links

Follow along with studio life on instagram.

Find my facebook artist page here.
Visit my Youtube channel for project videos.
Jeff de Boer - mentor, inspiration, collaborator, friend. Founder of LEXM (League of Extraordinary Makers), and kinetic jewellery design-house Armét Canada.
Cory Barkman - industrial artist, LEXM collaborator, designer extraordinaire.
Alberta Craft Council - professional member of the provincial craft council.
Citizens Of Craft - a great site to browse Canadian fine craft artists, my profile is here.
Vancouver Metal Arts Society--fabulous resource for Canadian jewellery and metal-workers, a volunteer-run organization forging "connection, community and opportunity". The group is Vancouver-based, but their exhibitions attract contemporary work from across the country.
make and do - Canadian contemporary ceramic work, and a Canada-wide maker directory. My profile is here.

brain food...

In Our Time - presented by Melvyn Bragg (elevated to the House Of Lords in the UK after a life-time of public service broadcasting in the arts). Available as a podcast from BBC Radio 4, subjects cover everything imaginable, from the universal to the arcane. Topics are dissected by a panel actively involved in researching the subject (not just those with opinions).
3quarksdaily - it's like having the renaissance revisited, delivered to your inbox, every day. Science, art, critical thinking... And there's always a really cool video clip - fortunately it's not always that highbrow, and that's the point: we all like to let go every now and then. Implicated by Steven Pinker as the main reason he can't get his work done.
The Edge - want to read what leading musicians, philosophers, artists, critical thinkers and many other smartypants are arguing about? They publish really (really) good books too, readable on-line under Annual Question.

Comments

narrative jewellery: tales from the toolbox book launch

For every piece of jewellery I make there is a story. It can be simple, just a note on the “why?” that led to the forms and textures, or the feeling that I want to remember. Sometimes the single idea that could become a piece, conceived way before the act of making, can become so over-whelming that I need to write a whole new reality for the jewellery to exist within. That’s how it was for “Pull”, the first piece of jewellery in a body of work that became the ReFind Collection *. It caused me to look at materials in my home, especially the things that were routinely thrown away, very differently. It was like waking up to realize I just hadn’t been paying the right kind of attention to all the “stuff” in other areas of my life; realizing that maybe jewellery could be linked to something as obscure as industrial-scale food-processing and packaging—if I allowed my mind to receive the information, differently. I am very honoured that my necklace has been included in Mark Fenn’s new ...

will you...?

Artists write stories about their work all the time, and the greatest joy is when that story becomes important to another person. This project was about creating a piece of fan-art for a client (DP) based on their love of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter stories. DP approached Jeff de Boer because he needed to commission a very special golden snitch sculpture: the body would become an opening engagement ring-box. DP had a very special proposal in mind, and the snitch was to play a key part. Jeff and I do not usually make snitches. Jeff is a renowned metal artist and teacher, famous for creating armour for cats and mice , and collected world-wide. Jeff also has an ever-increasing body of large-scale public art projects (…with lots of news to come in 2016!). His web-site is a magical place, full of stories made real. I am an emerging metal and clay artist whom Jeff is mentoring - particularly in the skills of chasing and repoussé - and these skills were to be at the core of makin...

there's beauty in recycling

Return tree sculpture on show at Centre Court in Market Mall, Calgary, Alberta. October 17 - 23, 2016. Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation's (ABCRC) new sculpture celebrating the beauty of recycling has just been unveiled... Sheri and Angela from ABCRC with a tired but happy Cory and Jeff, and Return - a tree sculpture decorated with materials from pop cans and bottles, milk cartons, juice tins, and every kind of recyclable beverage container that can be returned to depots in Alberta. Recycled containers grow into Alberta flora Jeff de Boer , Cory Barkman , and I were invited to create an artwork that could help reinforce the beauty and value that comes from recycling beverage containers. Our challenge was to re-use containers from the bottle depot as key components of the piece, transforming the materials into something new. Project lead and maker extraordinaire Cory Barkman proposed a tree to capture the vision: " So many Albertan's recy...

metal is clay

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