Back from SNAG

SNAG? What's that? Well, it could describe a metalsmiths' manicure, but it really stands for Society of North American Goldsmiths. The annual conference was held here in Houston last week. I'm looking over my notes and thought I would add some of my scribbles from the presentations and events. The following is a jumble of quotes from the lecture and thoughts that came to mind as I listened.

Caroline Broadhead - she looks at the word extreme: first you have to have a reference point and then judge what is extreme from that. What is the reference? Where do you go from there? How far can you go?

Jewelry that makes you think

Jewelry could be a starting point. why stop there - why not include clothing as a part of "jewelry."

Caroline worked in performance - clothing for dance - aware of the body and how the clothing expressed the movements or not.

Theme - boundaries of the human body

She was intrigued and inspired by a house with a gate. No fence. Just a gate. The gate created an invisible boundary.

Themes: dance, shadow, invite touch, evidence of human contact

The Body is not a mannequin for wearables

She observed the jewelry and clothing of African Women. Many rows of Necklaces - did they wear them at night?

Randomness - - - leads to order

working randomly - - leads to beauty

Protesting measuring Protesting numbers

management of uncertainty

finding ones end what is the shape of my edge finding out the extreme

I particularly like the "protest of measuring" and randomness leads to Beauty

I experienced this as I worked on my pins for the famous "Pin Swap" event at the SNAG conferences.
My plan was to make 30 pins that would include one of my eye beads similar to the one in my "Eye Catcher" brooch I made recently. To save time, I did not worry about the beads being an exact size. After those were finished (it took me about 2.5 hours (with only one that broke.) I cut 30 lengths of 12 ga. copper wire and melted the ends of each one to make a head pin. Again, I made them random lengths some short, some long, thinking I could trim as needed. As I hammered the end of the head pin after putting the bead on, I found it was easier to hammer the longer ones. So I did not trim any of the randomly cut head pins. After finishing all of the eye pendants, I wanted to see what they would look like all together on a necklace. Each pendant would hang by a safety pin that would be easy to remove and SWAP. I began to decide how to arrange the 30 pendants. I started lining them up like a row of children: the short ones first, and on up to the tall ones. Amazingly, they began to form a graduated line. Stair Steps if you will. I thought this was beautiful so I found a long chain and hung them like graduated hanging pearls. At this point I began to wonder if I could part with this collection of beads.
This excersize of making 30 things in a random way brought much pleasure and I learned that order and beauty can come from randomness. I hate to measure anyway.