Muttering Meditations, Pendantic

There is a difference between self expression and self obsession, and it is not even esoteric in definition. I looked at a clip of the below artist, and though the clip was about 2 minutes and 40 seconds, I got bored. I thought about the ballet dancers in the clip and that my lack of appreciation had to do with this demanding art form used in such a trivial fashion... but it bored me. I thought about self obsession being a part of the end result of capitalist society... how being advertised to and receiving information through the reductive quality of advertisement would lend itself to such cultural self obsession... but it's boring. Sometimes I think intense naval gazing blinds a whole culture to the huge abyss between self expression and self obsession. And the inescapable fact that, self obsession is mind numbingly dull. I'm sure this lady is a decent person, but I'm totally not interested.

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;)

And here's a pic of my lady of the wax, slowly emerging.

The Stone Roots Pendant

Well I'm sending this to my mother, regardless! And being a mother, she'll be delighted. They always say, know your target audience. lol. With some audiences the bullseye is bigger than the target... the delivery being what matters. What's great is I can sit there and tell my mother everything that's wrong with this and it will add to the charm. The next "Stone Roots" pendant will be improved, but probably less appreciated.

Time

This is my first figurative thing in a while. It will be a pendant with a stone, but the overall shape will probably change. This is a couple of pictures of the first hours of the piece. The second pic might have about 5 hours in it already. And this is the last estimate of time spent you'll see on this! Which, is one reason my work is molded and cast. The amount of time it take me to produce stuff cannot be recouped in one offs. I still hope to do a series of one off figurative pieces. But. We'll see. I don't have plans to mold this one, yet. I don't have plans for it period. My figurative fingers are still in the reforming stage.


One reason I appreciate figurative work, and well made work in general, is time. Time becomes a visual element. Its not that every piece has to take many hours to make, but the time to develop the craft is also present. That quality to me is deeply and recognizably human, whether the piece succeeds or fails.

Pondering Pendants

This is just a follow up post. Because this might be a model to be molded, it's not polished and antiqued. But I'm happy with it! Even though I managed to photograph it slightly crooked.... Like I'm unconsciously making up for the deliberate imbalance of the design.

With the model, I'm leaving the area around the stone blank. that's where I'll solder in a bezel or prongs to set the stone. I could add prongs before molding, but not a bezel. Oval cabochons vary too much in shape to do that. And I'm thinking this design calls for a bezel. There will be about 5% shrinkage which is why the area around the stone looks so big. Hopefully it works! If so, my mother will get one of these! I'm much happier with it than the triangular thingy.