Castings from the garden with colors of the sun, spring growth, sky, and water.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the garden this spring, creating new beds, adding new plants, and enlarging my vegetable garden. We’ve been here almost four years now and many of the plants that I’ve added are starting to get established and fill in, but I am still tempted by new plants and new casting possibilities for my jewelry.
This new collection has a nice variety of cast succulents, cast Hebe, Grevillea pods, poppy pods, mimosa buds, and a few others. I’ve used several different kyanites, sphene, tanzanite, rubies, peridot, carnelian, sapphires, lattice moonstone and aquamarine.
Combining colors and textures in the garden is not that different from the way I work in the studio; combining different stones with cast pieces until I come up with combinations that seem like a natural fit.
Summer feels like it has arrived on the Olympic Peninsula and along with the warmer weather, the plants have started to grow and bloom. I love this time of year. The solstice is the beginning of summer, and this collection celebrates the exuberance of life springing forth and celebrating its existence. I just love the garden at this time of year. Have I already said that? Well, guess what?- I love a lot about this time of year!
It just so happened that when I went to photograph some of these new pieces on Courtney (she is a wonderful person who has been helping me in the studio for the last few months in exchange for learning metalsmithing skills), the best place in the garden was where the iris, Cerinth and Lady’s Mantle are blooming.
I hope life is springing forth where you are – and that you are able to be outside and experience the sights, sounds, smells, and all other senses of what summer solstice has to offer us. From ol’ Webster’s… “The solstice (combining the Latin words sol for “Sun” and sistere for “To Stand Still”) is the point where the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest point in the sky for the year, and thus ancient astronomers came to know the day as one where the sun appeared to stand still.”
I would argue that the sun does not stand still – it may be the longest daylight day of the year for us northerners, but it hardly seems we are standing still. All that light fuels the plants – that, in turn, fuel us and all other living things. Be grateful for this. Get outside. And, if you see something you like in my new collection, I hope you treat yourself with something from this summer solstice jewelry collection and wear it with your new solar energy.
The Solstice Collection will be released this Saturday, June 17th at 9 am PST.
