My show at the Metal Museum

My small Ring a Day exhibition is currently on view at the National Ornamental Metal Museum until January 7, 2012. It's on the second floor of the library building. I could not be more pleased with the installation, conservator Kevin Burge made individual stands for all of my rings. Woot!

 

  

 

You can see all of the rings on view here.

365/365 finale

Our little friend has made it to the top of the pink tourmaline gumdrop! This is it, the end of Ring a Day. What an amazing experience it's been. Thanks to all of you who have followed my progress over the year, your support has meant so much to me - without it I would have stopped making rings a long time ago.

This ring is for me and I spent most of the day making it. I didn't have a plan and as a result made two settings and three bands before I finally settled on this design. The setting is a concave bowl (and probably more trouble than it was worth.) The ring isn't perfect, but it is one of the most complex pieces I've made, the stone is yummy, and I'm happy with it.

Stay tuned for Ring a Week! Each day I will feature a ring made by another artist, and I will upload my weekly ring each Sunday. RAW baby, RAW!

300/365 dreihundert

Well here we are at ring #300, I can hardly believe it. I'm really pleased with the way this came out except for one really important thing - it should say 'dreihundert' which is German for 'three hundred'. Instead it says 'dirhundert' which is German for 'you a hundred'. Damn.

286/365 chilean miner

sterling silver, brass

263/365 telephone pole

Another shadow ring, I think these are more successful when the band is hidden by the shadow like the others. I'm very drawn to this telephone pole form and have plans to incorporate it into other pieces.

sterling silver

253/365 cigarrette redux

Another cigarette ring. I like the lit end a little better on this one but it's not quite there yet. I have some ideas to improve it further. Sterling silver and copper.

240/365 ebony

sterling silver, ebony, brass, copper, saltwater pearl

The making of this ring was a comedy of errors. I fabricated the bezel first and cut the wood to fit, which was a mistake. The first piece was too small so I made the second piece a little too large and sanded it back which took forever, and the fit is not so great.


Next I inlaid (riveted, really) the wire into the wood, the wood split in one place but I was able to fix it with glue. I sanded it to a nice finish, then proceeded to solder the bezel on wrong - so the ebony piece only fit in upside-down. I suppose I could have made a new bezel, but I chose to finish the backside of the ebony, which had been rough sawn but not planed smooth, so that took forever.


I made a band from two round wires and soldered a strut between them. As I was soldering the band onto the ring, the strut desoldered and the band fell apart. I remade the band and tried again, this time with white out painted on the strut. It also fell apart, and one wire from the band ended up soldered to the back of the ring. So I stretched that wire out some and soldered the other end down, voila.


I applied tung oil finish to the ebony and let it dry about an hour, not really long enough for either the wood glue or the finish to dry, but the ring must be completed in one day, we'll see what happens. After epoxying the wood in I set the pearl on it's post. And you know what? I hate that pearl. Hate. It ruins the design. Bleh. I have to walk away for a while.

226/365 not a tarball

This ring began as something quite different. The lovely Kathryn Cole sent me some tarballs that she collected from the Florida coast. One was a perfect crescent shape, and I planned to set it beside the urchin - unfortunately it crumbled as I placed it into the setting. So I cut a piece of wood and added some copper inlay and a tung oil finish.

Not quite the statement piece I had envisioned, but I like it and I imagine that my Ring a Day friends are grateful for the respite from political outrage! The urchin was a gift from the wonderful Laurie Brown.

225/365 cat shadow

sterling silver

221/365 shadow

sterling silver

217/365 maui

The island of Maui, made to the same scale as yesterday's Deepwater Horizon ring. Copper and sterling silver.

Maui and Deepwater Horizon Spill

216/365 deepwater horizon

Made from a Google Earth image of the most contiguous portion of the BP oil spill as seen from the air on July 13, 2010. The drill hole represents the location of Deepwater Horizon. Sterling silver.

208/365 abu ghraib

This is the image I remember best from the Abu Ghraib photos. Out of context it might be called Boy with Land Tortoise. Copper.


Playing around with some ideas for display. I'd prefer that the rings be viewed first without the photos, so this isn't going to work. I do like the minimal stand.