It involves things like putting together and sending out an e-mail like this when I am SO challenged by desktop publishing stuff! Wish I could make the size bigger or have spent less than a whole morning trying to do this and making labels for post cards. Ah well, back to the studio where I am WAY more comfortable. Meanwhile…the day is so gorgeous it keeps calling me to go outside.
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…don’t wait too long to blog! The longer I go without writing, the harder it is to get back to it. Fall may be quieter on the island, as far as the population goes, but there was a whole lot that went on in September that I never got around to mentioning after the first day of school. I’ll wait for another post to tell about my studio shenanigans. (And I won’t wait for another month to do it.) Here’s a (partial) September synopsis of what went on outside the studio:
Lunch on Sutton Island (part of our town, but the next island over) with my new friends Donna and Dave Nussdorfer. I took photos of the island, but none of Donna and Dave?! Donna and I both enjoy making jewelry. Check out her Etsy shop. And it turns out we share the exact same birthday, except I am 2 hours older. Donna made some amazing grilled cheese and fig sandwiches and we talked about the similarities and differences of our islands and of course, about jewelry. Their house has been in Dave’s family for over 90 years. Our family’s house was built in 1906, so Dave and I compared our summer island childhoods. After lunch we took a walk. As we got ready to head back to Islesford a squall came up:
All was sunny by the time I stepped back on my own island. There are no roads on Sutton, so I felt like I was coming back to a city!
The next day I caught up with my mom and her brother Jim who was visiting from Maryland.
The following week I took the 6:30 a.m. boat off the island twice. Once for an early appointment in Bar Harbor. (The other morning boat leaves Islesford at 8:15, which would have been too late.) Lucky me, I had time to drive through part of Acadia National Park (before the inane government shut down….don’t get me started….) to look out at my island home from the top of Cadillac Mountain. From left to right the islands are: Baker, Little Cranberry (aka Islesford) Great Cranberry and Sutton. To the right of Sutton, but out of the photo is bear Island. 5 islands, one town.
It was only 45° and very windy. Brrr. I was outside to snap these two photos, but was glad to see the rest of the gorgeous views from inside the car.
Same week, two days later, my sister-in-law Karen and I took the early morning boat off so we could drive a couple hours up the coast to Machiasport to go to Jasper Beach. Neither of us had been there before, and I had heard the stones were pretty cool, so off we went. We got lost a few times but we didn’t care. The beach was quite pretty and much more reddish brown than our beaches here. I spent an hour sorting through rocks and picking up some to drill for beads. Due to the structure of jasper, it doesn’t “round up” in the waves like granite and some of the others. The nicely rounded pebbles I had in my mind were not what I found. There were enough others that are slightly different in color from what I usually find here, so I still came home with a bit of variety. Karen went off birdwatching and saw a Solitary Vireo, a new bird for her.
That has to be it for now, as I’m headed off the island again to pick up some groceries. I plan to cover some more beach antics tonight then back to the studio. I love this time of year. The sky, everything, just seems more dramatic.
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The quiet school yard soon starts to fill with friends from the community, arriving teachers and students.
Ashley Bryan calls it the “That’s ME!” school.
Teachers Audrey Noether and Lauren Simmons welcome everyone and ask for hopes and good wishes from the group.
This year’s art teacher, Mary Lyman, is totally overwhelmed by all of the things Ashley has just asked her to memorize. (….just kidding M and A…)
Here’s to a great year for all of the new and returning students and their new teachers!
The Ashley Bryan School will have 12 (13?) students this year in grades K through 8. My husband and all of his siblings attended this school, their father attended this school, and both of our sons attended this school. A great island tradition.
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…of the quick photos of necklaces I’m dropping off at The Gallery Next Door today in Bar Harbor:
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Holly Kellogg and I met on the airport shuttle that carried us to the 2006 PMC Conference at Purdue University. Over the years we have become good friends who like to learn new creative techniques together. Sometimes we attend workshops, and other times we just try to figure out what we want to try next when we visit each other’s studio. Hmm…what would it be this year when she had 5 days to come to the island with her son Evan and daughter Maia?
When in doubt, we get out the polymer clay. I planned ahead for her visit because I was fascinated with the idea of using an extruder to make thin canes of varying color that I think are called rainbow canes. (I’m confused about the terms “pixilated cane” and “retro cane.” I think they apply to larger canes of polymer clay made from combining these small thin extrusions.) All I know was that we wanted to extrude clay using the technique described by Cynthia Tinnapple in her Polymer Clay Daily blog. We wanted to see for ourselves how the stacks of color keep pushing through each other and changing as they are extruded through a smaller opening, but we didn’t want to wear out our wrists cranking the tiny handle of an extruder. I ordered the stainless steel extruder, adapter, and vise suggested by Cynthia, before Holly arrived.
It helps to read the directions when you’re doing something you’ve never done before.
We conditioned lots of polymer clay by running it through our pasta machines, then cut out circles of color the size of the extruder barrel and stacked them up. We thought we needed a different size hole for the end of the extruder, so I quickly made a copper version using my disc cutter.
Holly extruded the fist cane….
It works! (Though the cane in the photo below is actually one from our second day of experiments.)
We experimented with waxed linen between slices of polymer clay to see how it would handle curing. That way our test slices might be able to be used as jewelry components if they worked out.
My cane slices could be made to slide quite easily on the waxed linen. Not what I had hoped would happen. Holly’s pieces did not slide quite as easily. She had used liquid polymer between her slices to see if it made a difference in holding the waxed linen.
On day two I used all translucent Pardo clay, tinted with alcohol ink, with silver leaf between each disc. I extruded through a small square shape.
A cured test slice of one cane I had wrapped with more of the blue translucent Pardo:
Holly tinted Premo translucent clay with alcohol ink and alternated her translucent slices with light and dark solids. She used gold leaf between her slices.
I love how the gold leaf seems to glow through the peach translucent clay in the upper left teardrop.
The time went all too quickly. Two morning sessions were just enough to whet our appetite for more polymer clay exploration. We were having too much fun to stop and take photos of it all. Here are two more test pieces, with beads added to the waxed linen before squeezing the two sides of polymer together. In my mind they would be earring components.
The translucent segments show up a little bit in the finished earrings. What looks like a black stripe in the second segment from the top is actually the linen thread showing through the translucent part of the cane.
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The pace of life in the middle of August is at a fever pitch. I assume that everyone I know has their act together while I am just trying to keep my head above water and avoid panic if I can. It turns out that:
Have you heard of the term cabin fever? Well, mid August around here is the exact opposite of that.
I managed to fire a batch of beads last week. Here’s how they looked just out of the kiln and ready for the tumbler.
After I tumbled them, I oxidized them with liver of sulphur, and then buffed them on a muslin wheel. Of course I forgot to take a second batch of photos. Most of these beads are already in use. All of the earring sections are packed up and gone without photos. I was in kind of a hurry to get jewelry made and out to three galleries by today and tomorrow.
I dropped these necklaces off at Winter’s Work today on the island:
I was in a huge rush to get out the door, so I didn’t photograph the 10 pairs of earrings that I already had in cards. 15 pieces all together helped make Sue’s jewelry case look a lot more inviting.
When I got home from dropping jewelry off at the dock, I pulled together what I had finished for The Gallery Next Door in Bar Harbor. (I have to be in Bar Harbor tomorrow, so I wanted to finish at least a few things so I could drop them off while I was in town.)
Again, I only had time to photograph the necklaces and not the earrings.
Last but not least is the package I’ll mail off tomorrow to Chapter Two Gallery in Corea, Maine. I wanted to have necklaces finished for them too, but I ran out of time. That’s next on my list. Here are the styles of a couple pairs of earrings that are headed their way:
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…Islesford to Great Cranberry to Sutton Island to Northeast Harbor. It was hard to carry on a conversation with all of the foggy sky changes. Those of us who are compelled to take pictures kept interrupting to turn around for another photo op…. I’m sorry, what did you say?
(These photos are in sequence. The weather continued to change around like this for the rest of the day, whether you were on the island or the mainland.)
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“How do the cars get out to your island?” A fairly common question from people who might be visiting the island for the first time. My morning mailboat ride gave me the perfect opportunity to answer that question with a blog post.
The ferry was unloading supplies at the Islesford Dock Restaurant, as the Beal and Bunker barge pulled alongside to unload these vehicles at the island’s ramp. (The car and truck were driven onto the barge from the ramp in Northeast Harbor.)
David Bunker pushes the barge with the Double B, while his son Justin maneuvers the winch that lowers the barge’s loading ramps to line up with the concrete ramp on the beach. Lots of ramp stuff going on.
Same barge, same loading ramp, same father-son team on a very different day:
To answer the question, “How do you get ice that is 6″ thick off a barge?”
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Today was one of those days where I couldn’t seem to get out of my own way. All I noticed was what I didn’t get done rather than what I managed to do. Pricing and dropping off (mailing) work to two galleries is not nothing, but I thought I would be putting more time in at my bench this week. I have to spend both Wednesday and Thursday off the island so that means no solid working time until Friday. Well, no need to call in the waa waambulance. I’ll just post some photos of what I managed to finish and get myself off to bed early. Tomorrow is a new day and we can only live them one at a time, right?
The necklaces below (along with 9 pairs of earrings I did not take time to photograph) went in the mail today to Red Dot Gallery in Deer Isle, Maine. I almost forgot to photograph them, so the photos are rushed and the price tags are already attached. D’oh.
The second “drop off” was to Winter’s Work, right here on Little Cranberry Island. Again I rushed through the photos, and I did not take time to photograph the earrings I priced. Summer is just crazy busy.
Off to bed for me!
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Barbara S Fernald Jewelry 