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. 

 

We're Coming to the Bay Area

 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.

Butterflies and Suns

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.

 

Hoping to do Live Art Shows Later in the Year

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. 

Chico Fair Was a Happy & Successful Event

 

The Chico fair, the Bizzare Bazaar, on the first weekend in December was a very enjoyable experience for us. We found homes for a lot of our mixed metal jewels, reconnected with many friends and customers from our 45+ years of selling our work at fairs in the Chico area and were happy to realize we still remember how to do fairs after not doing one for two years. We were happy with the new location at the fairgrounds in Chico, it let us have a larger space that made it easier to set up our usual display. The first year we did the Bizarre Bazaar in the Women's Center in Chico we had to fit into a 5 x 5 foot space which was an extreme challenge for us. Luckily we did very well though and continued to participate in the fair.

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 

Online Store