Broken Calculator upcycled into earrings

Rick tried to throw away a calculator. First he took it apart and I found the pieces and then, well, then there were earrings. The first pair is on its way to Baton Rouge to Michaela because she's a mathematician and that seemed right.

These earrings are made from the broken calculator, scraps of wire, beads from an old necklace and brand new, handmade, niobium earwires because nobody is ever allergic to niobium.  My earrings sell for $11 per pair plus tax and or shipping or you can just stop by the studio and look.

At Hot Dog Day in Alfred, if the weather is friendly.

At the Annual Snowman Show on Mother’s Day Weekend at St. Philips’ Church Hall on Route 19 in Belmont, always at the Studio Tour in my studio on the weekend after Columbus Day and whenever you have time to stop by.
www.facebook.com/StoneFlowerPottery

www.StoneFlowerPottery.com

Gem - Accepted in the Lakeside Statewide Show, Oswego, NY

The story of making Gem: All of my sculptures begin with paper pieces. When the design is settled, well mostly settled, in my mind, I use the pieces as patterns to cut the shapes needed in the colors I find. I don't paint anything. All the color is found on cans. Gem is entirely cut from a one gallon Gem brand olive oil can.

These are paper pieces glued to part of a metal can.

 Individual pieces are drilled and riveted to a backing sheet.

              GEM's STORY:  I started working with tin cans, more accurately tin coated steel cans as well as aluminum cans, in 2010 in a class taught by Charles Orlando in Belmont NY. I’d spent 40 years working as a potter with gray, dusty, dirty, dull clay and glazes and suddenly colorful tin cans were piled before me. I dashed to my doctor for a Tetanus shot, ordered tools and turned a new eye toward found objects.

                All of the pieces of Gem were cut from one Gem olive oil can riveted to a stove burner cover. Gem was attached to a carved piece I carried home from a trip to China in 2003. Gem’s design is in keeping with the majority of my other tin works representing birds and birdish looking creatures. 

Calling Miss Olive for Tea Time

One of my sculptural teapots will shortly steam to Chicago to be exhibited in the 25th Anniversary Teapot Show, "On The Road Again" curated by Joan Houlehen and hosted at Chiaroscuro at Watertower Place.

 Calling Miss Olive for Tea Time is rescued trash. The body of the piece is a olive pomace can from the kitchens of Arrowmont. While studying there I ate this not knowing the great distance between olive oil and olive pomace. Olives, cold pressed, release their flavorful oil leaving behind pulp. Pulp was once seen as appropriate hog food but now it is heated, dowsed with hexane and coaxed to release a secondary product - pomace oil.

The green of the can looked right with the green spout/hand that has moved from spot to spot in my studio for years. The phone, also green, was the perfect handle and again color called my eye to the watch with a red spangled band. The flower-buttons on the phone face are from a long, black and white dress I wore while teaching preschool.