Just a week ago I stumbled upon a juried exhibition here in San Diego, California at The Studio Door. The exhibition is titled
ENDANGERED, A celebration of artwork which showcases the beauty of endangered and threatened species or habitats.

I read the prospectus which was as follows:
ENDANGERED is an exhibition of visual art running from August 5 - 28, 2016 produced by The Studio Door.
A celebration of artwork which showcases the beauty of endangered and threatened species or habitats.  The exhibit will cultivate an appreciation and understanding of the diversity of art inspired by nature.  10% of the proceeds will be gifted to the San Diego Zoo.
CATEGORIES ACCEPTED 
Painting, drawing, photogaphy, printmaking, assemblage, collage, mixed media, fiber art, artist book, ceramics, stain glass and sculpture.  Oversized jewelry that can be defined as fine art is acceptable for this show.
This exhibition does not accept jewelry (as defined as craft), video, film, performance art, installation and works requiring an external electrical source. 

Submissions must be the artist’s original work.

I figured that if The Tenacious Tentacle just took First Place in the Art Jewelry category at the fair, when then my cuff was FINE ART and by golly, I was going to enter it. 

For my artist's statement I wrote the following:
The Tenacious Tentacle is a piece of art jewelry that is a cuff. When worn, it looks like the tentacle is wrapped around the wearers arm. On the cuff is also a Sea Star (starfish) and a sand dollar (which is a type of sea urchin). Though all three are not currently classified as an endangered species their environments are being threatened. All require clean sea water, none of these three have fresh water relatives. All three mostly live on the sea floor. With their sea habitats being threatened these amazing creatures are threatened too.

The cuff is made from sterling silver using the technique of chasing & repousse. This is an ancient technique where the metal is stretched using small tools and hammers to create volume, texture and detail. Initially the cuff is worked flat. After all the chasing & repousse, it is then bent into the cuff. After polishing the patina is applied, this allows the highlights and lowlights to be accented.

AND...
Just a few hours ago, I got an email stating that my piece had been accepted - unfortunately it is not going to be in the physical exhibition but it will be in the on-line exhibition and it will be in the published catalog. 

This past Saturday, I worked in the Fallbrook Gem & Mineral Society booth at the San Diego County Fair at Del Mar.
I have worked in the booth, for one or two days, over the past 10 years, since I was a member of the club.  Though, I am no longer a member of the club I still have many friends in it and so when they called, asking if I could fill in one day, I said yes.   I was to work the morning shift with B.J, Orville, and Lester, who I have worked with many times.

As we were getting the booth ready for the days visitors, one of the people who work in the Hall of Gems & Minerals came up and congratulated me on my wins; or so I thought.  

It was not until I took my lunch break and decided to get one more picture of my cuffs that I saw that my Squash Blossom and Vine cuff had won a donated award for excellence.  I was shocked, I could not believe it because  this honor had not been presented (yet) when I had been at the fair the first week it was open, when I was there for exhibitors night.   

I had been awarded the Cinderhill Award for the Best Single Piece of Jewelry.

I guess you could say I was reeling at the realization. 

Turns out the independent, donated, awards are presented some time after the fair opens so those who make those decisions can have time to compare and ponder their choices.   AND the Cinderhills who presented the award had a booth in the room (but I had never met them), so I went over and introduced myself and while asking what it was about my cuff that they felt had merited this award, I realized every other phrase out of my mouth was either "thank you" and "I am shocked". I then shut up. The Cinderhills explained what their process was for selecting the recipient and then I thanked them again, and again, and again. 

I then left their booth and went to lunch.  Let's just say the rest of the afternoon was a bit of haze. 

So here it is, a picture of the cuff and the "award".  I have also now accepted the realization that I am an "award winning artist". 
​

The fair opened Friday night and yet the results for the Jewelry competition were not posted until today.
Yes, I chewed all my nails on both my hands and feet off waiting!

And what are the results???

The Squash Blossom & Vine took 1st Place in the Chasing & Repousse category/class.
The Tenacious Tentacle Cuff took 1st Place in the Art Jewelry, Amateur category/class.

The links above will take you to a search page that will have links to all the blog posts about those two items.

For all the results use this link which will take you to the exhibition page and the links to the results pdf are at the bottom.

I would also like to point out that one of the students in my Squash Blossom cuff workshop, Sylvia, took 2nd Place in the Chasing & Repousse category for her Squash Blossom Cuff.  Congratulations Sylvia!!! 

Today was the day for me to take my entries to the San Diego County Fair at the Del Mar Fair grounds.  The fair opens Friday, June 3rd and runs through Monday, July 4th.   Today and tomorrow are the days to bring in your entries for the competition in the Hall of Gems & Minerals; so today was the day I took in mine.

Since many of my friends and students also do jewelry, enameling and chasing & repousse we decided to meet at 11:00 and help each other set up and then go to lunch.  

I entered two cuffs. The Squash Blossom cuff in the Chasing & Repousse class and my Tenacious Tentacle cuff in the Art Jewelry class. 

It was during my Squash Blossom cuff class that I suggested that ALL the students (Diane, Eleanor, Stephanie, Sylvia, Laurie, Mary and Heather) should enter their cuffs too. It would give them experience being judged, learning what the judge liked and did not, and wouldn't it be funny if there were SEVEN cuffs in the Chasing & Repousse class that were all the "same".    In the end only Sylvia and Eleanor entered their cuffs so that means that there are three and sure enough, all three cuff's are next to each other in the display case. 

I wish I could see the judge's face when he see them but then again I will find out on exhibitors night when we go around with the judge himself and he tells you in more detail how he scored the entries.

Here are some pictures my pieces.

The judging is this coming week so if the post the results by opening day, I will know the results by next weekend. 

In the blog post prior to this, I gave you a brief hint about my bowl for the Super Bowl Challenge.  
I have tried TWO times to participate but the first time I burned my hand and gave up. The second time, I stretched the metal as I was raising it to too much and I gave up again.  

Then for the past 3 years I was in Tucson during the challenge and did not even try to participate. 

This year, I wanted to and have completed the challenge

Since the challenge can be started before Super Bowl Sunday, I started to raise the bowl about 4 weeks ago. It is not a big bowl, it actually fits in my hand  BUT with so many other things happening, I wanted to give myself plenty of time. 

And then, with the new house being renovated, we are in Texas at the moment to do some design selections and a walk through. THUS I really could not finish the bowl today. THUS I finished it last weekend. 

I went in a different direction and didn't even do any chasing and repousse on the bowl. I enameled it. I learned torch fired enameling in 2012 and I made a ring, and had not done any other enameling since despite having bought the basic supplies.  Thus, I wanted to play with enamel and see what I could do on a small bowl. It was about having some fun.

After I finished raising the bowl last Saturday. I went into my copper scrap pile and got some pieces of copper I could do some tests on as I had a sample box of enamel and color names but no clue as to what they would look like.  I did about 6 test firings and on Sunday, I went into the garage with TWO plumbers torches (one was MAP and the other Propane) , the bowl and the enamels. I first did a counter coat on the outside in a nice bright green. Then applied a cobalt blue to the inside of the bowl and a deep blood red to the rim.  

Despite using TWO torches and forming a bit of a box with my fire bricks, it did take some amount of time to get the bowl hot enough for the enamel to melt and fuse.  Yet, overall I do like how it turned out and YES, I did have fun. 

Here is my bowl and of course, some process pictures which include some of the bowl cooling and you can see the enamel colors come out.

I have been working on the teaching samples for the Chasing & Repousse Cuff workshop I am teaching in March. The workshop is full and we will be doing a new design. This workshop is less about the chasing and repousse and more about the cuff and finishing it. 

Then I am assembling the design for an etched cuff that will have music on it.   The music has to be redone bigger and fatter lines so they etch really good. 

And lastly, I am also working on a small bowl for the Super Bowl Challenge hosted by Wendy over at Hammermarks. I have a bit more raising to do and then I am going to apply enamels that are torch fired.  

As I wrote in my last post  I had joined a project called "A Hundred For One" which is a project to benefit CERF+ 

A LOT HAS HAPPENED SINCE THEN

What is important is the project suddenly hit critical mass.  When I signed up, I was #81 on the list and the number of links was going to be limited to 100. Just before I left for Tucson (I went to Tucson for another chasing & repousse workshop but that will be another post when I put the finishing touches on the project. ) I mailed the link off to the organizer Peter D'Enbeau and soon after I arrived I found out my link was #60 on the chain.

And thanks to Peter's idea and people talking about it in the Facebook group, suddenly we had people from all over the world asking how to participate and could they still send a link and it looked like there would be over 100 links. 

Then Peter headed out to Tucson too and while he was gone, I think the postie went on strike and just gave up trying to deliver all the packages to Peter's shop.  It was two trips to the post office to pick up all the bins. (UPDATE: According to Peter there were 70+ waiting for him when he got home)

Now we have people who have volunteered to find out about crowd funding the printing of books and posters so more money can be raised for CERF+ plus some other ideas that are being tossed about. 

Here is a link to the public group, on Facebook if you want to find out more.  This should work for those of you who don't have a FB account.

And the work is amazing.
Here is a photo of the chain so far - this does not have all the links that arrived last week and links are still arriving. The number of links so far (on and off the chain) is over 140!

In the Facebook group Metalsmith Coffee House, that I am a member of, a group project was started and I have decided to join in. 

Here is the project description: 
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A Hundred for One. CERF+ Project
Humanity at its best. One hundred souls calling through the woods in the bitter cold to save just one that might be lost. The Vulcans have a saying. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of one or few." but humanity in it's most beautiful chaos will do just the opposite. This project's seed idea was as a gift translated as best I knew to say thank you. I had no idea that people would even reply. I felt that the sacrifice of time and resource would be too much for many and coupled with the sad fact that the world is saturated with scams I felt maybe two people would participate. That couldn't be further from the truth. 100 links by 100 people is the chain that symbolizes a gift of what humanity at it's best should be known for....That we are not Vulcans and we will do the insane if we feel it can make just the slightest bit of difference.  

Requirements:  

• Size:  No more than 3". It must have holes to accommodate a jump ring that is 10mm outer diameter and 10 gauge or 2.59mm.  Please include connector jump rings.
• Metal:  Varying metals will add character...so, use whatever metal you want.

============================================================

The hope is that when the chain is done, a book will be published and that the chain might get displayed in a museum or gallery with all proceeds going to CERF+.

So what is my "link"? It is a small medallion using chasing & repousse of course.   I will not post, at this time, images of many of the links already sent in (because of copyrights and permission and all of that) .   I started this on Saturday morning with a design and now on Monday night, it is 99% complete. I just have to stamp it and then seal it. 

And because of my Year of Repousse project, I can say that project #2 has been completed.

Project Name: Un Piccolo Calamario
Material: Sterling Silver 20 gauge sheet and 12 gauge square wire. Liver of Sulfur patina.
Major Points:
Form frame and solder to sheet.
Chasing & Repousse of design
Saw and file off extra silver sheet
Solder on end links
Patina
Lessons Learned:  
To get sides straight and parallel anneal wire well and pull between to dowels to straighten.
If you put your mind to it, you can get a lot done in THREE DAYS.

Here are the process picture of mine, though so enjoy.  As usual, click a picture to view it larger and to see the caption, then you can scroll through all of them. 

Today I was back at the San Diego County Fair where I was volunteering some of my time in the Volunteers for Minerals booth. 

Before I went to work in the booth, I first went through the wood exhibit and then went past my case to just say "Hello" and my heart skipped a beat, literally.

My exhibit was awarded the Anne Schafer Award for Best Exhibit ($100).

 (yes again, all together) YIPEEEEEEEEEE

That means the exhibit has earned the following:  
* Award of Merit. $50
* The John Dalley Memorial Award for Best Educational Exhibit. $100
* The Anne Schafer Award for Best Exhibit. $100

Next Friday, I have to go back and take it all down. In October I will be giving a presentation on Chasing & Repousse, based on this exhibit, to the Fallbrook Gem & Mineral Society and possibly one other club in the area later in the fall. 

First a correction. 
The educational exhibits do not have a first, second or third place awards.

That being said, I have since spoken to BJ and have found out that I was awarded the 
 Educational Merit ($50)
and......... 
                     wait for it..............
John Dalley Memorial Award - Best Educational Exhibit. Rosette and $100.

And not all of the independent awards have been announced so there is a chance for more but word is they will be done by Wednesday for Exhibitor Appreciation night.

I will be posting pictures. 

YIPEEEEEEEEEE