Monthly Archives: June 2019

Home2019Monthly Archives: June 2019
Main menu
0Likes 0Comments By

Blossoming: African Squash Blossom Necklaces Echo Native American Designs

    
 

     
 

Many design elements from the Native American squash blossom necklaces have influenced my African squash blossom necklaces. The silver long petals of the Navajo necklace have been interpreted with vintage large Mail wedding beads made of colored glass. The stems of the flowers are copper wire wrapped with YKK zippers. Instead of silver and turquoise, my necklaces feature Ghana brass beads made from throwaway metals of big industrial companies and everyday items such as locks and padlocks. The intricate brass beads are made by the lost wax method which dates back to 9th Century Nigeria.

 

The bracelets are inspired by charm bracelets, but utilize African beads instead of silver or gold charms and echo the design elements of the squash blossom necklace. Small assorted blue colored Mail wedding beads. Denim rivets. Blue electrical resistors. New Ghana glass beads. Red Ghana vinyl. Kakamba flower beads aka Prosser beads.

0Likes 0Comments By

“My Humanity is Bound Up in Yours, For We Can Only Be Human Together.” – Desmond Tutu

     

 
Whenever I sit down to create a zipper person for my Humanity Pins, their upper body is always a YKK Zipper. YKK zippers come in many sizes, shapes and colors just like people. Each pin is as individual as each one of us. When I make my Humanity Pins, I visualize a human skeleton and use different materials to represent and interpret our body parts with an eye to proportion. I also consider the beauty of our diverse bodies.

 

Their upper bodies are created from a YKK zipper. The trunks are always two electrical resistors of assorted patterns, colors and sizes. The thighs are a rainbow of beads. A femur is sometimes a bugle bead or a random collection of beads according to my whimsy. The knees are sometimes larger than other beads. The legs are multi-colored beads just like the arms.

 

Each head is distinctive—some have faces and some merely have colored beads. A few people have hair made from pounded out copper or aluminum. Several of the people may be grasping something with their hands or a mysterious item dangling from their feet.

 

Humanity Pins are made to make you and others smile whenever you wear one. I hope you will have as much joy wearing this pin as I did when I created it. Each 3 figure pin is its own unique wearable mini-sculpture.

0Likes 0Comments By

Waste Not, Want Not

    

 

Since I am a reclamation engineer/recycle artist, the challenge has always been to use all of the materials in a unique fashion. In the case of neckties, that meant finding uses for the lining that was not used in the shirts, the main part of the tie and the labels. I collect labels in all the clothing I recycle.

 

I found many inventive ways to use leftover necktie materials. Out of the necktie lining, I have made flowers for hats, both children’s and adults. Necktie linings have wonderful textures and a variety of whites and ivory. The assorted colors and patterns for the neckties work for the blossoms.

 

Tie ends also make great flowers—along the lines of daisies. The smaller ones will adorn hats and the ties with larger ends which I think are 70’s wide ties become large outdoor garden sculptures which I plant outside my studio in the summer.

 

The outdoor sculptures utilize discarded plastic tubing from champagne bottle baskets for the flower part and the center of the flower is stuffed with thread and sweater scraps saved precisely for stuffing flower sculptures.

 

Nothing goes in the trash. One of my primary goals as a reclamation engineer/recycle artist is to transform everything part of everything I use—ties, shirts, sweaters, buttons—into something useful and beautiful.

 

Not even the smallest necktie scraps go to waste as they can always be used for embellishment. I have a faux Persian lamb coat that has the smallest of my tie scraps attached with a bead to the collar of the coat. The coat was designed to look a certain way color wise when the collar is down and a different way when the collar is up.

0Likes 0Comments By

Origins and Inspiration of the Manly Shirt

       

 

My creative process involves starting with a problem and then looking for a solution. Sometimes the answers come while I am driving or working on something else—the idea just needs to be planted.

 

And so it goes with neckties. They languished in a bin for years. The silk ones were separated and given to a quilter who turned them into a quilt titled “Wall Street”. The polyester, dacron, rayon and other ties just went into a plastic storage tub as I had no idea how they could be used in my art. I really thought about donating them as I felt that my house was reaching Hoarders status, but my friends assured me my décor was just Organized Chaos.

 

The problem that presented itself was I needed to develop a man’s shirt. I thought about it for months. At first, my thinking was to just use “manly” material for the gusset at the back and my stash of neckties would be used to embellish the cuffs and the collar.

 

In a meeting with a very good friend , a master creator, accomplished artists and inventor, I ran my idea of the Manly Shirt at a brainstorming session over coffee. She suggested that I use a tie for the gusset in the back.

 

I first I dismissed this crazy idea, but the more I thought about it, I realized this was the perfect solution. Instead of a man or woman wearing a tie in the front, the tie was adorning the shirt at the back. It was sort of a reversal and, therefore, a surprise. The old saying about the mullet hairstyle came to mind, “Business in front, party in back.”

 

Now I started dismantling ties for the gusset, ironing them and pairing them up with shirts that would work for those particular prints, stripes and colors. I also discovered I needed more ties—so it was off to Senior Day at the ARC Thrift Store. Imagine my surprise when I found a peek-a-boo tie, and naturally I kept that for myself.

 

Peek-a-boo ties were the rage in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Inside the lining of a tie was a secret silk screened image of a sexy pinup girl, which echoes my philosophy about my new style of man’s shirt, “Business in the front, party in the back.”

 

(For the images for this blog entry, I would use four shirts, but four different ones so you could show two fronts and two backs and that way you could show four designs. Also, I would have all of the ironed. Of course include the peek-a-boo tie.)