Pretty Pest

Pretty Pest
Carolyn A Buss
2012
Sterling silver, stainless steel, fishing line

Dahlia is 3” diameter, sterling silver, pierced and sawn by hand with a 6/0 saw blade. The earwig is nine separate pieces, each leg and antennae are separate pieces. The body and legs of the earwig are made using a technique called chasing and repousse by which the artist uses pitch, a chasing hammer and chasing tools to sort of push and pull the metal into complicated or simple shapes not possible using other methods. Antennae were filed by hand and soldered on. Legs are chased and attached in the underside of the earwig through tiny jump rings with tiny tube and fishing line. It is a brooch with a double pin on the back.

Edmonds Arts Festival Juried Show

My Dorothy Parker pin was accepted into the Edmonds Arts Festival Juried Art Show! That is extremely exciting, making the count of acceptances to rejections in art shows one to one.

The Edmonds Arts Festival is Father's Day weekend, the 15th to the 17th and is a three day event. The gallery in the Frances Anderson Center, which is at 700 Main St Edmonds, WA and is open Friday and Saturday 10 am to 8pm, and Sunday 10 am to 6pm.  If you end up going, please let me know! It usually has amazing art and is a lot of fun! The festival is great, too!

Magnolias, Shadows Of

While I agree that these photos are not particularly good, I took them with my iPhone, afterall.  I wanted to show what these pieces looked like before and after they were finished because I think it is important for people to know a little about the process of metal work. After all, most people still think of engagement rings, diamonds and beading when I tell them I make jewelry, which while not entirely inaccurate,  isn't what I mean when I say I make jewelry.

I have been interested in and attracted to silhouettes. An unconventional silhouette is something I am also visually attracted to, with its almost unrecognizable nature, because it is seen in only one dimension. The flat nature of the silhouette is what pulls the reality of it, simultaneously removing part of its identity and also elevating it to importance by being the sole item on a field of black, or a black item in a field of white.

I'm in absolute love with the texture around the edge; expect more edge textures in my coming work. This was an exercise to see what my weaknesses are on the fly. I need to work on wire-to-edge soldering, and I have some clean-up issues and fire scale issues due to excessive heat.

My favorite is the widest one. I think it's nicely balanced and the silhouette is beautiful.

These are brooches, made of sterling silver and NuGold, a type of brass that is simply beautiful and turns an amazing black when fumed with ammonia. Deeelicious. 

Dorothy Parker: Tribute to a Witty Demise

Dorothy Parker: Tribute to a Witty Demise; brass, nuGold, vintage typewriter keys, #2 pencil, steel pin-stem wire.
Carolyn Buss
2012

Dorothy Parker: Tribute to a Witty Demise; brass, nuGold, vintage typewriter keys, #2 pencil, steel pin-stem wire.
Carolyn Buss
2012

       After reading about Dorothy Parker's life and also her work, I wanted to make a piece which talked about how Dorothy Parker lived her life.  She drank, was part of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of writers and artists who ate lunch together, drank together and worked together, hung out with men without an escort or her husband around. Her wit was what allowed her to be accepted into such a group; this wit was something she grew up with, something she never outgrew.
     Although she was published, talented and popular, she was not happy.  Drinking and depressed, she had tried to kill herself two confirmed times, and supposedly a few more. Excuse My Dust is something she joked about having put on her tombstone once with a colleague; there is now a plaque with her name and those words on it.  

Personal Monogram in Sterling Silver

My initials carved from wax and cast with centrifugal casting machine in sterling silver.

Personal Monogram Pin
Sterling Silver, Steel Pin Stem Wire
2011

Lotus Ring #1

Lotus Ring #1
Sterling silver with enameled cabochon.
Size 9, Raised about 1.25" from finger.


Images below do not belong to me, but were helpful in the design of this piece.  I loved the way the pods dried with the skeletons of the larger 'veins' poking through the thinner layer of plant matter.  There are holes, as you can see in the second photo of the ring, which had little silver paddles wire wrapped on.  They represented the dried stamens, but weren't fully resolved, so they got caught up in one another.  If I were to make another, I might make the paddles out of thinner wire (22 or 20g silver) so they flowed a bit more without looking bulky.