Tooting my own horn

Let’s call this an annotated bio, with listings of major shows and events and commentary when I feel like crowing a bit.

2011

I thought the last two years were busy, but this one is crammed full as well.  Last fall, I decided not to apply to any weekend craft shows, since I had too many larger pieces to make for gallery shows through the summer.  It’s a nice place to be in terms of feeling positive about my work.  But I had to make stuff like crazy to meet all the deadlines.  Very exciting!

January /February – Gallery 555 – featured artist with Joan Belmar and Elissa Farrow-Savos (Washington, DC)

February – ACC Baltimore (wholesale only – paper jewelry) (Baltimore, MD)

May – Black Rock Center for the Arts (Germantown, MD) – w/ Leila Holtsman and Carl Dahlke

June/July – Creative Crafts Council Biennial Show (Strathmore Mansion, Bethesda, MD) – two pieces, Rough Seas and Small Echinoid in a show featuring work from seven DC-area craft guilds

July – Ebb and Flow, ArtSpace Herndon (Herndon, VA) – my shell and bone sculptures w/ Rachel Collins’ watercolors of vertebrae and shells

July – February, 2012 – Bijou: The Origins and Impact of Jewelry, Bruce Museum (Greenwich, CT) – A three-piece jewelry set of paper-over-steel work with pearls and gold leaf. This show displays dramatic jewelry next to the museum’s collection specimens of minerals, gems, and other materials they incorporate. The necklace is an spiky Elizabethan-collar-inspired piece with echoes of sea urchins and horseshoe crabs; the bracelet is an open sea urchin form; the earrings are a two-tiered spiky blossom form.

September – By the Numbers, Black Center for the Arts (Germantown, MD) – Two pieces in a group show illustrating intersections of science, mathematics, and art.

November 12-13 – Pleiades Jewelry Show, Bethesda Women’s Club (Bethesda, MD)

2010

What a busy year!  While I continued to do sculptural beadwork during 2010, I focused far more on the handmade paper work.  I think it has more potential, in terms of both scale and narrative.  I feel as though I am working with the material, letting it do some of the work and cajoling it as we meander toward a finished piece.

Bernie Schmutzhart, with whom I took a few sculpture classes (mostly stone carving) at the Corcoran College of Art, years ago, talked about letting the stone tell you what it wanted to be.  I only sort of understood that feeling when working with stone.  Now, I totally understand, as I manipulate the wire and paper in my recent work and it tells me where to go.

Here is a listing of events I participated in during 2010:

January - Personal Armor: Artists’ Concepts of Aprons, Black Rock Center for the Arts (Germantown, MD)

March (through February 2011) - Thoreau’s Legacy, UCS offices 1825 K Street, NW (Washington, DC)

March - 100 Tea Bowls, Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, VA)

April – Craft Boston (Boston, MA)

April – Wearable Art/Unwearable Fashion, VisArts (Rockville, MD)

May – Paradise City Arts Festival (Northampton, MA)

September – Elements: The State of Matter, DC Arts Center (Washington, DC)

October – Westchester Craft Show (White Plains, NY)

November – Washington Craft Show (Washington, DC)

December – Craft Boston Holiday (Boston, MA)

December – Washington Guild of Goldsmiths Biennial Show (Jurors’ Choice Award), Target Gallery, Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, VA)

2009

2009 was a whirlwind of activity for me.  My handmade paper work was accepted into some of the better national juried craft shows, as well as the Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, VA), and I finally started doing more gallery shows, shifting the emphasis of my work from jewelry to sculpture (albeit some of it wearable).

March – Juried in as an Associate Artist to the Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, VA)

April – Smithsonian Craft Show (Washington, DC)

May – Paradise City Arts Festival – (Northampton, MA)

September - Courage Unmasked, Katzen Arts Center (Washington, DC)

October – Westchester Craft Show, White Plains, NY

November – Washington Craft Show (Washington, DC)