From Pieces to Pieces: Local Upcycling

My friends, Kate and Shane Jarrett, who are the resident potters at the Sangre De Cristo Arts and Conference Center make absolutely wonderful work. Aside from their seasonal sales and my favorite, their Kiln Opening event nights, their work can be seen and purchased or sampled at Wireworks Coffeehouse down on the beautiful Historic Arkansas Riverwalk.

Sampled?

Yep, sampled. That's because Wireworks Coffeehouse exclusively uses Jarrett Pottery for all their coffee mugs, cups, and demitasse's, saucers, plates and bowls. This comes from the business and community ethics of the owner, Ann Chenu, who wants her small, local business to be a part of the local economic circle of small, local, and ethical businesses like hers. There are many reasons to support your local and small businesses, for one, their your neighbors. Another reason is that it allows you to enrich your community by supporting the parts of it you want to see thrive. But, like i said, there are inumerable reasons for keeping it local and low scale.

Well, Wireworks Coffeehouse goes through their share of Jarrett Pottery, for as any restauranteur knows, breakage is a major expense. Mugs are especially vulnerable to being dropped or knocked off tables or bonked against the edges of counters.

I have been collecting the Jarretts work for some time, mostly in my home where it now comprises the majority of my crockery. I love their rich warm colors and lustrous glazes. They have a wide variety of color combinations, but i have my favorites.

But i have also been collecting the broken crockery from the coffeehouse. I plan to cut the broken pieces into "cabochons" i can set in silver for rings, pendants and bracelets. I am especially in love with some of the glazes used around the rims of the mugs and edges of the plates.

This will be very attractive jewelry which will place portions of the Jarretts work into silver time capsules where they can be admired and cherished on into the years. It is a great way to recycle or, rather, upcycle local resources. It will also give Wireworks lovers a wonderful memento to remind them of the times and warmth and laughter they have shared, the plans and friends they have made down at the coffeehouse.

It will aslo keep all that Jarrett Pottery from filling our local landfil . . . although, a landfill full of Jarrett Pottery wouldn't be such a bad thing. Beautiful, in fact! Ah, if only that were the case, we should be so lucky.


to contact Jarrett Pottery

jarrettpottery@msn.com

Jewelry Artist Marta Sanchez

Ancient Techniques Meet New and Personal Visions of Antique Jewelry




I met Marta Sanchez through the online handmade emporium www.etsy.com last year and recently i was featured on her online contemporary jewelry site called 18kt. Marta started her blog in 2006, and with an average of 20,000 visits a month it has evolved into a meeting place for jewelers around the world. (http://www.18kt.es)

Her Bio explains how her family and childhood influenced and encouraged her toward a life of artful joy.

"Marta Sanchez, a jeweler and gemologist, born in Vic, Barcelona, Spain, from a working family. She remember drawing and playing with clay, walking through the forest with her grandfather who taught her also to tie her shoes and fix a light switch. Her mother would always tell the story of how she only needed a pencil and paper to entertain her, or to let Marta get dirty making figurines with clay. They still conserve a mural she made with plaster on one of the walls of the house with only two years old!"

After school she would pass her time in her fathers wood shop where she made wooden toys and furniture. This work gave her a mechanical aptitude for working and controlling tools and machines. As early as age 18 Marta knew she wanted to make jewelry, and enrolled in Escola Massana at Barcelona, where she learned about metals, forging, micro fusion, stones, galleries and everything related to a jeweler. Fascinated with stones, Marta decided to study Gemology and earned Gemologist titles from the University of Barcelona, and the FEEG (Federationfor European Education in Gemology).

I find that Marta has a keen eye for the integration of metal and stone. There is a quality to much of her work which allows it to be very flowing and rustic at the same time, industrial and yet organic. Quite a bit of her work strikes a balance between the showcasing of the stone and the framing of the metal. In fact, it's so balanced that I find it hard to decide if the metals are framing the stones or the stones are ornamenting the metals. It is this balanced integration which i find fascinating in some of her pieces, since i am so often drawn to one or the other in my own creations.


Marta conceives jewelry as ornamental objects for the body. "A jewel is something we wear to beautify our body. As someone who gets a tattoo, changes their hair or gets a piercing, I change my jewelry every day depending on my mood. I like to wear my jewelry as much as I like to show off my tattoos."

There is a great precision evident in the crafting of Marta's pieces, and it marries well with the thoughtful spirit and skill of her creative design. Marta admires German jewelry and enjoys the techniques of making jewelry she sees there. She likes to mix these ancient techniques with her new and personal visions of antique jewelry.

To understand the breadth of Marta's style one must really check out her extensive archive of works. I have only put a few pictures here to wet your appetite. Coming to her work with my own personal appreciation for myth and metal, I was immediately drawn to several pieces which spoke to me of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. I can see the ages of iron and the eons of celestial illumination.


All elements of nature and aspects of the cycle of life are represented in Marta's work. It is no wonder that we find much of her work informed by the mythology and cosmology of ancient Egypt. Currently Marta has a few collections on display; Atón, Geb, Nut, Isis and Flor de Lotus. All of these inspired from Old Egypt, their gods and beliefs as they influence us today.

Marta lives and works in Barcelona, in her own studio and showroom.

Make sure you check out Martas magical video "Flor de Lotus" below!


Marta's Blog:
http://www.18kt.es

Martas Website:
http://www.masaoms.com/
(after it loads, click on "english" to the left for a translated version)

Marta's Etsy:
www.masaoms.etsy.com/

Marta's Video
Marta's Flor de Lotus Video can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/user/Masaoms




See Martas blog about my work at:
http://18kt.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/david-a-martin/

I will also be mentioned in an interview with Marta on the Such Cool Stuff! blog on 2/16/09.
http://suchcoolstuff.blogspot.com

A Lifelong Love of Beachcombing

Some of my most magical childhood memories are of beachcombing with my family on the North West coast of Washington State. My brother and i would play all sorts of games, hiding from each other, making or discovering huge driftwood forts where the sand had drifted and created caves smelling of the sea.

Flotsam and jetsum abounded on the coast and we revelled in most of the treasures we found. There were of course the seashells; sand dollars, mussels, limpets, oyster, clam and crab. Some beaches were covered in wonderfully polished stones and pebbles.

Occaisionally we would find beautiful glass balls used as floats for the nets of Japanese fishermen. Red, blue, clear, yellow, green they came in all colors and sizes often ranging from tennis ball sized to basketball sized. These were greatly prized and sought after for years and years of beachcombing. I have not lived on the coast for some time now and wonder if the Japanese fishermen still use these hand blown glass floats or if they, like most of the world have moved on to cheap plastic floats. I hope not.

Another favorite find was sea glass which was glass from broken bottles that had been rounded and worn by the rhythmic motion of the waves and the beach sand. This gives the glass a frosted look. The colors are wonderful, there are lots of brown pieces from beer bottles of course, but the light blue and green are also fairly prominent. Other colors are more rare, such as yellow, red or that dark lapis blue.

My brother recently sent me some of this sea glass from his beachcombing and hiking. As a lifelong hiker and photographer he often travels the beach and rain coast forest between First Beach and Third Beach as well as digging Ruby Beach and hitting Ocean Shores with his family where the love of beachcombing has been passed down to his children. I am working on designs for these pieces of sea glass in rings, earrings, pendants and necklaces.

Artist Statement

As a native of the Olympic Penninsula of Washington State i grew up in a heavily forested area which verged on raincoast. In my childhood i would always bring back stones (and sticks and feathers and found baubles)whenever i went hiking or our into the woods around our house. I never really knew what to do with them though, i would keep them around as beautiful momentos of the places i'd been and the things i'd seen. They were often testaments to the mystery and miracle of nature. Years later i still bring home stones, but now i know what to do with some of them so that they can become keepsakes and reminders of the wonders of this planet and the workings of the universe.

As an adult I reached a point where i needed to get the arts back in my life, not in an academic way, but in a hands on physically creative way. I was still a poet and a writer, and an occaisional painter, but i needed something more. My friend Michael Boyd suggested i come and learn a few things from him and help him out in his shop. I was a quick study and loved the creative possibilities. My precise craftwork in other areas of life (remodelling, carpentry, jack-of-all-trades maintenance man) crossed over easily and in no time i was helping Mike in the fabrication of his jewelry.  

After working with Michael Boyd for several years where I learned metalworking and lapidary techniques i have been lucky enough to venture out on my own and have begun creating my own creations arising fom my own inspirations.  

I love nature and my work often reflects it's inspiration in form, emotion and essence. Often when working on a new series, instead of sketching, my poetry and mythology and studies of world religions and language combine and lead me to create lists of words instead. Often compound words made from the roots of other words in many languages which give a feeling or a sense of meaning behind the ideas and images i am fabricating when looking at stones and material. I may end up with two to three sketches, but for the most part, my sketches are surrounded by words and word-bits, the pages covered in odd biological and sacred hybrids.