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I was in the city Wednesday, it was so warm and balmy that I was comfortable in a sweatshirt without a jacket. Several jobs that have finally arrived in the studio ( it seems I wasn’t the only one on Spring Break. . .) and this trip was for them and for school and personal projects. There were seven stops to make, the last one being my class in Gemology at FIT. Walking from 6th to 7th Avenue on 28th Street, it was apparent that Spring is here.  It was really nice to smell hyacinths and narcissus on the street.

In our yard on Staten Island, hundreds of bulbs are blooming. Pink chionodoxa is blooming everywhere.  A few years ago I bought 100 bulbs and planted them in little patches in the front, back and sides of the house.  They are blooming with scilla and the first tete-a-tete miniature daffodils in the front and and in the back with this old curlew weathervane. 

Ice Follies are blooming in the “Piano Bed”  beside the greenhouse.  

Thursday night I made my second rubber mold, the first one was a disaster and went immediately into the garbage.  Our assignment is to make a necklace from one piece for which we have to make the waxes.  It wasn’t easy, after cutting the mold open to release the model, you have to hold it between metal plates and push it against a nipple on the wax injector to make the models one at a time. After the wax cools for a few seconds you have to remove a wax copy of the metal model from the mold.  My first attempts found the wax models incomplete when the mold was opened. I changed metal plates and things seemed to be happening perfectly, then I couldn’t get the models to completely fill with wax again, it turns out that I was squeezing the plates too tightly. The metal and mold sandwich only needs firm pressure, not the type I am usually deliver while binding.  Here’s the array of models with the metal original, spread out on my bench, after I got them home. The pieces on the wooden part of my bench are rejects for one or another reason. 

The next step is to take the wax models to a caster and have them cast in Silver so that I will be able to start cleaning the castings for the necklace next Thursday.  The finished project is due  April 17th.  

It has been an interesting week of rest and work. Binding work is in a stage of waiting for materials to arrive, I have been able to move ahead on some metal projects both in and out of the studio. I went into the city Wednesday to meet with a couple of companies that do large scale metal work to talk about costs and techniques for making some larger bowl shapes that I would chase and assemble before returning it to them for finishing. As I was leaving their shops, I passed by a storefront that had mirrors in the entrances. It reminded me of a self portrait I took one late September afternoon in Croydon over 25 years ago.  I was struck by the similarities of the mirrors and lighting and had to make the portrait again.

  I also visited my caster on 46th street because I noticed there were problems with the last mold I had them make for me, the silicon deteriorated while they were injecting the waxes and the insides of the bezels that were cast, were marked with excess silver that prevented me from setting the stones inside them. I spent part of Saturday cleaning a new master for them to make another mold with a new orange colored silicon that should be stronger and provide cleaner castings. 

 Colman and I had tickets for Carnegie Hall Thursday night for the last in our series of Virtuoso Pianists.  We left Tysen Street around 5:00, entering the Ferry terminal, we saw that the sun was casting long, low rays into the terminal, lighting the new aquariums in a way we hadn’t seen them before. In the bright light the gaudy, fake coral reef looked better than it had before and it was reflected on the inside of the aquarium. 

 Here are some of the fish I was watching while we waited for the Ferry. 

 This fish is about 8 inches from nose to tail, its blue markings couldn’t be brighter if they were electrified neon. 

 Once were on the Ferry we began to see the effects of the high winds the weathermen had forecast, the water was brown, with whitecaps and deep wells between the waves. The ferry windows were spattered with sea spray.  As we passed Governor’s Island, we could see that the Queen Mary II was in her Brooklyn berth.  I am astounded by how large the ship is, even at this distance it towers above 5 story buildings on the island. 

 On the return trip after the concert we met our neighbor Denise in the Manhattan Terminal,  she was with her sister Leslie and a friend, Spencer who was visiting from New Hampshire. It was Spencer’s birthday and Denise had planned a small party for the trip back to Staten Island.  Once we were settled on the boat, she brought out two exquisite, small cakes from a Lower East Side bakery (whose name escapes me for the moment) plates and forks.  The conversation and cakes made for a pleasant ride home after another disappointing concert.    

 Friday morning we awoke and found that more large branches had fallen in the fierce winds Thursday night. A smaller branch had  fallen right in front of the green house, the large branch broke our only rose bush in the back yard. Gary will help me saw the branch into pieces that will be picked up later this week. The chain link fence prevented real damage to Gary’s azalea.  

 These are the silver pieces I have finished building this week. First, there is this piece, intended to be used as a decorative element for hat bands and belts. Here it is with some of the idea drawings. I have decided to have a mold made without attachments, that way the castings can be used as belt pieces, pendants or pins by adding the appropriate attaching hardware. The surfaces are unmarked as I intend to personalize each casting by chasing textures, lines or small circles to enrich the cast pieces. 

 These are the other pieces I have finished building; a pair of cuff links, a new scarf slide with a ’safety’ stick pin, a seven stone bracelet and the belt piece square.  There’s also the cleaned piece for the new mold which is intended for necklaces and bracelets and a shield shaped piece that I will make a mold for in my class next Thursday. While making the scarf slide, I got annoyed with not knowing which gauge of metal and what length of wire would produce the size of silver balls that I needed. So, I cut wires in specific lengths ( I have a cutter on which I have engraved marks to an inch, in quarter inch increments, for ruler-less snipping) from each of 4 gauges of wire, then I made the balls and soldered them to a piece of copper sheet for a permanent reference, that’s in the right side of the photo.  Three of these pieces these pieces will go into a polishing machine for a starting polish, then I’ll set stones, burnish the bezels and give them a final polish with some rouge. The other three are intended for mold making.

It’s still cold outside, and wet, but the sun is trying to poke through the clouds.  The front yard has snow drops pushing through the leaves I didn’t have time to remove last Fall. I am really ready for warmer weather and this slight tease is promising. 

In the back yard, crocus have been blooming since Wednesday.  It’s always difficult to get a good photo of these crocus.  They’ve been here since we moved here over 21 years ago, they’ve increased in number and spread into the lawn. 

This is the first finished casting I made in class,  cast in a cuttlefish bone which gives it the texture you see in the center. It’s about an inch and a quarter in diameter. 

The next piece is a scarf slide I made to get a favorite piece of Turquoise into a setting.  I’d originally planned it as a ring, but after I made the square base, it was a combination of too big and too sharp for me to wear on  a hand.  So I made a structure of rings on the back that would accommodate the scarf I usually wear through the winter.  I added a stick pin  as a safety should the slide fall off of a thin scarf. The rings  turned out to be small for the scarves I am wearing now and there is little danger of it falling off .

The past week has been very busy. I delivered 90 invitations that I made in two days, yesterday; that’s after a weekend in which I bound 20 books from ink jet prints with hard paper covers and photos, built a box for them and made a logo out of sterling for the box. That project was delivered Sunday night. Here’s a photo of the project, I’ve blurred the marks on the cover to keep my client’s project private.

  It’s Thursday night and I have been in classes at FIT since yesterday’s evening. During the day, after delivering the invitations, I walked downtown on Broadway, crossing 23rd Street at Fifth Avenue to buy some materials for the next job. The first thing I noticed was that the ‘Silver Trees’ sculptures were being taken down in Madison Park. The dismantled trunk was on a huge flatbed truck, another truck held two boulder sculptures.  

    The second new thing is a tower going up on 23rd Street in the shadow of the Met Life Tower.  It’s getting to be like that all over lower Manhattan.  You can look down Fourth Avenue from East 10th Street near Astor place and see a number of towers rising over a large area of  Little Italy and Chinatown.  It’s disturbing to see my sunny old neighborhood being chilled by the shadows of gleaming towers. 

 Looking down Broadway I was surprised to see David Beckham in his underwear, smoldering on a roof top, keeping watch on the traffic from 22nd Street.  I think that’s a new billboard,  haven’t seen anything like that outside of Soho or Times Square.

 It’s about a 12 block walk to New York Central Art Supply and I like the walk down Broadway.  I pass  ABC  Carpet and Home and like to stop in there to see what is new.  Shouldn’t have been surprised to see that their buyers had been to Tucson for the mineral show.  Their purchases were all over the first floor,  they had found some things I hadn’t seen, like these slabs of  quartz that they are using as table mats or platforms. 

 The other things of interest were the piles of hand wrought metal bowls and chargers. The bowls aren’t expensive so I assume they are nickel silver or silver plate. But the leaves you see on the table are sterling, they are priced at $150 and  $180 each. All the leaves are individuals, cast from different leaves. The round ones, about 5-6 inches across, are especially handsome. They are resting on slabs of petrified wood. 

 A little further down Broadway the farmer’s market was running, this first stall with the tulips and daffodils in pots made me feel like Spring is not far away. 

 After shopping at Central, I headed up to 46th street to get supplies for tonight’s casting class. Having made the necessary purchases at Metalliferous, I walked around the corner to see if Tony had been shopping  for beads in Tucson. He had been, his side of the store has almost doubled in size, he showed me some of the Tucson material and while we were talking, my friend Irma said hello. It was a surprise to see another Staten Island artist in this special shop. We left together, walked to the train, got out at FIT, shopped for a sushi dinner at  Wholefoods and then ate in the student cafe at FIT. It’s rare that we have so much time to talk and catch up with each other. It was really pleasant. She left to go to a gallery talk and I went upstairs to my Gemology class.