Hope and peace

Having a bit of a rough spot the last few weeks, and someone reminded me of this piece by Max Ehrmann.  It’s always worth reading these lovely words.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

Monster time!

Monsterbling time! 

Yes, yes, I know.  I haven’t posted pics of the pendant, and I will.  Cripes.  Nagging naggers.

For those of you riddled with self-doubt, let me go all Art Mommy on you for a moment. Ready?  Close your eyes and picture me holding a plate of brownies and wearing an apron.  In person I look just like a young Sophia Loren,  or maybe Penelope Cruz.  Go with that image.  And for those of you who have sent me emails telling my how hot I am?  Make sure I’m fully clothed under that apron, K?:

 

Pookiepants, of course you can draw/sculpt/photoshop/sew/knit/needlepoint a monster!  You’ve always been so talented!  Remember when you were little and you used to play with Legos for hours and hours?  So creative!  And I know I had to take your crayons away because you wouldn’t stop eating them, but before that?  You drew the most beautiful pictures!  Remember how we had one of your pictures made into a Christmas card, and everyone just raved about my little Picasso?  I was so proud!  You’re brilliant! 

 

But I guess if you  had your eyes closed you couldn’t read all that, huh?  And you wouldn’t be reading this, either.  Hmmm. 

I’m monstrously excited about the contest (see what I did there?), and I’m looking forward to plastering the walls of my studio with the images everyone sends in, so….get sending!

Enter early and often, and the more the merrier!

The rundown on the contest is here.

Men will be men

I’ve chauffeured around student athletes, made dinner, helped with homework and tucked Matt in for the night.  Riley, Jake and I are sitting together in the living room before bed.

“So,” I say, “did you guys notice that I got all my hair cut off today?”  I feel half-naked, and every time I catch sight of myself in a reflective surface I need to chant, ”hair grows back, hair grows back.”  In my view, I’m practically bald.

Blank, puzzled stares from Ri and Jake.  I hadn’t expected that they would notice, and it tickles me.  I’m endlessly baffled when men fail to see things as obvious to a woman as a major haircut, and yet this absence of noticing seems so inherently male that I find it adorable and endearing:  the earth will continue to turn on its axis, and men will always be men.  But it’s still funny.

“This morning,” I explain, “I had really long hair, and tonight I have short hair.  Did y’all notice that?”   I swing my hair from side to side,  and the ends now graze my shoulders. 

Continued blank look, and then a quick glance at each other and their faces become animated.

“Yeaaah,” says Ri, “I thought something looked different.”  He’s nodding and smiling.

“It looks really nice, Mom, ” Jake adds, “and it’s a different color, too.  Right?”

My hair is the same color it’s always been.  You know, since birth.  I can’t help but smile; this is another thing I love about men, and my boys have shown me that it starts very young: they don’t want to hurt you, and they are very often clueless about how to avoid doing that.  

Riley and Jake are both nodding and agreeing with each other that the haircut which was so obvious to them is really, really nice, and I look really, really pretty.

I fix the two of them with a grin and a raised eyebrow.

A brief silence.

“Nooo,” Ri happily admits, “I didn’t notice at all.”

“You got it cut?”  Jake sizes up my hair, “I guess it does look a little shorter.  I guess.”

“It looks really nice, though!”

“It looks great, Mom!” Adds Jake. “It’s a nice color.”

This morning as I help Matt pack his lunch I ask him, “You didn’t notice I got all my hair cut off, either, did you?”

He moves back to look at me.  “You got it cut?”

“Yes, like all of it.  How can you guys not notice these things?  Oh my gosh, it’s just too funny!”

“Mom.” The ten-year old explains. “I’m a guy.  Guys don’t notice hair unless it’s green or something really cool like that.”

Ah, clearly I’ve been going in the wrong direction with my personal styling.

He kisses me and runs for the door, calling back over his shoulder, “Love you Mom, you look really pretty!”

A slam of the door and he’s gone.

Canada, let’s work this out

Canada, Canada, Canada.  I’m shaking my head already, and you haven’t even done anything.  Yet.

Yesterday, Shmarla commented that the upcoming Monsterbling Contest might offer you a chance to redeem yourself.  You know what I’m talking about Canada, don’t you? I’m referring to The Bad Ring Contest of last spring, when I didn’t see a single entry from the entire country of Canada.

That wasn’t nice, Canada.  It was as if I threw a neighborhood picnic and you, my next door neighbors, didn’t attend.  Not only did you not attend, you didn’t even RSVP, and then you came outside and sat on your patio and pretended my picnic wasn’t going on.

I know you’re there, Canada.  My blog stats tell me you’re reading this blog, and another, less well-adjusted goldsmith might have taken your lack of participation personally.  I don’t tend to take things personally; I think this is a Canada-owned problem.   It’s not me, it’s you.

In the spring, one Canadian reader wrote to suggest that maybe Canada was just too nice to enter The Bad Ring contest.  OK.  I hear you.  You are an exceedingly well-mannered nation, and perhaps it was too much to ask you to condemn and insult a piece of jewelry in order to participate in the contest.  Perhaps your Canadian minds just don’t think like that (but Australia?  Wow!  Wowwy wow, wow, wow).

But Canada, I do want you to know I was thinking of you when I created the Monsterbling Contest.  All you need to do is draw a monster, sculpt a monster, paint a monster; whatever!  And you’re in.  Drawing monsters is in your lexicon of acceptable behaviors, isn’t it?

I did my research and found that Canadian folklore is full of monsters!  Monsters everywhere!  You can’t throw a hockey puck without hitting a monster!  You have lutins in Quebec, furry fish,  sea and lake  serpents,  Old Yellow Top and Waheela.  You’ve done quite well for yourselves in the monster department, and so I know you have it in you, Canada.

Let’s put The Bad Ring contest behind us and work together.  I have a pretty pendant, you have a wealth of Canuk-y minds full of monster-creativity; let’s make a little magic, ok?

I love you Canada.  Let’s work this out.

Football nerds

College application due dates are approaching, and so our house is all college discussion, all the time.

Jake has worked hard academically, and now he’s looking at some brainy colleges.   For every school he explores, Matthew quickly gauges their worth based on their football strength.  Other than UNC, Matt hasn’t been impressed with Jake’s picks.

As I made dinner, our daily college discussion turned to the schools  no one on earth should be smart enough to go to, the schools only the freaky-smart attend.  The schools which scoff at National Honor Society kids like Jake.

“Who even gets into MIT?” Jake asks me.

“Dude, I have no idea—”

“Does MIT have a football team?” interjects Matt.

” I don’t think so,” I say, “Usually the farther you go up on the brainy nerd scale, the less likely you play football.  MIT doesn’t strike me as a footbally bunch.”

“Jake, you shouldn’t go there then,” Matt informs his brother.  Jake agrees.  It’s settled, then.  He won’t be attending MIT because they don’t have a football team.

Cornell has made Jake’s short list, though, and Matt does not endorse Cornell, either.

“But Cornell’s a nerd school,” Matt argues,  “and you want to go there.”

“Cornell has a football team,” I say, “they’re a little lower on the brainy nerd scale, so they play football.”

“Yeah, but they’re nerd football players,”  says Matt, derisively.

Matt hunches over like a quarterback in a football huddle.  For some reason he  assumes the voice of Jon Stewart impersonating George Bush, and so Matt’s quarterback comes out evil, clueless, AND brainy.

“He he.  It’s fourth down, see? And if we run this play there’s a 42 percent chance I’ll get sacked.  He he. He.  If I do, I will attempt to fall at a 30 degree angle and avoid injury.  He he.  We’re gonna need our pocket protectors.”  He straightens up and looks at Jake, one eyebrow cocked.  “They’re nerds, Jake. Nerds suck at football.  You shouldn’t go there.”

“Ok, Matt.  I’ll keep that in mind.”

Captain Vagina

Matthew will only address his brother Riley as Captain Vagina. This will not end well.

Fan Clubs

I am a charter member in the Jamie Franki Fan Club.  Jamie is an artist of whom you’ve probably never heard, and yet there is a very good chance you have a piece of his recent work.  Turn out your pockets and gather up all your change.  Do you have one of the new Jefferson 1800 nickels?  Do you have one of the 2005 American Bison nickels?  If you do, you have a Jamie Franki piece right in your hot little hand. Pretty neat, huh?

Jamie was on my short list of Very Cool People before his work earned a place on our country’s currency, and when that hard-earned, spotlight-winning success occurred it was wonderful to watch. Good things couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.  In addition to being a terrific artist and professor of art, Jamie is, plain and simple, a good person.  He’s ethical, funny, kind, and encourages the best in people.  He also has good hair.

In Jamie’s Senior Seminar class, UNCC’s mandatory class where fledgling artbirds ready themselves to find their wings, Jamie regularly brought in a variety of working artists as guest speakers.  As a student, the visiting artists’ cumulative success both encouraged me and discouraged me.  There is a life in art!  That’ll never be me! Listening to those artists speak, I also secretly hoped someday to be one of those working artists Jamie invited back to speak to his class.  That would be a milestone in success, a mark of earning the respect of a man I admire as an artist and a person.  I think I already had it at that point, but being asked back would further stroke my vanity.

Can I tell  you how insanely awesome it was when Jamie invited me to speak to his class?  Oh yes he did!  Shut up,  he did!

Visiting Jamie’s class on Monday night was a lot like being a rock star, but better, and it’s taken me a few days to chew on it.  I hope, in answering the students’ and Jamie’s questions,  that I was encouraging and gave the students something to think about.  But hadn’t expected that they would do the same for me.

Writing letters of wisdom to one’s young self is an idea which pops up frequently in self-help columns and on Oprah, but I’ve always felt that letters to our older, more frazzled and more compromised selves would hold just as much importance.  Letters to the future, written in that moment when we know everything, when we see things less in shades of gray and more in black and white.  There is a purity and a value to that young adult moment of passionate beliefs, and a shot of that purity when we’ve become weighted down by our adult compromises and muddied and muddled in our adult shades of gray might help us remember who we set out to be, and why.

As they commented and questioned, the students didn’t realize that their words served as a barometer and a compass to me, measuring where I am now, and reminding me of where I set out to go.  Reflected in their idealistic young artists’ eyes,  I realized I’m more passionate about my art, more driven to produce great work than I had really acknowledged.  I love my materials.  Love. Them.  I love what I do and why I do it.  When I spoke of working for over eighty hours on a custom piece for which I only charged $400, simply because I wasn’t stopping until I had it right, damn it?  Jamie high-fived me: it was the right artistic move to make, even if it was a lousy business decision.

Was speaking to Jamie’s students a bit of a rush?  Sure!  But it unexpectedly served as a critique of me as an artist, and I really needed that.  I’m right where I wanted to be, and that blows me away.

Thank you Jamie Franki and your UNCC Senior Seminar class for inviting me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Monsterbling Contest!

It’s time for the Monsterbling Contest! Yay!

The lowdown: Submit an image of a monster between November 5 and November 15, and may the best monster win.

Draw it, collage it, paint it, Photoshop it.   Sew it, build it, sculpt it and take a picture of it!   Use whatever medium you like, and send me an image of it when you’re done.  Keep it simple or make it a masterpiece; sophistication is not necessary, and I hope to see work of all levels of expertise.  Scary monsters, funny monsters, sad monsters…..all are welcome.

The prize?  A 14k gold, handforged sapphire necklace: the Roman Sapphire Necklace.

It’ll be like the necklace below, but you know, with a sapphire.  A pretty blue sapphire. It will be so pretty you will cry, and so I will send the winner some tissues with their pendant.  I’m still waiting for that stinker to come in, but I will have the necklace done by the time the contest begins, and I will post it then.  That’s why I’m not taking entries until November 5th: because the rat bastard sapphire hasn’t come in yet.

L: pretty sapphire which is taking its sweet time getting here. R: The Roman Pendant

Monsterbling Contest Rules

1. Email entries to: monstervaka@aol.com.   Entries will be accepted from November 5, 2009 through November 15, 2009.   I will announce the winner on November 18, 2009.

2. There is no limit to how many monsters you may enter into the contest.

3.  All work must be original and your own.

4.  All ages are invited to enter, but if you are under the age of 18 you may not enter without the permission of your parent or guardian.

5.  The winning entry is decided at my personal discretion with the help of friends and a bottle of Chianti.  The winner is final.

6.  Let’s keep our monsters PG-Rated, ok?

7.  The prize necklace is not for resale.

8. Entries must be in JPEG format or included in the body of the email.  Please include your full name, and the email address where I may reach you to confirm shipping information should you win. If you are unable to be reached within 3 days of winning, you forfeit your win. Your last name and email will be kept private, and this information will neither be shared nor used for solicitation purposes.

9.  Images may be posted on this blog or on Vakadesign’s Flickr page, and by entering your image into the contest you give Vakadesign permission to make public your monster image in this manner.

10.  By submitting an entry to the Monsterbling Contest, you agree to these rules and understand the spirit of this fun, friendly competition. You will not hold me responsible if you lose this give-away,  or appeal for a new decision.  This is a give-away everyone, so let’s not get all hard-core.  If I am asked to clarify any of these rules, I will do so on the Monsterbling Contest page of the blog.

Monster questions, anyone?

Monster update!

Blogosphere, keep your pants on!

Some readers have already sent me monster images, including two pictures of mothers-in-law.  Naughty!  For those of you who sent those?   Your secrets will go to the grave with me, my cheeky little ducklings. 

But I don’t want you to waste all that creative fabulousness.

Tomorrow I will post the Official Everything about the Monster Bling contest: dates, rules, ideas, parameters, the whole McGillicutty, enchilada and shabang.

So, what am I waiting for?  I’m waiting for two stones to come in so that I may choose which one to dangle like a carrot in front of your wee little noses.  I’m also trying to figure out the best way to receive submissions… snail mail?  Attached images in email?  A group flickr pool?  I’d like to avoid contracting computer VD by opening attachments. 

So, hold tight while I puzzle the details out!  But keep thinking about monsters while you hold tight….

 

www.vakadesign.com

New Ruby pendant

Look!  Look at the new pretty!

A 1.52 ct  SI Ruby, set in a slightly Etruscan-looking handforged setting. I’m not sure “Ruby” should be capitalized, but I’ve decided that’s how we’re going to roll at Vaka Design.  Rubies deserve it.

Beautiful Rubies glow.  That, with their color, is what they are prized for (is there any royal crown, in the history of ever,  which doesn’t include a ruby?).  The silky glow for which rubies are famous is caused by tiny threads of the mineral rutile, which  are naturally occurring in the stone.  Rutile is terrifically refractive and highly dispersive.  In common speak?  Rutile does awesome things with light.  Rutile’s natural inclusion in Ruby turns a red stone into a glowing, silky, gorgeous thing.  Thank you, rutile.

 I am really pleased with this, and have several other stones I intend to set similarly. In fact, I’ve decided to have a sapphire pendant in this style be the carrot for the Monster Bling contest.  More on that soon…..

 

www.vakadesign.com