What I’ve been working on in the Studio: Earrings galore

I began this summer with an exploration of dome shapes in all different sizes, colors, textures, orientations and materials. One of the directions that proved really interesting to me involved the use of different wire shapes, and that has spread to new ideas for various designs that use all sorts of different wirework.

The pair above is also part of my move to incorporate gold-filled wire in to my usual repertoire of sterling silver, copper, and brass wires. I’ve always been a fan of silver and copper because they look good with my coloring and, honestly, they are a lot cheaper to explore new ideas with. Now that I am doing my art full time, though, I am staying in practice enough and doing enough work that gold is looking more and more interesting to me!

I have also started experimenting with earrings that are more 3 dimensional, as if they are tiny mobiles for your ears. I have been considering working on mobiles as a way to incorporate physical movement in to my larger designs but haven’t (until very recently) been able to make the leap to that form.

(This pair of earrings went to a very lovely lady last Saturday who stopped by the studio after a photo shoot she had in the building. We had a great time talking about the corporate world and finding new directions late in one’s career – I wish her all sorts of good fortune in her explorations!)

One downside to this more three dimensional approach, though, is that many of the designs no longer sit well on “earring cards” for display! The pair below, for example, looks horrible if you put it up against a flat surface, but they dangle quite nicely from ears or earring stands. It seems the extent of my lessons in display and packaging is doomed to go ever on….. 😉