Abalone Jewels

I've been using abalone in jewels for a long time, 30 plus years. It's a unique and interesting 

material. In the collage below some of the pieces are ones that I found at various places up 

and down the  coast between Gualala and Westport. The best beach I've found is near Mendocino

but is a challenge to get down to so not many people search there. I have found some wonderful 

pieces there. Some I've used just as I found them although I polished them. Some I cut and sanded 

and polished. You need to be very carefulwhen cutting or sanding as the dust is very toxic and

can cause harm. Some of the pieces in the collage use pieces I've found, some are Paua shell, 

a type of abalone that comes from New Zealand that I buy in a variety of shapes. Most of the 

jewels pictured are made of a mixture of silver, copper, gold and sometimes brass. I have boxes 

full of abalone pieces that I've collected over the years. 

Showing my Jewels in Fort Bragg

I just turned 82 a few months ago. I'm in pretty good health, am very active and have quite a lot of energy but I'm interested in simplifying my life somewhat. I'll never stop making jewels but I don't want to continue doing a lot of traveling to do out of town art fairs any more. SO--I'm going to try showing my mixed metal jewels in the Edgewater Gallery in downtown Fort Bragg, at 356 N. Main Street. It's an artist's coop gallery. I'll try a 3 month trial run to see how it goes but I think I'll probably continue after that. I'll start showing my work there on First Friday, May 2nd, a monthly event in downtown Fort Bragg during which galleries & stores will be open and there will be live music. Hours are from 5 to 8 pm. 

I will be selling at a couple of local events, one of which I help organize. That one will be CasparFest, at the Caspar Community Center on Saturday, July 19th and the other is Art in the Gardens a fund raiser for

the Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg on August 2nd & 3rd. Maybe a couple of events in December which I'll post info about later. 

Coming to Chico Dec. 7th & 8th, 2024

We will be coming to Chico to sell our work at Chikoko's Bizarre Bazaar located at the Chico Fairgrounds on Saturday & Sunday December 7th & 8th from 10am to 5pm. This will be our 3rd selling event for this year. We will have a very good selection of mixed metal jewels for Chico, some are in the collage below. I have a lot of other finished pieces that I haven't taken pictures of yet and many more will be finished before the fair. Looking forward to seeing all of our Chico friends and customers, we've been selling our work in Chico for over 40 years.

Chico's Bizarre Bazaar was our last fair of 2023

We had a great fair in Chico on Dec. 2nd & 3rd. Lots of our regular customers came and bought new Mixed Metal Jewels and the weather was fairly pleasant. I had planned to do another selling event at the Makers & Bakers Holiday Fair on Sunday, Dec. 10th at the Caspar Community Center near where we live on the coast, but the intensity of the Chico Fair and all of the driving has kind of tired me out and I have broken one of my teeth & need to take care of that so I have decided not to sell at the Caspar fair. I'm not a 70 year old youngster any more, 81 coming up next month. I will continue helping to organize the Caspar fair though and it will be fun with some interesting vendors. It runs from 11am to 4pm on that Sunday. Lots of good food available too. Below are some of the new jewels that I took to the Chico fair. In the next couple of weeks I'll be adding a lot of jewels to my online store (link just below) and will continue to do that throughout the next year. https://www.eventeny.com/company/?c=11060

Link to our online Store

   Online Store

 We will be at the Los Altos Rotary Club's Fine Art in the Park Fair on the weekend of August 12th & 13th, hours 10am to 5:30pm. It takes place in Lincoln Park, along Foothill Expressway across from downtown Los Altos. We will have a good selection of our Mixed Metal Jewels. The fairs website for directions, details and a list of artists and links to their websites is http://rotaryartshow.com/ 

Some of our new work:

Circle Wave Pendants

I recently posted on my Face Book page a collage like this one with 16 different versions of what I call my circle wave pendants and got a lot of likes and comments from FB friends. Thought I would post this one here for my blog visitors. These are different ones than the Facebook posting. These are ones that I've made in the last 20 years and all  have found homes. I think that I first started this series back in the mid 1980's when I lived on some property we owned on the North San Juan Ridge north of Nevada City. At least the first drawings of them that I've found were in a journal from then. I would guess that by now I have made several hundred variations of them and the series continues, probably 8 to 12 a year or so. I make a fair number of jewels that are one of kind pieces but a lot of my jewel work is like the circle waves, starting with one and then continuing the series but each one changes, shifting size, gemstones, metal mixtures, details, bails and so forth. They are like cousins to each other. I'm working on a couple of new ones now. I enjoy them and they sell very well which is always a factor in continuing a series. Sometimes though I feel like I'm stuck in making circles (not just these) and I consciously make myself break out of that pattern and make forms that are triangles, squares, ovals, abstracts, free flowing forms or whatever. That's always good for me and leads to interesting jewels. Where will I go next?

 

Link to Our Online Store Just Below

   Online Store

We're Coming to Chico Dec. 3rd & 4th

We will be coming to Chico to sell our work at Chikoko's Bizarre Bazaar located at the Chico Fairgrounds on Saturday & Sunday December 3rd & 4th from 10am to 5pm. This will be our 3rd selling event for this year. We looked but didn't find a Sacramento area fair that worked for us this year. We'll try again next year. We will have a good selection of mixed metal jewels for Chico, some are in the collage below. I have a lot of other finished pieces that I haven't taken pictures of yet and many more will be finished before the fair. Looking forward to seeing all of our Chico friends and customers, we've been selling our work in Chico for over 40 years.