vblog

Goodbye, Mollie

2009-07-01T17:36:00.003-04:00

I've created many a piece while watching my favorite Britcoms from the 70's and 80's. Although I'm not one to watch the same movies or TV shows over and over (I only own 4 or 5 movies), I've watched all the episodes I can find of Are You Being Served more times than I can count. There's nothing like laughing your backside off while coping with a challenging soldering moment. If only I could achieve patinas on silver the colors of Mollie Sugden's hair.

Now my son watches Britcoms with me. In fact, he's officially made them family time so that he can pause the DVR 20 times per episode and explain the jokes to his clueless parents. (Aren't all parents clueless when you're 9 years old?) After nearly a year of this ritual, he's finally stopped asking why the audience laughs so hard when Sugden's infamous character, Mrs. Slocumb refers to her cat as "my pussy".

Molly Sugden, you will be missed, and "I am unanimous in that!" I'm sorry the end was tough, but you were brilliant from the beginning.

Recent Live Interview on The Jewelry Connection

2009-06-17T21:38:00.004-04:00

Please check out the recordings of the recent live interview in which I talk about the inspirational as well as technical aspects of my work on The Jewelry Connection with Mona Hair and Gail Devoid.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Call for Eastern Repousse Images

2009-06-12T10:07:00.005-04:00

My latest DVD, Metal Tehcniques of Bronze Age Masters: Eastern Repousse will be released this fall, and I'm looking for images of Eastern repousse work to include in the gallery section.

If you have taken one of my repousse classes or do this specific style of repousse, you are encouraged to submit images. The artwork can be all Eastern repousse or combined with other techniques and in any non ferrous metal (silver, gold, copper, argentium, brass, mokume gane, bi-metal, etc.)

Artwork will be selected on the basis of technique, artistry, uniqueness, and the quality of the photographic image of the work. Please adhere to the image requirements and photography hints below.

There is no entry fee. Artists, whose work(s) are accepted, will be given full credit with their images and will be given one free copy of the DVD when it becomes available.

Deadline to submit images: August 10, 2009
Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2009

Email images to victoria@victorialansford.com with no more than 2 images in each email.
Please include "artwork #1" (or #2 or #3) in the subject line of the email.

Include your name as you would like it listed, the title of the piece, the materials used, and the height, width, and depth of the piece in inches, and the photographer (if not the artist) with each artwork sent

Limit 3 repousse works of art for a total of 6 images: (1 full image of each artwork + 1 optional detail image of each artwork) Artwork that is part of a set, such as a necklace and earrings, or necklace and bracelet, may be photographed together and counted as one work of art.

Image requirements: digital images at least 8" x 10" at 300dpi in .jpg or .tff format

Please do not crop the images too closely. All images will be fitted into the appropriate resolution for television and may require more background than you would ordinarily leave for print or web use.

Work should be shot on a smooth, solid, contrasting background. Black or other dark foam core is encouraged. (Medium gray gets really boring on a big screen.) Artwork photographed on professional models will be considered, but please include a detail shot as well.

If you are photographing your own work, hints and tips may be found at
http://www.victorialansford.com/photographingmetal.html

For information on this specific repousse technique, please visit
http://www.victorialansford.com/repousse.html

If you have any other questions about submitting images, please email victoria@victorialansford.com.

Getting to Work

2009-06-06T17:57:00.003-04:00

There is the silly myth that still surrounds the concept of the working artist. The muse hits, and suddenly we're supposed to jump into the process of creation in a fury of inspiration and work until exhaustion prevails, passing out in a near Victorian repose as our audience is able to witness a new masterpiece. That's definitely the Hollywood version, and those, who know artists, usually realize that most art isn't created that way. Unfortunately, some peoples' perceptions go to the other extreme, and so they expect artists can turn off and on at a whim whatever it is that gets us working. Alas, that perception is as ridiculous as the first one.

Professional artists can't make a living by making art a la the popular perceptions of Michelangelo and Van Gogh. The truth is they both worked all the time and didn't let little things like interpersonal skills, bathing (Michelangelo), or insanity and the odd ingestion of lead based pigments (Van Gogh) get in the way of cranking out masterworks. However much they accomplished, today's artists don't often have a single rich patron or family to sustain us while we loose ourselves in our work. Of course, if we waited until the muse hit, we'd starve as well. Waiting on such a muse to inspire us off our backsides and to work has all the efficiency of getting from Atlanta to London by walking.

So what's a pro to do? Well, it's important to have tricks up your sleeve. We all need something that moves the fulcrum on the see saw to make it go from down to up. We are a visual lot, so looking at what inspires us is often a good start. I have a couple of books on ethnic jewelry that work like magic when I flip to the Middle Eastern chapters. Most of us have some kind of sound track that also puts us in the mood, as it were. Many of us have a whole arsenal of tricks to get going, so that whether the muse shows up or not, we still have inventory to show and sell.

There's one more challenge for all but the wildly independent (read 20 something males with no spouse, no kids, a small trust fund, and a Buddhist bent for materially minimal living). Most of us aren't islands. We have kids and spouses, pets and houses, gardens in need of weeding, clothes in need of washing, and refrigerators and pantries that are always mysteriously missing that key ingredient that will let one make tonight's dinner.

There is nothing so completely frustrating as making art in the middle of, well, life. It's the pulling of emotional energy away from oneself and outward toward others, energy that must stop going outward, do an about face, and begin recharging one's own batteries in order to gain any kind of flow state. When the pulling doesn't stop, no amount of pictures or sounds can galvanize an artist back to the process of making art. It's like asking a black hole to stop what it's doing and create a little matter.

I used to be perpetually frustrated with friends, who thought if I was home that I must not be working, despite always having had my studio in my home. Things got easier when so many more people began working from home even if they weren't self employed. Still, people used to seeing artists work may erroneously believe that artists just show up in their workspace and switch whatever button to work just like if someone working in an office sits down at the computer with a cup of coffee in the morning and immediately starts working... after checking email... and getting on Facebook.

As important as simply showing up is, gaining momentum is what gets us into a flow state that helps us create. For me, it's essential that I be thinking about what I'm working on before I actually sit down to work on it. I mentally feel my way through what I want to make or make progress on, and the ensuing build up of ideas is the momentum that carries me over to the bench and makes my hands pick up the tools. It's like stretching before running or dancing. Walking in and hitting the ground running, is a great way to get injured. My walking over to the bench and grabbing the torch without getting myself into the right frame of mind is probably a recipe for melting something or worse, potentially setting the house on fire.

This mental shift and momentum is a stealth move. Since it's going on in my own head, no one is aware of it except me, although everyone around can become painfully aware if I am derailed from making that shift and the momentum is lost. In other words, getting interrupted multiple times before I begin can be as frustrating and creatively devastating as getting interrupted after I've started. How well do runners run after the 12th false start? It's all too easy to give up and remember that I need to update my mailing list and catch up on email, and as important as those tasks are, they don't get art made.

Most artists cope with that problem by working away from home. I've always kept my studio here so that I could work through the night while my little one slept. I'm not sure what would happen if I moved work out. I've always been afraid that I'd never get there. Perhaps I should be more afraid that I'd never come home. ;-)

Live Interview @ 3:00 EST, Sunday, May 31

2009-05-30T15:44:00.003-04:00

Please join me for a live interview at The Jewelry Connection on livevideo.com this Sunday at 3:00pm EST.

I'll be answering questions about my work and what inspires it from host, Mona Hair, co-host, Gail Devoid, and from the listeners as well. The interview will be archived on the site for one week if you miss it and would like to download it.

Russian Filigree Powdered Solder

2009-04-29T11:16:00.004-04:00

Love doing Russian filigree? Hate filing the solder? I've only been searching since the early 90's for a better way to create the ancient solder recipe, and now at last, I have one. This new solder is the same recipe but already in powdered form and with the flux mixed in. All you have to do is lightly paint the piece with water, then dip the damp brush in the powdered solder to pick up a tiny dab, and gently brush it onto the points to be soldered together. Voila!

It slices, it dices, it julinennes... Ok, while I normally despise sounding like an infomercial or a used car salesman, I'm more than a little excited about this stuff. I'm thrilled to be making it available to others, who pursue the beauty of Russian filigree, but I'm ecstatic about never again having to file the stuff for my own work!!!

Because the solder is of a finer mesh than what anyone (read any sane person) can file, it flows into the joints more effectively, meaning far better results from "the dreaded thumb test" to see if the filler wires were all soldered correctly. I've used it on several pieces that curve dramatically, and not had any of the filler wire joints break, which is amazing. Also, because it is based on the same ancient recipe as I teach how to make in the DVD, it flows like an easy but then behaves like a medium silver solder, making it possible to re-flow but not easily re-flowed by accident.

The solder comes in a small jar with instructions and is .75 troy oz for $29.95. At last the kits with solder and milled frame and filler wire are now available as well. One jar should last for months, possibly years of making Russian filigree pieces.

The Great American Pastime

2009-04-29T10:12:00.006-04:00

Batter's up. One strike, and then... he hits! He pauses half a second to make sure. It's a grounder. He takes off for first base. As the second baseman misses it and fumbles along with the players from center and right field, the player on third makes it to home, and the player on second makes it to third. The fans are going wild. It's the third game of the season, and there is now a good chance we can win a game for the first time.

It's player #3's first ever hit and first time to make it to first base in a game. He's jumping up and down on the base. The crowd behind home is jumping up and down too. He doesn't hear the first baseman talking to him through the fans' noise or the tight fitting hard helmet that creates feedback in his hearing aids. The assisting coach on first says to the first baseman, "He's not ignoring you. He has hearing loss."

"C-A-N Y-O-O-O-O-U-U-U H-E-E-E-E-A-A-A-R-R M-E-E-E?" the first baseman taunts. Number 3 doesn't hear. He's too euphoric to notice.

"Son, don't you dare speak to him that way!"

"You're not my coach!"

"I'm his step-dad. Would you like me to let your coach know how condescending, ignorant, and unsportsmanlike you're being?" replies the coach while the first baseman contemplates what condescending might mean. It sounds like it could be bad. He becomes sullen.

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, sir."

The refs are speaking to the head coach of #3's team. The coach, who couldn't find his way out of a cardboard box but would never admit there could be a problem, had lined up the batters out of order. He hadn't kept a copy of his list, apparently forever convinced of his own infallibility. The refs take away the last point scored, and, the inning now over, #3 comes into the dugout, still oblivious in his elation that his two RBI's and his first hit ever didn't count. It's now up to me to explain it to him, while the other Little League parents talk of wanting blood. Parenting is not for wimps.

In the second half of the last inning, #3 caught a ball in left field and kept the opposing team from scoring, and his buddy #5 scored a home run, which many of us suspected was inspired in part by his less than supportive father's lack of attendance. Still, we lost 10 to 3. As soon as the game was over, sometime between my phone call to my videographer, and the assisting coach returned to the dugout from the obligatory "good game" high fives, the head coach was caught in a feeding frenzy of indignant and angry parents. After yelling, "I quit!!!" he pointed a finger at the bewildered assiting coach, aka Daddy-o, and said, "You're now the head coach."

I hate sports, yet I dare never let on. It's moments like these that David Byrne sings through my head, "And you may ask yourself, 'How did I get here'?!?"

Necessity Is the Mother...

2009-03-22T19:58:00.005-04:00

The Art of Opening: Bottles and Their Toppers opens at the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia PA on May 1, 2009 and runs through July 19. I'm happy to announce that I have 2 bottle stoppers, 1 unconventional corkscrew, and 1 wild video in the show.

Environmental Oddities

2009-03-10T14:24:00.003-04:00

It's a lovely warm spring day here in Hotlanta. It's been in the 70's since the end of last week. Sunday it got so hot in the house that I unabashedly revealed to my honey a shocking site that he hadn't seen since the end of last September: my bare feet. Of course, when contrasted with snow we had on Sunday, March 1, that makes living here just plain weird and as unpredictable as the coming economy.

The view from my studio:

A Radically Different Take on Creativity

2009-03-04T20:20:00.002-05:00

I can't say that I completely agree with this take on creativity, yet I found it so utterly moving that by the end of the video I had tears in my eyes. I have watched so many polished speakers and performers that I was quiet surprised at how someone speaking so earnestly with all the "um's" and "uh's" of a conversation, could keep me riveted to the screen and drive home a brilliant idea with absolutely no guile. Whether you think of yourself as creative or not, it's well worth the 20 minutes out of you life, but then I've yet to find a TED video that isn't.

New Work

2009-03-03T19:11:00.003-05:00

More new work on the front page

Parallel Universe
Original pattern Side Weave Mesh* bracelet with a granulation clasp
Fine Silver, sterling silver, 22k gold, dolomite
7" long x 1-1/2" wide
©2009, V. Lansford

*This pattern is taught in my latest publication, All Chained Up

Eating Your Veggies: Not As Good For You?

2009-03-02T18:07:00.004-05:00

This article is from The Journal of Horticultural Science & Biotechnology It can be read for free at the link in the title.

If you're still not buying the whole "organic-is-better" argument, this study might convince you otherwise. As Davis points out, more than three billion people around the world suffer from malnourishment and yet, ironically, efforts to increase food production have actually produced food that is less nourishing. Fruits seem to be less affected by genetic and environmental dilution, but one can't help but wonder how nutritionally bankrupt veggies can be avoided. Supplementing them is problematic, too: don't look to vitamin pills, as recent research indicates that those aren't very helpful either.

I haven't followed the recent research on vitamin pills. I supposed my frequently forgetting to take them isn't as bad for me as I might have thought. Eating organic though, is something I am passionate about. Frankly, I'd like to die of old age with all of my parts, organs, and hair still attached. There's a great deal I can't control in this overly plasticized, oil hungry world, but I can certainly fork over for organic potatoes and such.

I have friends and family, who insist that eating organic is too expensive, but we spend far less on groceries than most of them do. We're very careful not to buy more than we need and not let food go to waste. Organic or conventional, letting food form the basis for science experiments in the fridge is like wadding up part of your paycheck and throwing it in the trash.

The truth is that I'm so passionate about eating organic foods, I don't succumb to much that's not at the very least all natural. Ok, yes, my idea of health food includes organic sugar, organic chocolate, and organic potato chips. Hey, I want health and quality not a life without the basic necessities! (Yes, I eat organic veggies too!)

Review of my new book, All Chained Up

2009-02-22T21:50:00.004-05:00

From Tammy Powley
About Guide to Jewelry Making, part of The New York Times Company

Victoria Lansford's jewelry is stunning. ...for the designer who is ready to advance his or her jewelry skills, Victoria's text is a wonderful learning tool.

Read the whole review here.

The Creativity of Living Under a Rock

2009-02-14T11:53:00.011-05:00

As passionate as I am about metalsmithing, the processes and techniques I do plus 20 years of experience doing them, leaves much of my brain free to wander as I tap tap tap with my chasing hammer on a piece of repoussé or fuse that 400th link for a long complex chain. Most of my mental meanderings revolve around the creative process and what is entailed in starting it up and keeping it going. Put all that time theorizing and creating with over two decades of helping others to unlock their own creative powers in the realms of visual and performing arts, and I might know a few things.

There is one powerful thing I have learned about my own process, that every time I forget, I have to spend hours or even days recovering from: I should not venture out from under my very selective rock. Now it takes my clueless expression at a reference to a certain news items, celebrity gossip, or the latest stupid trendy chachkha, which Americans are conned into buying before anyone realizes that I'm not merely the gregarious, out there artist happy to share her expertise and opinions with the world. (I'm proud to say all references to American Idol cause me to assume the same polite but bored expression, despite my friend, Beth, coercing me into watching an episode a few weeks ago.)

A manufacturer I was speaking with a while back was aghast that I had no idea what Pandora jewelry was. I almost asked if it was related to the online music website but thought that might make him wonder if I was on medication. Not wishing to be rude, I refrained from asking, "Why would I know what that is?" but really, why would I?!? Like any decent artist I like to think I help set trends not follow them. I don't go for the pre-packaged, don't question it world, and being bombarded with reminders of it doesn't make for good flow states.

I was talking with friends yesterday about how so much of what we take in informs our ideas without our even being aware of it. Our brains are constantly yet unconsciously registering all manner of input from the commanding no nonsense helvetica fonts on street signs to the decadent swirls of the filling on a TV commercial for chocolate candy. As I stare at my monitor the naked branches of the water oak tree in my back yard are visible above it through the window in front of my desk. Though I'm not focusing on the tree, my brain takes in not only the shapes and lines of the branches, but also the gray-blue light of the negative shapes that are formed by them at the same time as the minor keys and blue notes of Jazz 24 stream through my speakers.

How these shapes and sounds will morph and synthisize with all the other semi and unconscious input that I will receive today, or any input from the thousands of days past, is anyone's guess, but they will likely one day inspire and inform concrete objects that have yet to come into being. That I will not be able to contain the overwhelming desire that drives me to release their synthesized form is at the heart of being an artist. The endless process of perfecting the craft of one's choice is merely the vehicle through which such objects are born in an endless recycling of the world which surrounds us.

That lofty statement said, I have found it essential to screen what gets in the same way health nuts don't eat junk food. Now this might sound snobbish, but it's really just discernment for survival. I'm not like most people, who can rent and watch 3 movies in a weekend. I watched Cassablanca last weekend, and I'm still replaying the scenes in my head and processing the absolutely insane attention to detail that director Micahel Curtiz created. I still have all the frequently quoted lines running through my head, which is a hell of a lot of dialog because, like Hamlet, Cassablanca is one oft repeated sound byte after another from "Here's looking at you kid" to "Round up the usual suspects" to "Louis, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" to "If she can stand it, I can. Play it!"... you get the idea. - One of my favorite bits of trivia is that Rick never actually said, "Play it again, Sam." That was Woody Allen.

It takes days or weeks for me to finish the deep ponderings of books, movies, and certain TV shows. (I finally read Harry Potter 6 & 7 a few weeks ago, and I'm still reeling just a bit.) Watching the news if far more depressing than hearing it from my honey or my friends (who are always happy to tell me whether I want to hear it or not) If I get a song stuck in my head, there's always a bit of lyric that's playing like a looped Freudian slip until I decipher what's really on my mind, so you might imagine that in order to maintain any kind of clarity and productivity (or sanity) I'm rather careful about where I spend my time. It's not so much OCD as it is a desperate need to solve things. My left brain will hack away at a piece of information or a problem with the same tenacity and determination that drives a border collie to catch a frisbee.

Less atuned people might dub me "too sensitive," but I've spent decades expanding my capacity for taking more in because doing so allows me to delve deeper into design and composition to create the unexpected and the innovative. Art is a congommeration of details all in service of the larger picture (pun intneded). If I can't be aware of all those nuances, including the balls in the air, house of cards processes of hammers, punches, tiny wires, and fire, then I'd probably make a lot of unexciting half melted pieces.

For each of us, the limit of what we'd really like to let in is probably far less than the amount of stimulus we Westerners receive and are expected to engage in and return. I'll happily champion anyone's right to be part ostrcih with his/her head in the sand just enough to survive. (How else could I have successfully made beautiful things or raised a happy child in the George W. Bush years?) If we are what we eat, then I believe our creations are the bodies of our synthesized soul foods, perceptions, feelings, and ideas. Be selective. Be reflective. Be creative.

Gift Certificates Available!

2009-02-11T23:56:00.002-05:00

Give a gift that is as unique as your love and one you'll know she won't take back.

Gift Certificates now available at VictoriaLansford.com!

Good on all available artwork, book, and DVDs. Not redeemable for workshops or commission work. Status of available artwork updated periodically but may not indicate work recently sold on exhibition.

The "Small World" of Art Connects Victoria Lansford to Greeneville

2009-01-26T14:22:00.003-05:00

Check out this feature article by Daniel Luther in the Greeneville Marketplace!

New Book, Old Holidays

2008-12-17T19:33:00.005-05:00

The new book is finished and available for pre-order at 10% off the cover price (regularly $24.95) for a limited time. Orders will ship within the next week or so.

All Chained Up is part of the Metal Techniques of Bronze Age Masters series and focuses on fused link chains, 4 ancient Mediterranean patterns, and 4 patterns that I invented.

Having put out 2 publications in 9 months, bopping back and forth from coast to coast to teach workshops, and creating tons of new work, all while being Mom and partner, I thought sitting down to blog with a dish of pasta and a glass of sweet iced tea (a redundant term in the South) is a more than well deserved break. This is the first time I've been alone in the house since... uh... since... well... I really can't remember. It could have been before Halloween. There are usually 2 of us here if not 3, which is certainly not a complaint. I love having my honey work from home, and I wouldn't trade unschooling my son, Skyler, for anything. It's not as if I can't get work done or be my wild bohemian artistic self with the guys around. I can, however, create in complete peace without the guilt of explaining to a 9 year old, "No, I can't play Nintendo right now. I have to work another 18 hours today."

I just got up from doing collage at my drawing table for the first time since both the temperature and the humidity in Hotlanta were about 100. Collaging might be one of my favoirte things to do in life, although I'd hardly call it a break. It thoroughly recharges my creativity, but it is more physically exhausting than it ever seems it ought to be. There are down time moments in metalsmithing, even if it's just to wait for the pickle to remove the oxidation caused by soldering. Not so in collage. I can work the same 11" x 14" board for 2 hours without looking up, only to have to stop and wash out my brushes and realize my back is sore, and I can't cope with looking at intense colors for a while.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the day was not furthering a work of art, or even the beginning of holiday baking, but cleaning my desk. I haven't seen this much expanse of wood on a raised horizontal surface in quite some time. (It could have been 2007.) At the rate I'm going, I could kid myself that I'm finally catching up on things from the last few... ok, I"ll be honest, from the late 90's. I have come to realize that I could create 2 full time jobs managing actual work. There is a sign outside an art gallery near my house; "To make art is work. To sell it is art." Add photographing work, maintaining a website plus social networking sites, applying for shows, updating resume and PR materials, keeping up with emails, shipping work, shipping publications, and packing for workshop trips, and I start wanting to clone myself.

So call me Scrooge, but all that leads up to my busiest time of year (which started in January!) has made me less than thrilled to see Christmas come 'round again. Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to have my work given as Christmas gifts to other people, and quite happy about the cool gifts I found for Skyler at the coolest toy store in the universe, San Marino Toy's & Books. I even love having an excuse to bake 5 different kinds of treats in one week, but when my honey and I were running errands yesterday, I looked at him and said, "I have to confess something. I've come to hate Christmas music."

"Me too," he replied, making me feel, as his always does, that I'm not alone. I'm just never ready to hear seasonal songs when every store and restaurant decides it's time to play them. Just give me some good mellow jazz and let me chill with cucumber slices on my eyelids to reverse the sleep deprivation damage of the past 5 months. Of course, presents are always welcome too. ;-)

LA... I Love It!

2008-12-16T20:55:00.001-05:00

The only downside to traveling great places to teach is that I don't often get to see much more of the city I'm in than the studio where I'm teaching, the bed where I'm crashing, and the roads in between, so these last two trips I made sure that I could squeeze in a few cool things on the front end. November's trip to northern CA was a combined teaching and birthday boys adventure, which started with a run to the Exploratorium and ended with a stop by Otto Frei, a tour of Revere Academy (Alan, I envy the view from your office!), and a mad dash through the Afghan Gold exhibition all before catching a 1pm flight out of San Francisco.

For my trip to LA, I flew out early the day before, and fab hostess for my stay, Kay Taylor, and I blitzed through the Getty and the Huntington before stopping by Farrin O'Conor to get a feel for the studio where I taught for the 3 days that followed. Between the 2 museums, I saw the exhibition, The Belle Heures of the Duke of Berry, oogled at Medieval paintings, a Rembrandt portrait, some Van Gogh irises, a Turner, a Gutenberg Bible, an illuminated copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a first folio of Hamlet, and Gainsborough's Blue Boy to name only the highlights. It was a good day!

O course, the real reason I was there was a one-day Drusy Ring workshop for Farrin O'Connor and a two-day Russian Filigree workshop for the Metal Arts Society of Southern California. I'm always so fortunate to teach such dedicated and appreciative students, and these two workshops were no exception. I had an absolute blast working with everyone and was very pleased to see the students' results. There is simply nothing else like watching a proud student bring me his/her piece and realize that I got to be part of that creation.

The pond labyrinth at The Getty

more Getty garden

The Succulent Garden at The Huntington

more Succulent Garden

being serenaded at dinner with the Farrin O'Connor gang

with students Leah and Betsy

My fabulous host, Scooter, who had his mommy and daddy take very good care of me while in sunny CA

A Big Orange Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T11:18:00.005-05:00

If anyone had told me that I'd ever again spend a holiday in Appalachia, I'd have laughed outloud at the improbability. I should have known something was up when, on our first date (lo these many months) my now spouse, proudly proclaiming his undergraduate degree was from UT, said, "If you cut my finger, I bleed orange," and I opted to find his devotion charming. It's been a whirlwind trip, which fits the whirlwind romance that caused me to be here and, well, my usual whirlwind life in general. From Atlanta to Chattanooga to visit my grandpa (almost 97 and probably destined to outlive us all) then on to Knoxville with the inlaws and my new nephew (he's 7, but he's relatively new to me). For the actual Turkey consuming, we're heading over to Lake Junaluska, North Carolina to my honey's aunt's house. If all that's not a whole heapin' helpin' of southern holiday, I don't know what is.

As I ride through the curving roads of The Great Smokey Mountains, I am forced to admit that it is stunningly beautiful here. The Smokies don't have the wow factor of the Rockies' sheer size. The did once upon a time, but only Jurassic creatures could have been doing the jaw dropping. Time and weather have worn them down to comparative nubs from what they once were, but their forms and colors are spectacular, particularly in the fall. It's enough to make this cynical southerner feel brimming with holiday warmth. That is until we make a pit stop for the kids, and I hear the accents. It is those times I'm glad the back bumper of our car remains unadorned and neutral even if our politics most certainly does not. The clan with which I spend this day might be even more liberal than I am, but the other accents I hear outside our cars can only ever conjure up the sound of dueling banjos running through my head. Yikes, Toto, we're not in Obama country any more! Quick! Get me back to a major city!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Check out the November Jewelry Artist Magazine!

2008-11-02T11:39:00.003-05:00

For the November, 2008 issue I was the guest author for Cool Tools & Hip Tips: Twist & Curl, on page 16. Also, my high relief Eastern repousse bracelet, Inspiraled was featured in the Contributor's Gallery p.10.

They're Ugly!

2008-10-31T15:19:00.003-04:00

Just in time for Halloween!

They're Ugly!

Get yours here. (I've already sent a Venus fly trap to my friend, Beth, and freaky ferns to my mom.)

A Musical Seance, Oct 28, 2008, Atl

2008-10-24T23:07:00.003-04:00

If you're in Atlanta, please join me in supporting our oldest park and most unique link to our past, Oakland Cemetery, at what promises to be one very cool event:

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Le Moulin Rouge at Paris on Ponce presents

A Musical Seance: A Benefit for Oakland Cemetery

featuring Paul Mercer, Jill Tracy, and the Ghosts Project

Doors open at 7pm

Press quotes:
Since joining forces on Halloween 2007, Jill Tracy and Paul Mercer are becoming widely known for their astonishing duets on piano and violin, mostly improvised or channeled. The pair affectionately refer to their duets as "spontaneous musical combustion." Their uncanny ability to conjure spirits through unsettlingly lavish compositions has led to spellbinding results, eerily transporting the room and its rapt audience into a "musical séance." Legendary scribe V. Vale of RE/Search publications described a Jill Tracy/Paul Mercer séance as "Sheer magic! Perfection. Improvised... If you're lucky enough to be there, you realize you've just had a hint of something extra-mortal, uber-human, transcendent - maybe the concentrated ghosts of Shakespeare's Globe Theater or the Commedia Dell'arte of the past are swirling around the room . . . and you think that THIS is the new avant-garde: live, un-censored, living theater."

Also appearing will be The Ghosts Project, Dames Aflame Burlesque and The Seed and Feed Marching Abominable Band. Drinks will be available for donations, and fabulous prizes will be raffled off throughout the evening.

To read more about the event and purchase tickets, please visit:
http://www.freewebs.com/amusicalseance/
$35. per person, includes drink tickets and hors d'oeuvres and small plates from many delicious local restaurants and caterers

Audience members are asked to bring small objects of special significance to them, such as a photo, talisman, jewelry, token.

I understand that the guest of honor is my great great great grandfather, John Freeman. Don't miss him!

Enjoy this clip of Paul and Jill in Portland

An Appropriate Lack of Efficiency - For Tasha

2008-10-15T12:50:00.009-04:00

I'd never had a guru. The mere thought that I would need to stop thinking for myself and blindly follow another is against all of my most fundamental values. In spring of 2007, however, Tasha Tudor became my guru. I had hit burnout at an all time high that spring. Work was going extremely well, yet I was sick of the frenzy of deadlines and weary of having to keep up. My mother had given me Tasha Tudor's video "Take Joy" the Christmas before. In my typical stubbornness of not liking to watch or read things upon which others insist, I was happy to receive the gift, but I still hadn't popped it in the VCR.

It must have been a lack of any other intelligent life in the studio that day. I must have already watched all the Britcoms and mysteries I'd recorded, and I remember thinking, "Maybe I'll see how other artists cope for a change." I grew up with only one of her books, although I always loved her illustrations, and as an adult became fascinated with her seemingly bizarre lifestyle, an 1830's farm and farmhouse complete with a well pump in the kitchen and a wood burning oven all by choice. There was footage of her drawing and painting, feeding her chickens, taking care of her goats, walking barefoot through her garden. Long before Martha Stewart made New England home keeping cool, Tasha was having afternoon tea in an outdoor room of blue forget-me-nots walled by trees and roofed by sky.

It was Tasha's own description of taking (not merely trying to find) joy in everything she did that hit home. I knew if I were to keep at it, I could only do so by being fully and sensually immersed in whatever I did. Suddenly the act of making a cup of tea felt important, the act of making bread vital, not because these things needed doing, but because I needed to feel the doing of them. Suddenly, I had new ideas; my right brain was kicking in full force not quite so hampered by the perpetual critique of my left. My experiences a few months later would forever shut off my Statler and Waldorf left brain banter.

Yesterday I began my day flipping through The Tasha Tudor Cookbook, having forced myself outside with a cup of tea. While this all sounds like a lovely relaxing way to begin a day, the reality is that I've been working so much that I seldom leave the house, and have become concerned about vitamin D deficiency. The tea was an herbal blend with wild cherry bark that soothes my chronic bronchitis. Just reading through Tasha's descriptions of the significance or occasion of each dish brought me back to that place of importance.

So often I'm doing the non work or non parenting tasks with as much speed and efficiency as I can summon in order to make more time to take care of Skyler, finish my book on chain-making, finish commission work, finish new work in time for Christmas, apply to upcoming shows, manage DVD sales, manage Russian filigree supply kit sales, and volunteer for SNAG all in the midst of painting and rearranging Skyler's room. October is always extra busy. What reading the cookbook reminded me of was that taking a deep breath and paying attention to making a cup of tea doesn't make it take any longer. It's not just a "stop and smell the flowers" kind of thing. It's more about enjoying what I'm already doing, which may not make me feel like Super Efficient Super Mom, but I'm less stressed by the frenzy of packing in so much. At that moment I'm making tea, at the next I'm writing, at the next I'm hammering cuff links.

The USA's pathetic economy and its fast paced, throw away culture drives me to be as efficient as possible with the Bronze Age technology by which I work. It's all well and good to create art in the flow and never pay attention to clocks... until the mortgage payment is due ... until it's time to go to the grocery store ... until it's time to pay the health insurance with a deductible so high I never go to the doctor. Still, there is a point at which finding creative ways of assembly lining the making of chain links can turn into being overly sequential with a day's to-do list of pieces to be finished, a point at which efficiency sucks out all the fun and, ironically, slows me way way down.

There is a strange disconnect between work and income that must stay in place for me to experience the flow of ideas. I make what I love and it sells. I can pay attention to what sells where and how soon, but there must be a kind of firewall between such savvy and the flow of ideas to create. Nearly 20 years of making and selling visual art have taught me that if I do not take joy in the processes of idea to concrete form, I will not make what I love, it will not sell, and I will literally be a starving artist in every sense of starvation, and there is no efficiency in going hungry.

From now until 13 hours later when I will likely collapse from another day's tasks, I will focus and remember that I enjoy what I'm doing instead of feeling rushed and frazzled by it all. I'll feel the importance of the acts of making tea or lunch or a necklace or helping Skyler find a way to build his new monorail over his latest train system that will still leave a small path for the middle aged grown-ups to navigate the den. I will remember the importance of creating and enjoying beauty in all its forms even in the midst of having to form so much.

I was devastated a few months ago when I learned of Tasha's death. I can only hope that when it is my time, others will think of my life as I did hers, a life well lived.

2008-09-25T17:44:00.004-04:00

song du jour: I Get a Kick out of You, Ella Fitzgerald

I recently created a Russian filigree champagne flute for Thomas Mann Gallery's 20th anniversary event, L'Art Pour L'Art. The theme of the show is not only celebration but the remembrance that artists are free to create art for the sake of doing so. Pour in French means for. Gotta love the pun! The glasses were blown by glass artists, and the metal artists selected were invited to create the stem and base. I chose to form the parts from a single continuous piece of Russian filigree in order to create an elegant flute, reminiscent of Medieval chalices yet with contemporary shapes and lines.

I was pleased to find out that the image of my flute was used for the event announcement on the gallery's website. Check it out here: Thomas Mann Gallery I/O

Curves in the Right Places
Sterling & fine silver, blown glass
©2008, V. Lansford

Holy Grail and Bar-B-Q

2008-09-16T02:05:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago, I had a phone call from a lovely lady in Canada. She was very politely calling in referrencce to my (first) shipping disaster: I had sent her the wrong DVD (she already had the title that I'd just sent her). - Last week I put the wrong PO # on a shipment to Rio Grande, but they were quick to figure that out, and since I'd at least sent what they ordered, it was more of a shipping faux pas on my part... and another first at least. The company from which I get my shipping envelopes has a slogan on their website that they don't use computers for orders. "We have real people to mess things up!" In these cases I have both.

Before hanging up, she told me how much she loved my work and that I was her "Holy Grail." Wow! Artistically speaking, it really doesn't get much better than that. It was one of those moments that makes all the hard work worth it, and sorry as I was to have messed up her order, I was really glad she'd had reason to call me.

I've been remembering that call through all of the endless hours Chinese water torture of late. No, not a new patina chemical, not even a new way to make hundreds of filigree wires pop out for no good reason. I've been crying out of one eye 24/7 in perpetual allergic response to whatever is in the air that my body hates. Ironically, the only time it's stopped was when I visited my friend, Beth's, house and her 5 cats, 1 ferret, 1 snake, 1 Chihuahua 1 Chiwinnie,, and 3 more Chawinnie foster puppies plus concrete dust in her living room. Here at home, where we wage The War on Mildew, I'm dying.

The only other relief has been my mother's latest victory (and first ever thrift store find), a brand new Cuisinart ice cream maker for $15. Alas, when she had us over for ice cream, it didn't freeze because her freezer on top fridge doesn't get cold enough to chill the bowl. When she asked if we could try it in our freezer, we said, "Damn, we'll endeavor to come through on such a big favor."

Day 5 of having the ice cream freezer, my honey brought in three dishes of vanilla ice cream with chocolate gravy (see recipe below) and said, "I've already washed and dried the bowl and put it back in the freezer for when you do this again tomorrow."

Day 18 of having the ice cream freezer, my mother remarked that I've put on a pound or two. "I'm in danger of becoming dehydrated from my eyes watering so much. Homemade vanilla ice cream counts as a fluid." Alas, tonight my blurred vision might be the only excuse for the vile concoction I created in the kitchen. Frustrated at my word processing program's insistence that it is smarter than its user, I went for that light night rehydration attempt. As I plopped a big dollop of chocolate gravy on top of my (modest sized dish of) vanilla ice cream, I thought, "Yuck, the consistency doesn't seem as smooth as it ought to be." As I moved the dish into the light (night runs to the kitchen are more fulfilling if done in the stealth of semi-darkness), my horror turned to hysterical laughter as I sputtered, "Honey, can you help? PLEASE"

I'm not sure what help I thought he could give except to provide solidarity in laughter for what I had placed on top of my ice cream was not chocolate gravy but a big heaping helping of the bar-b-q sauce Chris had made earlier and left out to cool. "You're going to have to scrap that dish and start over," he managed to utter while being bent over double and gasping for breath between laughs.

"WASTE this ice cream?!? NEVER!!! I can scrape it off!" which I did, but by the time I'd added the right topping and stopped laughing, the fruits of my labor were approaching a complete state of liquidity. Unfortunately, during the scraping process and without thinking, I licked my fingers. Eeewww. Chocolate truly can make many things better, but obliterating the taste of milky vanilla bar-b-q was nearly too much to ask.

The Ever Necessary Chocolate Gravy:
This recipe is adapted from one a friend gave me several years ago. The original was intended to be served over biscuits (odd sounding but not bad), but I could never consistently get the consistency right, so I changed it into more of a soft fudge sauce.

1-1/3 cups sugar
1/3 cup baking cocoa
1-1/2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk

Mix dry ingredients, then whisk in milk. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and let it simmer and slightly bubble for 10-15 minutes. Refrigerate when cool.

If you use organic ingredients, it could be considered a health food. Grass fed milk, antioxidants in the chocolate, etc. ;-)