I didn’t quite make my goal of finishing the pillow today, but I’m only slightly bummed, because I’m happy with the way its turning out. Plus, I couldn’t be more excited about my new studio music… The Complete Million Dollar Quartet. Elvis featured prominently in my undergrad metals studio (nothing fixes a bad day like Heartbreak Hotel), so I was thrilled to get this album of a 1956 jam session with Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash. I highly recommend it for your studio enjoyment.

As I near completion on the latest pillow (I’m hoping tomorrow at the latest), I can’t help but think… I miss grad school. In grad school, we practiced art by committee – meaning if you had a problem or needed to make a critical decision, you asked for feedback from the other people in the room.

I’m trying to determine the surface treatment for this latest pillow, and I’m totally stuck. The first pillows – made from copper – had an oil painted surface. I liked this at the time, but I’m not sure it matches the more modern quality of the new patterns, plus, it doesn’t protect the steel from rust.

My thesis pieces were powder coated – which protects them from rust – but then I’m forced to make some color decisions. (I have 100 lbs of hot pink powder sitting around, but I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’ve also got some brick red, and this nice matte brown – but I’m not sure how I feel about those in my current b&w phase.)

And of course all my current jewelry is bare steel that’s been sealed with Johnson’s paste wax. But with a larger area such as the pillow, its hard to get a consistent surface finish.

Plus, then there are other choices… powder-coating matte black to look like bare steel, powder-coating then oil painting, etc… I really miss grad school.

Despite the cold, the second pillow panel is almost finished. Since that process looks almost exactly like the first pillow panel, I’ll treat you instead to an image of these great toothbrush sculptures – part of Corey Ackelmire’s graduate thesis. (Corey and I went to grad school together.) If you’re in Kent, OH in April, you should stop and see the show at the Downtown Gallery.

I’ve completed the first panel for the pillow. After a little break from the cold, its back into the studio to start the second.

An endless stream of paperwork. Three applications submitted last week. Three more in the mail today. Let’s just hope I actually get in to a few…

…though not quite as far as I would have liked. So it’s back into the (cold) studio after dinner.

Today was, unfortunately, a short studio day. Here’s what I got done on the pattern pillow today. Tomorrow I’m hoping to complete the other three sections of this panel.

A clean workspace so I can begin a new piece – in this case a new pattern pillow. I start with a line drawing of the pattern – I’ll make each side flat before forming and putting the piece together.

as promised, here are a few images of what I’ve been working on in my studio the last few days.

layered steel hoop earrings – 2″ in diameter

earrings with steel links and sterling ear wires – 3″ to 4″ long