i'm dirty!

Ponoko

This was posted on the MFA blog and I just thought it was so awesome that I had to post it here. Ponoko is a website where you can sign up for free, download their templates for free and use Illistrator, or someother vector drawing program to design, jewelry, furniture, whatever. Then, you upload your files to their site, pick a material (mostly acrylic and wood), pay with a credit card and they will laser cut your design and ship it to you. You can design flat pieces that can then be assembled. You can also sell your work through their site or even take someone's existing design and customize it. It's really awesome, I suggest you check it out.

The Power of Objects

This is a "scarf" by Rika Mouw. It is made of salmon vertebrae and thread. Rika lives in Homer, Alaska (an amazing place for those who haven't been) near the Bristol Bay watershed home to the world's largest wild salmon run. This watershed is still a pristine wilderness and one from which subsistence, commercial and sport fishing are absolutely vital to this state. It is home to one of the largest concentrations of brown bears in the world, vast herds of caribou and countless species of migratory birds. It is also where there are plans to open up this region to a huge mining district the likes of which have not witnessed before.

Art Jewelry Forum

Do you know about the Art Jewelry Forum? Check it out.
Click on the Random Acts of Jewelry. (Hint: it is always different.)
Andrea Janosik was named the 2007 Emerging Artist by the AJF (silver and blue piece above).

MJSA Show April 13-15, NYC

The annual MJSA Show is right aroudn the corner. All majors should go as a student at least one time. It is a small-ish trade show of suppliers. MJSA- Manufacturing Jewelery and Suppliers of America.

Smithsonian Craft Show

The Smithsonian Craft Show is another regarded craft show in your backyard. This year's dates are April 10-13, 2008...right around the corner. The exhibitors at this show by-and-large do not show at the ACC Baltimore show although looking at the list of jewelers there is some overlap. The exhibitors tend to be more special and higher end. For example, the image above is work by Donald Friedlich. Check out Don's work. It is all learning for you. The more you look and look carefully the better YOUR work will be. ACC can be overwhelming and the trick is to keep going and looking. Soon things will become familiar and you will be able to start to pick up good info.

Consider checking it out. Take your friends and family.

Quote of the Day

Alice thought to herself,

"I don't see how he can ever finish if he doesn't begin,"

towson design collective - share your thoughts!

Next Monday, March 31st, at 5 PM in CA 2006 there will be a brainstorming session to discuss ideas for the Towson design collective (or whatever we want to call it).

What is the Towson design collective, you ask? That's where you come in. It can be anything you want it to be! This is a totally new endeavor that we are creating from the ground up, so everyone's feedback is welcome (and encouraged). As a starting point, some of our inspirations are SCAD's Working Class Studio and Droog Design.

This is a great opportunity for students, alumni, and faculty to help create a flagship program for Towson. Some come by on Monday at 5 to participate in a lively discussion!

(Can't make it - email your ideas to Megan at meauman(at)yahoo(dot)com)

April Wood Gallery Talk, Thursday, April 10th

April Wood will be giving a gallery talk on Consuming Desire on Thursday, April 8th at 5pm. Everyone is welcome to join us for drinks/food after the talk. Hear it from the artist directly. Ask questions. Socialize. Celebrate April's success.

New Blog- Fresh!

I started a new blog that I want to share with you. I really should not call what I do on Blogger blogging b/c it is nearly impossible for me to make regular updates. But I can't help myself- I want to share all of the cool stuff that I find in my travels and there just isn't enough time in the classroom. I started this in 2007 and if you read the initial post you will understand why.

Bookmark it.
Check it out.

freshdesignideas.blogspot.com/

Fall Course Offerings

ART 218 Intro to Metals + Jewelry, Heidi Lowe, professor, Tuesdays 10am-1:50pm
www.heidilowe.com
ART 218 Intro to Metals + Jewelry, April Wood, professor, M/W 2-4pm
ART 361.001, 3D Modeling, Doug Bucci, professor, W, 2-5:50pm
www.dougbucci.com
ART 370.001, Special Topics: Design + Social Entrepreneurship, T/TH 4-6pm
ART 370.050, Special Topics: Design + Production, T/TH 2-4pm
ART 419, Metalsmithing + Jewelry III, T/TH, 9:30-11:20am
ART 438.001, Metalsmithing II, April Wood/John Fix,M/W 10-11:50am
ART 490.050, Internship
ART 415.050, Internship for Honor's Project

Ponoko

Perhaps some of you have already seen this site, but Ponoko is:

"the world's first personal manufacturing platform. It's the online space for a community of creators and consumers to use a global network of digital manufacturing hardware to co-create, make and trade individualized product ideas on demand."

It appears to be a place to upload designs to be laser-cut in a variety of materials and set directly to you - personalized manufacturing on demand. While you can't check pricing without uploading a design, I'm guessing its probably priced more for prototyping than manufacturing.

They are also sponsoring a jewelry design contest, which is open until March 10th.

Writing An Artist Statement

Click on this link to read a very helpful article by Tacy Rosolowski on how to write an artist statement: http://www.lapidaryjournal.com/archive/499bus.cfm.
Happy Writing,
Jan

Bargain Books

I was at the Barnes and Noble, on the circle today and I spent sometime perusing their Bargain Books section. They have a relatively decent selection of art books. Some of which are published by Taschen (who specializes in art/design books). There were a few books on ancient jewelry, including Egyptian. They also have a book on "the worlds greatest treasures", which covers metals/goldsmithing from several ancient cultures. And that's just what they have in the store; there's even more selection on their website. Most of these books are under $20, and a few were even under $10. No time like the present to start building your reference library. I got an awesome book on fashion.