studio notes #14

Sep 10

If you are paying attention to how often I post, you may have noticed it has been over a week since my last update.

I learned that my production jewelry wasn't accepted into the only market I had planned to do this winter, which required a bit of recalibration for the year, both logistically and emotionally. I've gotten more resilient about rejection over the years, but because this is a market I've done before, it has been work not to take it personally.

I've also been dealing with some thumb pain for a few months and recently learned that it is trigger thumb, so I've been resting my hands too. Which means I've had more limited making time while I heal. I could stand to slow down though.

new idea

I have still been able to do some research, and two things have been percolating: the Blackland prairie and reliquaries.

The Texas Blackland prairie is an endangered ecoregion that I happen to live on. I've thought about it before when choosing plants for my yard, but the more I'm learning about the ecosystem, the more it feels connected to this project.

I'm also reading Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, and it has already proved inspiring. One section talks about people making pilgrimages to places that were important to them and bringing home small pieces of those places like oil, earth, rocks, and water. These objects were believed to "contain the blessings of the holy places where they were gathered."

As I'm learning more about the Blackland prairie, I am particularly interested in how each individual plant and organism is part of something much larger. Big bluestem grass, for example, can have roots that extend deep into the soil, helping hold it in place and filter water from heavy rains. Its dense foliage provides habitat for birds, mammals, and insects, and its seeds and foliage can feed local wildlife. It is such a strong example of how losing one thing can have broad consequences.

So these two ideas - an interconnected ecosystem and the idea of a pilgrimage, along with my general theme of bearing witness - have led me to start working on an idea for a stacking ring.

I'm currently cutting silhouettes of plants from the Blackland prairie out of plastic collected from ACR and attaching them to individual rings. So far I have a purple coneflower and prairie bundleflower, and I'm waiting to find a large enough piece of plastic for the bluestem grass. I also want to create the root systems underneath the rings.

The idea is that the act of stacking the rings becomes a kind of pilgrimage through the Blackland prairie. Each ring is one small piece of the ecosystem, but when they are brought together, they create something larger.

mourning veil updates

I tried a light grey folder plastic for the mushrooms. I don't like it.

Now I'm trying black thread instead of white. I will leave the stitches representing the mycelium white. I don't have enough finished yet to know if it will give me the full vision I need, but it isn't an automatic no.

I still want to add some black paint to see if that helps with the transition between the black mushrooms and the white mycelium.