scale from the torch, I just sanded it down a bit with some sand paper.

Here is a little sprouting seed sculpture! The pebbles holding it up are made up of three sterling domes, the seed is made of two brass domes soldered together with a sliced piece bent back as if it were sprouting. The stem is made of sterling wire with one copper leaf soldered on.

MY FAVORITE SERIES OF PIECES BY FAR ! A combination of found object casting with lost wax casting!!!

All of these pieces are rings that were apart of my AP 3D Art Portfolio. They are made of sterling sliver, most of which I've oxidized. They are very sculptural and most (I think all of them) are too fragile, sharp, and even heavy/awkward to wear. These are still some of my most treasured art works that I've made.

This ring was made from casting a real leaf. This piece is very fragile and the one that I'm MOST PROUD OF. After I finished casting and cleaning up the ring, I soldered a tube setting on the leaf, oxidized it, and set a mystic topaz gemstone in the tube setting.

Here is part of a Holly-hawk seed pod and wax band that I sculpted, then cast into sterling. This piece has also been oxidized.

Here is a piece of Milkweed seed pod and wax that I cast into a quite unique ring. After I cast and cleaned the ring, I oxidized the seed pod to bring out the details and epoxied in little (micro) colorful, metallic balls.

This ring is my Wheat Ring, again it was cast out of wax and a piece of weed/wheat that I found. It is 100% silver and the wheat has been oxidized.

This is my Topless Ring... all cast sterling silver and oxidized.

P.M.C. (precious metal clay)

So this process involves this "clay" metal that we rolled out with pens and then stamped patterns into. Then we cut out the shapes we wanted and poked holes in them with toothpicks for the jump-rings. Then we heated them up with the torch until they were glowing red, and after they cooled they were done!! Heating them up with the torch cooks out all/most of the clay particles so only the metal, in this case sterling silver, is left.

I hung all of the necklaces on waxed cotton cord, and the bracelet as well.