Spirals have been part of my jewel work for quite some time. These pictures are all from the last 25 years but I put them in jewels before that. After I got into digital photography in 1998 I started taking pictures of every single jewel that I made. In the 30 years before that I made thousands & thousands of jewels that I don't have pictures of. Darn!
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
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:
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?
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.
We're happy to say that we will be coming to the Bay Area in a couple of weeks to do our first live show there since September of 2019. We will sell our mixed metal jewels at the Los Altos Fine Art in the Park fair in Lincoln Park just across Foothill Expressway from downtown on Saturday & Sunday the 13th & 14th of August. The fair moved it's timing last year from its many years in May to August. We are sad to say that we won't be doing the Kings Mountain Fair this year. In our old age we are moving in a direction of making our lives easier in a number of ways. We love and will miss the Kings Mountain Fair but it is a much more energy intensive event for us. More driving, 3 days instead of two and so forth. We hope that we will see you at the Los Altos fair, we will have a great collection of our jewels and look forward to seeing old friends and customers. The collage below features some of our new work but there will be many more that we are in the process of finishing.
One of my doodle drawings, Butterflies & Suns. Done when I lived on the San Juan Ridge in 1983. Each line and dot put on the paper one at a time. It's crazy but I find it relaxing. I started playing with drawing suns 65 years ago or so. I Started making metal suns about 1975 and butterflies probably in the mid 1980's. I'm working on a butterfly jewel currently and just sold a sun brooch a few days ago. I would guess that I've probably made a couple of hundred sun jewels in the last 45 years. I've been wearing one for over 25 years.
Trying to line up some live art shows to do later in the year. We may do a local show in Caspar in July. In August we will do the Los Altos Rotary Fine Art Show that has now moved from it's old date in May. We will not be doing the Kings Mountain Fair. Although we like the fair and it is always successful for us it is a somewhat challenging show for us and we are getting old. I'll be 80 on my next birthday. My friend Warren Cook who has organized the Sacramento Arts Festival for the last 20 something years is retiring from organizing fairs so we are looking for another venue to sell our work at in the Sacramento area. We are looking at the Crocker Holiday Artisan's Market on Thanksgiving weekend at the Scottish Rite Center and for next year we are looking at the Kiwanis Art Fiesta at the Pavilions Shopping Center in June. If you've gone to either of these shows and have input about them or know of some other shows that we should check out, please email us at jica@mcn.org
We hope also to do the Bizarre Bazaar show in Chico in December. It worked well for us at the fairgrounds there last year. We will continue to sell on our Eventeny online store which has worked very well for us. To go there click on the the Online Store link above. I am committed to posting an image of a new jewelry piece there at least every other day for the rest of the year.
At this point Carlie is in a retirement exploration phase of her jewelry career but I am spending a few hours a day 5 days a week making jewels and will probably never stop as long as I am living. Collage below of a few new pieces.
We're not sure when our next fair will be. The spring show we used to do in Los Altos has moved to August. We hope to find another spring fair to do but haven't at this point. We may try the August Los Altos fair and we hope to do the Bizarre Bazaar in Chico in December of next year and probably the Sacramento Arts Festival in November. It's been quite a while since we have tried a new fair but we may try a couple this spring and summer to find one that works for us.
Carlie is enjoying her life of retirement and may not be making many jewels any more. I will miss her work, it was often an inspiration for me and led me in interesting directions. I enjoyed making the collaborative pieces that we worked on together also. Because much of the work she did was in the form of earrings, I am starting to work on a lot more earring designs to make sure we have a good selection of them and am enjoying that developing process very much.
We are happy with how sales have gone through our online store on Eventeny and will continue to add new jewels to our page as we finish them. Please check it out at
We will be leaving for Chico soon, to participate in our first live art show in two years. We will be setting up at the Chico Fairgrounds for this year's Bizarre Bazaar organized by a group of young women called Chikoko Fashions. The fair is open from 10am to 5pm Saturday & Sunday in the commercial building at the fairgrounds. There will be signs leading to it. Masks and social distancing will be required. If you visit it would be wise to dress warmly as the doors will be kept open for ventilation. Luckily the weather prediction is for two sunny days. We are looking forward to seeing many friends and customers over the weekend, hopefully some of our jewels will find homes also. We first started doing fairs in Chico in 1976.
We will be shutting down our Eventeny page where we sell jewels online during the fair but opening it back up afterwards, probably by December 10th. We will be putting up pictures of new work periodically. The link to that online page is https://www.eventeny.com/company/?c=11060
Below is a collage of some of the new work we'll have in Chico.
We thought we might participate in the Sacramento Arts Festival in November but because of some health challenges that Carlie is recovering from we will not do it this year, hopefully we will return next year. We will miss connecting with our Sacramento customers.
We are planning to go up to Chico to sell our work at an event called the Bizarre Bazaar at the Chico fairgrounds on the 4th and 5th of December. Except for last year, we have sold our work in Chico in December every year since 1976. Some details are available at the website https://www.chikoko.com/ More details will be available as the event gets closer. I'll also be posting more images of new mixed metal jewels as they get finished. Some new work is featured in the collage below.
Because of the Delta varied unknowns the live Kings Mountain Art Fair has been cancelled for this year. They will be doing a virtual online fair, to find out more about it go to their website at https://kingsmountainartfair.org/
We encourage you to visit and check out the work of the artists there, many are friends that we have been doing fairs with for many years. You can click on the link that is a picture of the artist's work and be taken to their webpage. Money raised through a percentage of artist's sales will go to support the Kings Mountain volunteer Fire Department and the elementary school there.
We will be doing our on version of a virtual fair starting on Thursday, Sept. 2nd and going until Friday, Sept. 10th. A percentage of our sales will also go to the Kings Mountain Fire Department & school. Our mixed metal jewel work will be available for viewing & purchase on our Eventeny page at:
https://www.eventeny.com/company/?c=11060
We will be adding pictures of new work on a regular basis. We hope you will visit and see what we have been making. Email us with any questions or comments at Jica@mcn.org
If things go OK and there is no new resurgence of Covid we hope to sell our mixed metal jewels at two live art fairs this fall, the Kings Mountain Art Fair near Woodside, south of San Francisco and the Sacramento Arts Festival back at the Convention Center in midtown Sacramento. The Kings Mountain Fair is Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 4, 5 &6, the Sacramento Fair is November 5, 6 & 7. More details will be coming up soon as well as pictures of new jewel work.
Eventeny Page Link
For the first time in 50 years we won't be doing any live art shows this year. We will be participating in the virtual version of the annual Sacramento Arts Festival on November 13th, 14th & 15th.
Click on Sacramento Arts Festival to reach the festival site online.
The festival online is being hosted by the website Eventeny and you can reach the page featuring our jewelry by clicking Mixed Metal Jewels
The pictures of our latest work won't be available to view and buy until the festival starts on Friday, Nov. 13th. We will have a lot of new work available for sale. By going to the Sacramento Arts Festival site you will be able to link to the work of all the artists participating also and see and buy their art work. This system makes it fairly easy to shop and buy online from multiple artists if you wish.
I'll be doing another posting with any updates of information before the festival starts. I hope also to be set up to be able to interface with visitors through zoom. I'm still learning about these new systems but hope to have it all set up by the time the festival starts.
