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In late January I began to paint again. There are a few canvases  in the studio that have gone through many changes in my mind, it was time to put pigment to the thought. This one finished itself before I was ready.  There’s another large canvas in the studio that seems to be finished too, but I don’t feel done with it. It will probably sit around another year before I show it. This one is fine as it is.

I’m not sure this is finished yet. I’ve been sketching this in color on my iPad which has given me the luxury of trying a number of compositions before I got to the easel. But the paint doesn’t always do what you want it to do.

Colman and I went out to Gennady’s studio during the school break to visit and get my spout welded. Here’s Gennady just after the job was done.

The welded spout, cooling down.

Now it’s cleaned up, ready to be annealed and filled with pitch.

At home I was working on a number of projects. We were waiting for cups and saucers to be electro formed in Rhode Island and I was working on another cup and some jewelry. These are pieces of a chain, I was working on two at the time. Both of them were finished today. The recent rise in silver prices has made finishing these chains a proposition to consider, the selling price is going to be much higher than it was last year.  Each of the chains weigh in at 4 ounces.

My whole work bench with several projects on it.  The large vase in the center is  an attempt to completely shape and chase without pitch.  It has progressed since then but will probably need another 15 hours or so.

The finished chains. Ovals and Bubbles. . .

We had a nice day about 10 days ago and Colman took this shot of me with a new begonia that has bloomed. 

This is a small silver leafed begonia  (in a 2 inch  pot ) that Tibor gave me,  it has taken off and is blooming too.  He says that his plant is bigger and fuller but hasn’t bloomed, it’s probably the extra light in our greenhouse that is giving our plants a longer stretch of daylight.

Last week I finished a lot of Portfolios for Talas.

In the back yard crocus are blooming. Spring is not far away.

We have had  lights installed in the greenhouse, they are only on a few hours at the end of the day to extend the daylight hours for the plants.  That and a lower humidity seem to have made a real difference in how the plants are growing.  There is a lot of root growth on the orchids and some plants that have refused to bloom for years are in spike.  

My begonias, that in the past hav simply over wintered in the greenhouse, are blooming.  This is Cathedral , a plant I have had only since the beginning of summer. 

Blc. mem Vida Lee ‘Limelight’

Part of thehe shelf of Phalaenopsis.

I’ve had this begonia for years and it never bloomed,  we just kept it for the glossy green leaves. The flowers are nothing special but they add atmosphere to the plant. 

This Phalaenopsis, baldan’s Kaleidoscope, has never bloomed sop well, it has branches of buds  on this stem too.

Phalaenopsis Sogo Vivien MP9398

Colman with a neofinetia, Hawaii Pine River. Vanda, Pachong Blue.

Phalenopsis, Leopard Prince is just opening.

This is is a hybrid paphiopedilum.

Here are a few shots taken in the back yard. The tropicals are responding to the cooler night time temperatures. Begonias are blooming and the anthuriums are looking very fresh with lots of new flowers.  The red anthuriums are a new hybrid that I found in Scituate, Massachussetts in August.  The pinkish  ones are very purple in person, that plant came from Home Depot a couple years ago. It is a constant bloomer but it has really put out the flowers in the past couple of weeks.

This is a hybrid names Sara, the flowers are enormous. If they get pollinated and fruit forms, the spathe will turn green and look like more leaves.

I’ve forgotten the name of this begonia.  It has incredibly large flowers.  This is the first time it’s had more than one umbel.

A composite shot of a small part of my anthurium collection.

It’s plum season and time to make tarts.  These have a modified rich tart pastry and a layer of chopped walnuts under the plum quarters.  This is just before they went into the oven.

I didn’t remember to take a picture until we had eaten half of the large one.  This is one of my favorite things. . .

The colchiums bloomed last week.  It’s a pretty nice clump of bulbs.

It’s a lazy drizzly Sunday and I am finally taking some time to write.

On the 18th I had another birthday,  this one ends in a zero and marks the beginning of another decade.  The day was spent in the city doing normal things which means I was on 47th street and in class. I visited Ellen in her studio where the girls all sang happy birthday,  we ate lunch together and had some special cupcakes. It was a really nice event since I hadn’t planned on doing anything special until the weekend.

After lunch, I went to class at FIT  where I am working on three pieces in an attempt to get control of raising metal into the shapes and sizes that I want, not just the things that the hammer is delivering.  After each round I am making four measurements to gauge progress and make corrections if things get out of line.  The little cup I had been working on was raising fairly well but I hadn’t noticed that the base diameter shrank about 10 mm. Gennady showed me how to regain the base diameter in class.  it was because of that shrinkage that I added measuring the base to the list of obvious measurements of height, top diameter  and lip to lip around the base.

Here’s what the pieces looked like last week after class. Bottoms and tops. The small cup is the piece that had its base re widened.

I spent some time over the next weekend raising them (and measuring), then took them to class where, for some reason, I was only able to get one round in on each piece, the usual work in class allows me to raise at least two and a half rounds on each piece. Here they are after class.

I recall now that I was getting some instruction on the small cup, which had reached the right size, but I wanted to see if I could thin the metal a little and give it some more height without changing the top diameter. This action requires a different hammer, the first rounds didn’t do anything noticeable so I asked for help. Each of these pieces started out as a 5, 6, and 7 inch diameter circle of 18 gauge copper.  I’ll work on these again tomorrow. The tall one needs to be narrowed more, the smaller cups need only to be refined before I can begin to chase designs into them.

On the 19th Colman and I went into the city to go th the Met. We were to see the Morandi  and Turner Shows and I wanted to look more closely at the ancient silver and jewelry. It was a beautiful day and we walked up Madison Avenue to take in some of the sights we haven’t seen for a while.  In front of the Whitney there was a street  vendor who was selling african artifacts, among them, on a very crowded table,  were these two bronze leopards, one seated, one standing. I wanted to take both of them home with me.

We had lunch at Nectar and then went into the Met. No photography was allowed in the major visiting shows so there are no pictures of the Turner or the Morandi paintings.  Colman liked this painting of the Annuciation.

I found this girdle interesting. It’s very close to a project I’m working on in the studio.

And these hair pins are something I’ve ben thinking about but haven’t moved on because I don’t see many in use.

But here’re the things that I needed to see.  The  ship has really bold chasing and repoussè on its hull, the 16th century tankard has flat chasing on its sides, I intend for my work to be more like it’s top.

After the Met we walked over to Dean and Deluca’s on Madison Avenue to pick up something for dinner.  While we were there I noticed these wrapped pieces of stone which turned out to be salt.  Reading the little card explained that these “plates” were to be used to cook fish on, to serve sushi on, and could be used to  keep food warm on the table if they were first put into a hot oven to charge them. They’re attractive, heavy and more pink than my photo shows, I don’t know if they are fragile or if they salt the food served on them. There were jars of crushed pink salt on the plates, presumably for seasoning.

At home over the weekend, where it is definitely becoming Fall, the begonias are blooming. This one has enormous flowers.  It’s got a name like Big Roy or Big Bob, I can’t remember what it’s called.

Soon the plants will start to come inside for the winter, I’m not looking forward to that. The studio space has been redesigned and there is less room for the big guys that usually spend the winter there.

Henry is in his second week with us. Every day he grows in ability. Yesterday he discovered jumping, we have graduated from dragging toys to flying toys. He’s also discovered he can get onto my cushion by himself.