Playing with fire in Atlanta

I went down to Atlanta last week to help Kathleen Plate, of Smart Glass Jewelry, experiment with incorporating enamels into her glass work. Kathleen uses recycled glass bottles as the primary medium in her work. She slices the bottles into rings, then slumps them in a kiln, resulting in smooth-edged, organic glass rings that she then turns into jewelry and home décor items. The work is beautiful, but working in glass limits what Kathleen can do because of  the limited color palettes of the glass bottles and because of the properties of glass as a material.

We worked for two days experimenting with enamels on copper, silver and glass. Kathleen was not particularly drawn to the metals, but was intrigued by the idea of using enamels directly on the glass rings. We had some technical issues in our experiments because the enamels we had on hand were better matched to metal than to glass, but with some experimentation with enamels with different expansion rates Kathleen will most likely get a good result. This will allow her to add new colors to both her jewelry and décor lines.
You can visit Kathleen’s website here: http://www.smartglassjewelry.com/


I also worked with Jen Cleere of Fetching Tags, teaching her enamel basics. She is adding a new line of pet memorial containers to her collection of pet-related crafts. These beautiful, hand-crafted wooden boxes will incorporate customized inset enamel medallions. It was exciting to see how working in enamels opened up a load of new possibilities for Jen’s creations. I can’t wait to see the finished products! The weather was so nice we set up and worked outside, with the kiln sitting on her goat milking table. I had never done enamels with 5 week old kids bleating in the background, but I rather enjoyed it!
Click here to visit Jen’s website: http://www.fetchingtags.net/

While in Atlanta, photographer Terry Greene shot some of my newest jewelry pieces for me. I also got a call from the Montclair Art Museum, requesting that I do a trunk sale in the museum store. So it was a very productive week!