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· r e j i q u a r · w o r k s · the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn ![]() 3mar2010Hi there, sorry for the hiatus. I have a cast-iron excuse, or at least machined-titanium one, though: I got hit by a car! Yes, I am now the proud owner in the very latest in titanium body jewelry, to wit, a collarbone plate, a pin, and six screws. And, yes, if you wondered, bone screws come in both coarse and fine threaded versions. (This was actually a question I intended to ask the orthopedist who put the plate in, except his assistant showed me my latest batch of x-rays and I was able to plainly deduce this on my own, from the pictures. I must say, x-rays of bone do produce a beautiful texture.) However, my little automotive impact has had, shall we say, a negative impact on my productivity. I did put some things on sale (as in, discounted—so buy now—ok, spiel over:) on etsy (they're the featured items) and hope to be back to posting soon. In the meantime, we've done (which is to say, the wizard did a ton of work, and I whined about things I didn't like) on the site, and it has now has search and tagging features. Type in text to find posts that include that particular string; click on tags to get a list, then, click on a tag (on the tags page) to get all the posts that have been so tagged. (Admittedly I need to go thru and tag a bunch of stuff...) 15feb2010
The wizard's valentine, so to speak, has been the continuing upgrades to this website: today I get to use the new editing tool:) —In fact, today's post started out basically as a way to test said tool, so it's not real exciting, just some twisted dot beads I made awhile back. Otoh, I guess the site is going live today:) 13feb2010
With luck the new site will go live sometime later this week, and I'll tell you more about it then. (It'll still look much the same, since it's functionality we're adding.) This is something that's been on our to-do list for years, so it's pretty exciting to see it finally happening. (Also a little scary. There are something like 15 thousand files associated with this website, and granted a lot of them are boring back-end stuff associated with generating the content, but still...that's a lot;) I also took a class last Monday and Tuesday, an offhand sculptural lampworking class with Gianni Toso. He was in town to do a demo at the Toledo Museum of art, and my goodness, taking the class was almost worth it just to get me off my butt to check out their splendid new Glass Pavilion. Wow. Definitely worth a look, and they had a glass bead sculpture! Sort of like a cross of some of my more free-form stringing and more regular wall hangings (as opposed to the bead curtain, and which I have yet to put up on the site, sorry—they're a real pest to photograph). Always happy to see stringing celebrated, and as they're busy making their own bead curtain, I should send ’em some beads;) Anyway. In the process of trying to make fairy heads with shamrocks, I
made some test beads that I thought would make pretty, simple
necklaces, kind of like my fave glass bead
necklace—so here they are, a mint
shamrock necklace
etsy 29jan2010
I made another fairy, a green one
(etsy) 27jan2010
So we're gonna move forward in time a bit, to things I'm doing
right now, as opposed to twenty years ago, since I've finally got to
the point of having something marginally interesting to show in my current
work, which would be these acid etched fairies in
blue 25jan2010
So, I promised more blathering about Avatar, specifically about the beadwork. As I said last time, the red beaded cape the love interest's mother wears is taken right off the back cover of the classic book about African beadwork, and is Dinka beadwork. Similarly the corsets the male Na'vi wear on their torsos—you'll note, Jake gets one towards the end of the movie: it's that wide brown belt thingie with the cream colored swirlies that he wears around his middle—is also Dinka in its shape; however, those do not appear to be beaded (as in the originals), but rather fabric of some sort. And they all looked like they had the same design. (But then, I thought all the Na'vi were the same shade of blue, and second time around I spotted at least one that was darker.) The same basic concept is also used by the Dinka to make handsome collars, and these also make an appearance in the film. The red-painted folk in the neighboring tribe could have been inspired by any of several depicted in the same book. |
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