Tuesday, January 19, 2010

(Mostly) successful time at Arisia!

I say "mostly" because I think I may have come away from the weekend with some kind of con crud (probably a cold). But I did better than I'd expected at the art show, and then made another sale on Etsy as a result of someone viewing my work at the con. I'm planning on transitioning from renting studio space to working in my own basement during the month of February; making these sales means that I'll be able to afford more tools of my own sooner, and hopefully there won't be much downtime while I piece together a metalsmithing setup of my own! This weekend I'm hoping to do at least a preliminary clean of the basement workbench area. I'm planning on posting "workspace in progress" photos as I collect tools and organize my materials so that readers can get a glimpse into how and where I work.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Learning

I'm not entirely sure how to articulate this, but biking home from metalsmithing in the freezing cold last night made me feel fantastically alive.

Carnelian flower I'm learning more and more metalsmithing techniques and concepts and gaining confidence in my abilities to execute them; I'm making things that I see as a fusion of the metalsmithing world and the assembly jewelry I was working on before; watching copper glow bright red from my torch and shift on the flowing solder is a pure, elemental rush. Likewise, I'm immensely proud of myself for bicycling in such extreme cold, and surprised and delighted at the muscles that can suddenly Do The Right Thing when I want them to. After only walking and taking public transit for so long, a bike really gives me a new feeling of freedom-of-place. And it's fun to go so fast!My bike (now with panniers)

I know that at some point my rate of metals-related learning will stop accelerating, my bicycling-related fitness improvements will plateau. But I hope that I'll retain the feeling of hungrily racing forwards, able to smoothly and competently go wherever I can imagine.



I'll be at the Arisia art show this weekend! I can't wait :)