Monthly Archives: July 2009

Barb and Jayne

Maine jewelers Barbara Fernald and Jayne Redman, finalists in the international 2009 Saul Bell Design Award Competition, will be honored at a morning coffee on Friday, July 31,  9:30 am to 11:00 am at Alone Moose gallery in Bar Harbor. Both jewelers will be in attendance to show and discuss their awards and recent work.

Jewelry designer and PMC® artist Barbara Fernald of Islesford, a finalist in the PMC® category of the 2009 Saul Bell Design Award competition, along with her necklace named “Double Vision II ” was honored in Las Vegas during JCK Las Vegas on May 30. Fernald previously earned second place in the PMC®  category of the 2006 Saul Bell Design Awards competition. She attended that award ceremony with her lobsterman husband, Bruce, and their two sons.

Barbara, who lives year round on Little Cranberry Island, started working with Precious Metal Clay in 1998, and it continues to be her favorite silver jewelry material.  Always on the forefront in metal clay design, she attended the Metal Clay World Conference in Chicago this month. Barbara learned the keum-boo technique which she uses in PMC designs during a Jayne Redman workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. She says “I am honored to be a Saul Bell finalist with Jayne, and I am looking forward to celebrating with her at Alone Moose gallery where we have shown our work for a number of years!”

Jewelry designer Jayne Redman of Portland, a finalist in the silver category of the 2009 Saul Bell Design Award competition, with her necklace named “Dahlia” was also honored in Las Vegas. The “Dahlia” was hand fabricated in sterling silver and 18K yellow gold. A Maine native,  Jayne earned her B.F.A. in Jewelry and Silversmithing from Maine College of Art in 1977. She began her jewelry career in the fashion jewelry industry in New York as a design and production assistant. She started her own company, Jayne Redman Jewelry, in 1982 and began developing the Floraforms™ Collection in 1995.

Jayne is a former faculty member of Maine College of Art and teaches workshops nationally. She is the recipient of a Niche Award and Lapidary Journal’s Jewelry Arts Award and has had feature articles in Crafts Report, AJM, Lapidary Journal, Professional Jeweler, Niche, and Ornament magazines. Her work has appeared in several books including Art Jewelry Today by Donna Z. Meilach, Making Metal Beads by Pauline Warg, and 500 Earrings, by Lark Books.

The 2009 competition challenged jewelry designers to push the boundaries of creativity as they created original and innovative pieces in any of six categories. Each designer chose one category as the foundation of their piece and integrated additional stones or materials as they wished, provided that the predominant material remained at least 75% of the finished, original design.

Although awards were presented to jewelers from as far away as Australia, Korea and India, Fernald and Redman were the only finalists from the State of Maine The pubic is invited to meet the artists at Alone Moose gallery, 78 West Street, on the Waterfront, Bar Harbor. For more information about the event, please call 288-4229

Messages, prayers and thoughts of loved ones who are no longer with us, sailing away from the sand beach in a southerly breeze. This is the 4th year of  the tradition, thanks to my sister-in-law Karen Fernald Smallwood. Every year has its own feel. This year the lights raced away quickly, into the fog.

Sunday was a day to remember and to say good bye to someone who had been a wife, mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother, great great grandmother, and everyone’s friend on Islesford; Lillian Alley. In a moving memorial, after the church service,  a flotilla (single line)  of boats traveled to the cove at Baker Island, where Lil’s ashes were scattered. Many of the 2 dozen boats were the working lobster boats from our harbor. The fog was so thick that the only way to see the flotilla beyond the two boats in front of us, was to look at the impressive line of dots on the radar screen.

Leaving the harbor:

Lobster boats owned by Lil’s son Rick, her grandson Jeremy, and her grandson Cory:

The loss of Lil hit especially hard, as less than two weeks earlier we said good bye to another great lady from Islesford, Betty Lou Sprague. Islanders have had more than enough fog, rain, and tears this summer. Its time for things to dry up a little bit. We need the sun.

I had the best time in Chicago. So much fun catching up with my friend Holly Kellogg and meeting new friends, especially those crazy Canadians Marley and Angie! We all can’t wait for next year to see each other at the Purdue conference. My mind is overstufed with new techniques to try, and new designs running through my head for clasps and catches. Every seminar had something to offer.

And, on top of really enjoying myself while I was away, I was so happy to come home to my little island. Today was sunny with a big picnic gathering at Bunker’s cove in honor of Hal Whitaker. It was the first time all summer I got a little sunburn, and went into the water because I actually felt hot.

The picnic was also a great opportunity to pick up some very cool rocks to drill for more necklaces. Now that I’m home, I really need to get to work. I ordered a new OTT light, to help in photographing my work. It would be nice to take photos at any time of day, not just when the sun comes through the dining room art the right angle. I’ll let you know if OTT is the answer!

Everyone turned their entries in around 7:30 a.m. You can imagine there was a really wide range of stuff. I took a few photos of the ones I really liked. There are questions about disqualification. ie. I never saw a felt tip pen on the tool table….I’ll call Holly in the a.m,. to find out who won. I had to leave before they announced a winner b/c of the time of my flight. Smooth uneventful flights both ways. Phew!

This one was my favorite. Notice the silver ball on top of the toilet paper holder. And that roll of TP was only about 1/2 inch wide. I do love miniatures. Inside the toilet representing a “you know what” was the coffee bean. Loved the humor of this piece. But, it nay have been disqualified. Like, where did that display box come from?

Anyway, the competition was fun and there was such a range of creativity.

There was a name draw for 50 people to participate in a brown paper bag mystery challenge. Holly and I were both among the 50.  In the paper bag were 7 items and specific instructions. You could only use those items, you had to use all of them, and you could use the tools available in the dining area. You could not use  any other tools that you might have brought with you. Everyone had to be on the same level playing field. It sounded fun, until we opened the bags. They contained: 7 grams of Art Clay Silver (like PMC, and it was not very much clay!) , a length of hemp twine, a short piece of square brass tubing, a coffee bean, a pale wooden bead, a piece of toilet paper and a white lollipop stick. Yikes! All creative ideas left the head when we opened these bags. One or two people even turned theirs back in to give someone else a chance! We had Thursday night, and time after lunch and into the evening on Friday to work on them. They have to be turned in at 7:30 on Saturday a.m. It was fascinating to see what people came up with. Here’s what Holly and I did:

I torched the lollipop stick and the wooden bead so they would be dark brown instead of pale. Impregnated the toilet paper with Elmer’s glue, rolled it in a ball and rolled it in crushed coffee bean. (Crushing the bean was Holly’s idea.) I scored the brass tube to make a little bit of surface texture, and made beads with the clay. I also cut circles of the paper bag, glued them together and drilled a hole ion the middle to make one more bead. (Using the paper bag was one of the options.) We each torch fired our silver clay because it was so much faster than a kiln. Also, good torch firing practice since I’ve only done it once, and Holly had never done it. (I dropped and lost one of the flat beads before I fired it, so I don’t have the bead I wanted to put on top of the brass tube. Oh well. I think the winner of the challenge wins a kiln. No small prize that!

I love Holly’s silver piece. She used her ground coffee bean, toilet paper, lollipop stick, and brass tube to texture her piece of clay. If we had Liver of Sulfur to use, the texture would show up much more clearly with a dark background and bright highlights.

Day 1. So much to take in. Here are two random images from two different seminars.

Lyle Rayfield gave an excellent seminar on water etching.

Gordon Uyehara talked about Bronze Clay. This one is for my brother Steve Shirey, the world renowned geo-chemist:  A photo of Bronze clay, unfired, taken with a scanning electron microscope.

Tomorrow, I’ll be able to photograph our results of the brown bag mystery competition. Both Holly and I were chosen among 48 others to compete.

I’m at the Metal Clay World Conference with my best metal clay friend Holly Kellogg. Seminars start at 9 a.m. Will post some photos tomorrow night. Many many thanks to Stevie Quinn and her favorite Auntie, for being patrons of the jewelers!

I sell most of my jewelry on consignment, in stores with seasonal markets, or at craft shows or home trunk shows. Trying to find the right price tag for small items, like earrings, is always a challenge.  Often my jewelry is in a case with  jewelry made by others. How do I make my pieces stand out and find room to attach a price and an inventory number? (When I sell wholesale, this is not my problem to figure out. ) I try something new every summer. This year, at Winter’s Work, my friend Sue moved her shop into a new space on the Islesford Dock.  The display case is the same, but the walls are painted a light sea foam blue. These leaf inspired display cards work well with her color scheme, but I still can’t quite decide if I like them or they are too “cutesy.” (Yes, those are real sticks. Gotta love a chance to use the glue gun!)

…the fog cleared.  It has been a really long time since we have seen the sun on Little Cranberry Island. Today, the sun, high clouds and dry wind saved our sanity,  just in time. No studio work for this jeweler! I got out in my garden and removed 50 snails from my perennials and replanted seeds for several kinds of vegetables and herbs. Seems late for our growing season, but I have nothing to lose. It just felt good to be outside in dry air.

If you are coming to the Mount Desert Island area in August, be sure to come to Northeast Harbor for the third annual Northeast Harbor Neighborhood House Invitational Craft Show from Thursday, August 13 through Saturday August 15. I’ve added a link to the wonderful web site created by Linda Perrin. It features all of the fine craftspeople who were invited to participate in this year’s show. It looks like I am in some very good company!

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