Jewelry Update

What I've Been Up To

Now that last semester finished, the holidays passed, and school started up again I have time to share some of my newest wire creations. The order goes from oldest to newest.

                                                 

The five stones at the bottom are turquoise 

My model, Adele.

A collection of pieces on display in the copper box my grandfather made me

These last two show my progression in making this not-yet-complete necklace. The "beads" are actually used to connect parts on a lamp and came from my grandfather's garage. He used them when he made lanterns at his company, Sturdy Lantern. He also made the four wider leaves out of brass. The middle leaf comes from a barrette my mother wore as a teen. The green "beads" you see are actually the same beads that make up the majority of the necklace, they're just tarnished green. I have still to make the part that goes around the neck, which is on hold until my grandfather can find more of those brass beads around his garage. 

Excerpts From My Journal

Library Lights

I can’t stand being in the library more than 2 hours. It truly is my limit. I get annoyed by the soft blanket of incessant chatter. The air is stale. The lighting is unnatural. And sitting in one place that long, I start to feel like a caged cat.

The Future is Inside Us

I just finished Paul Auster’s book, Oracle Night. I’m left with these two statements stinging my mind: “the future is inside us” and “everything human is real”.

Ideas:

I realized early on that built up extravagant events with someone don't make for special moments, rather it's the unexpected moments during the every day that do. 

Time is a way to manage people.

Money exists only when you use it.

Add wire to my paintings.

We should wear what we want like a little girl.

Perhaps creativity aims to reach the sublime-- that place where it's both familiar and completely foreign.

Odysseus is a great name.

What causes an itch?

What if I had a day when I never knew what time it was?

Quote from Invisible by Paul Auster:

“Real love is when you get as much pleasure from giving pleasure as you do from receiving it”

Play on words:

I grated great cheese but dropped some in the grate.

That kind of dog is kind of kind.

Who am I to you?

Who is Olivia to someone meeting me? What do they see? What do I show and give of myself in their eyes? I do not have a clear perception of how I am to other people. 

Deepak Chopra:

"Seeking is really just a way of winning yourself back"

Poem About a Poem

I went home straight away after finishing a poem

Read it to Lora and Kat

Both impressed

That I wrote such a thing

In two hours flat—

So dense and immense they had to

Hear parts back.

After editing I couldn’t resist

I re-copied it down,

Bit by bit.

I read it out loud,

Letter after letter,

Forming words—

      and meanings too!--

Making it better and better

For my ears and yours, I assume.

Together, with voice and hand typing all

I finished the poem growing in me

Nine months strong. 

New "Tidyings"

I've had a collection of miniature things on my desk for the past 2 months, waiting to find the perfect display case for them all. I've collected "miniatures"since I was young but recently I've put more thought into what I choose to hold onto. For example, I drank a mango juice from Bay State Bakery (delicious middle eastern food on Water St, Worcester) that came in a tiny, unusually shaped glass bottle. I knew I wanted to keep this bottle, but had no clue what I would use it for. So I tucked it into my bag, brought it home and on my desk it sat. Until one day, I was working in my studio on a new doll and considered using buttons I've collected from various garments that came with extras on my doll. Thats when it hit me: why not put all these buttons into the mango juice bottle?

This is the type of decision that has gone behind my collection, however my miniatures were consuming my desk. Though I've been looking in antique shops , yard sales and stuff left in front of houses for the perfect case, I hadn't checked my own house. Lo and behold, in my attic, balancing on the arm of an old chair and a filing cabinet was a beautiful display case--no doors-- with a mirror in the back. Perfect.

So today, I finally set up all my miniatures collected over the past year in the case. In the midst of accomplishing a task that's been hanging over my head, I decided it was time to finish another project.

Last winter I began a sculpture to hold incense. The concept was to sculpt a hippie leaning back smoking  but all I completed was the head. For the next few hours I designed the rest of him: his yellow and green tie-dyed T-shirt, blue cut off jeans, funky sneakers, and limbs.

I've posted images of both these new "tidyings", along with two old collage drawings I did around the time I started the smoking hippie.

The Start of Wire

I started working with wire a few years ago. My favorite pieces were three dolls, each with a primitive headdress. I hung the three wire men from my favorite tree at a park down the road and sat up the hill watching people pass. Some never noticed these wire men hanging from the tree but those who did examined them, not knowing the artist was just up the hill. I was curious to see how often people really see their surroundings. Here stands a tree with such thick beautiful energy and yet many barely notice it.

After my little experiment I stood the men up in brush on the side of the trail. Here is a hint at what it all looked like.

The Death of My Childhood

I had such a strong dream last night. I remember several parts. The one that sticks out most is the image of 7 yr old me standing in my front yard in the snow with red socks and a red dress. I asked her what she was doing out in the snow with socks on and she said that mom says its ok, which I knew wasn’t true but in the dream I accepted it. I looked at little me for a while, noticing my giddiness, my happiness, my childness. I saw my nose, so much smaller but the same nose as the one I have now—long with a little ball at the tip. And then I started crying and so did she. I held her—she was so small I realized—and I was even sadder by how sad she was. She crumbled in my arms, crying.  I felt her shaking as I looked down at her and I couldn’t believe I was holding a younger version of myself. How is this possible? I thought. But it was so real, so believable. I could feel the weight of her body in my arms so clearly. My childhood is dying I remember thinking. This is the ghost of my childhood and she is dead.

Later I was riding bikes with a friend of Zoya’s named Katie. She had a bike that fit her but mine was too small. She told me she had to move the seat up on hers so I tried doing that but it never stayed. The bike was just too small for me. I remember telling her that maybe we shouldn’t ride to Bread and Circus because of the hole in her heart (which she really has) but she insisted. I remember how hard it was for me, and not for her. The bike was so small and my legs were getting overworked. I was exhausted by the end of it.

At another point in my dream I was in my basement with Alex and maybe Marcel. I remember I wanted to look cool to them, impress them with the movies I had but all I could find was Flubber and other childish movies. I wouldn’t impress them with these, I thought to myself.

Then I remember it was a holiday and I was disappointed that we weren’t going to be eating any of the roast beef (that I picked up at Bread and Circus with Katie?); that the whole holiday was called off. I don’t remember why anymore. But I remember feeling especially disappointed— really let down that my family didn’t go through with the holiday. I had been looking forward to it all day and now it wasn’t happening.

When I woke up I was overwhelmed, particularly by the experience with the 7 year old me. I couldn’t believe I saw my childhood self so clearly. It was so truly real and yet, here I am in bed with no little Olivia in red socks laying in my arms. What do all these things mean? 

I have been thinking throughout today about what I dreamt. I’ve decided that this is my subconscious telling me that childhood is over. I’m grown now. I no longer am the little girl who disobeys my parents by wearing red socks in the snow—I make my own choices now. And my bike, my way of moving around my world, is too small for me. It’s time for a new bike, a new approach. And no longer does it matter who I impress with surface ideals. Whether I watch Flubber or not is insignificant. It is not what defines me.

After all of this, my dream ends with feeling that my family let me down. But nothing is as it seams in a dream. Rather, I interpret this as signifying my need to break out of the comfort of my family. I can’t always depend on family tradition; I need to make my own way. I relate this to my desire to move out. It is too easy to fall back on the comforts of the familiar. I yearn for something new, something separate and clearly my own. It’s not to say I wish to abandon family holidays but I think it is time to make my own life. This is my life and my childhood has ended. 

A View Into My World