I went downtown yesterday to see the Mathias Goeritz retrospective. I don't leave my neighborhood often, but when I do I am struck by the monumental splendor of historic Mexico City. Here are a few images from my visit. This week I took a sand casting course with the amazing jeweler Jesse Bert, at my dear friend Cristina Celis's studio in Mexico City. Sand casting is an ancient method that uses sand as a mold material to cast metal. It is used to reproduce everything: from car parts, to statues and bells. I took the course because I want to make jewelry with more volume, and this simple method lets you reproduce any piece made of a hard material and cast it into metal. The results were not what I expected. Some of my pieces came out with holes, sunken areas, or missing parts. I was disappointed at first but soon realized that these accidents enriched the piece, if I was willing to work with them. My first sand cast ring is now among my favorites. We used Delft red sand as a mold material. We imprinted the original piece into the Delft sand, that was tightly compacted inside a two part cylinder. We used a thin metal bar to poke holes and let air circulate so the molten metal can flow freely into the mold. We heated pieces of silver with a torch until they became molten. We poured molten silver into a hole in the sand that reached the center of the piece that was being reproduced. An example of a student's first cast piece. My first sand-cast ring. The roughness gives it character. One of the biggest obstacles on my creative path has been my inner resistance. I invest so much of myself in each piece that my deepest fears inevitably come out and warn me to stop: Who are you to spend all day creating? Your work is not good enough. There are others more talented than you. You have good ideas today, but what will happen ten years from now? If you show your work, others will copy it. This will never sell, etc. These thoughts can be crushing, and I would not be where I am now if I hadn't had help along the way. My main source of support has come from brave artists who soldiered on regardless of their inner critic, and then wrote books to encourage the rest of us. These books gave meaning to my life when it seemed aimless and empty. They guided me towards a deeply personal and exiting path, kept me from straying from what I most love to do, and encouraged me to share my work with others. If you have not read them, I recommend you do. They will be great allies along your way. Have you ever had a moment where you're so completely present that time stops and you become part of existence? I remember one years ago. I was in a swimming pool and was leaning against the edge to feel the warm sun on my face, when a large orange wasp landed in front of me. I stared at her, first to see if she would attack, but then with intense curiosity. Suddenly, the entire world disappeared and only she and I remained, observing each other, coexisting in time and space. I’m no longer afraid of wasps. An artist friend told me that she only looks to modern and contemporary art for inspiration. This surprised me because I thought everyone was fascinated by ancient art. I have always been. Growing up, I had no access to public libraries, there was no internet, and bookstores were expensive, so my visual input was limited to what we had at home. Fortunately my mother had a collection of books on African, Oceanic and Pre-Hispanic art, which I devoured. What I saw was rudimentary and incredibly sophisticated. I’m still captivated by ideas reduced to their essential forms, and by the feeling that moves us to create. The combination of what we have seen and imagined, captured by the skill of our hands, will never cease to amaze me. Imagine a world where we are not afraid to speak up or stand out. Where we encourage ourselves more than we support others. Where we use our intuition to guide our lives and the organizations we lead. Where we live by our own standards of beauty intelligence, wisdom and skill. That's the world I want to live in. I have always been amazed by our ability as human beings to imagine and make tangible what we see in our minds. Our whole world was created this way and who knows how many other worlds will evolve like this. If we each imprint our unique imagination, experiences and quirks to everything we do, we will add to the rich tapestry of life. My paternal grandparents were Roman Catholics who migrated from Lebanon to Mexico in the 1940's. They settled in Mexico City, opened a sewing supply store, and had a large family. Every Saturday, my grandmother would cook copious amounts of rich Lebanese food for her seven children and their spouses, her thirty grandchildren and friends. Their home had plastic-covered velour furniture, crystal chandeliers, and wire beaded bonsai trees that adorned coffee tables. At weddings (there were many), my aunts and cousins looked stunning, embellished in long, colorful sparkly gowns, while my sister and I wore cotton frocks that resembled those in Little House on the Prairie. It was the 1970's and my mom had moved to Mexico from California. She sewed her own clothes and never wore makeup, fed us All Bran for breakfast and baked whole-wheat bread. The four of us lived in a rustic wooden house surrounded by forest and dirt roads. Although the life I live now is simple and calm, I hold dear the festive and abundant childhood memories of my beloved Lebanese family. My sister Vanessa is visiting from Austin. She is a healthy baking consultant who teaches people around the world to bake delicious pastries using natural sugars and alternative flours. Her Noble Baking movement has changed the lives of thousands of people who are hypoglycemic, diabetic and sensitive to sugar. This morning we talked about how much it's helped us to have parents who are self-starters. Both my mom and dad built their business from scratch: she as a textile artist, and he as a freelance architect. Their efforts gave us a beautiful home and access to a bicultural education. Had we had other examples, we would probably not be self employed. Vanessa began her business in 2005 in the kitchen of her apartment. She soon was teaching sixty students a week and now she has over 50,000 followers on social media. I had the fortune to sell my first jewelry collection in a local design fair in 2009, and since then I've created hundreds of one-of-kind pieces that now belong to wonderful people around the world. The path of the self starter is not easy and can be uncertain, but it is stimulating and rewarding. Thanks to the internet, we can now find role models beyond our families. I hope you find those who inspire you to do what you love and to start with what you have. You will embark on a great adventure! Many of you have asked me what is Metal Clay, so I took pictures to show you. As I shared in a previous post, Metal Clay is a modeling compound made of fine recycled silver mixed with an organic binder. Its putty-like consistency registers detailed textures and designs, as you saw in my latest pieces. Once dry, you can heat it for a few minutes with a torch until the organic binder burns away and you are left with pure silver. After the piece is fired, you can burnish it with a metallic brush and give it the patina you like. I have tried several brands, but my favorite is Art Clay Silver because it is easier to work with and shrinks less when fired. It is also the only one available in Mexico City (thank you, Iliana Carrillo for giving me a sample!). I finally found a way to transfer my more intricate drawings into metal. I would have liked to photograph the clay when it was moist, but I ran out of it before I took these pictures. There are many scary moments in the life of an artist. The first is when you accept that you are one. You admit that you are not willing do anything else. Then, you stick to your work even when the results don’t come close to what you intended to make. You solve technical problems that threaten to stop you: the paint cracks, the clay explodes, the soldered parts fall off and the stone breaks when you set it. Finally, you make pieces you are –relatively– satisfied with and show them to others. This part is unnerving because you know your work can improve. If you want to sell what you make, you realize you also need to show who you are, why you made it, and how you made it. This frightens you because you’ve never asked yourself these questions. So you dive in and learn to articulate what you discover. A daunting task because you are not a writer or a journalist. Still you continue, because the scariest part of being an artist is to stop making art. A coach once asked me: what did you have to give up to get to where you are now? I had to stop living my life through other people, I answered. Growing up I promoted the artists, writers and yoguis I dated, because I admired what they did but was afraid to do it myself. My biggest lesson has been to focus on my own path and ask, what do I want? I've learnt to listen to my own advice, and be my number one fan. Today when I admire someone, I take it as a sign to recognize those qualities within myself and find the courage to explore them. Sometimes I disconnect from the rest of the world for a few days. I used to wonder if this was a good thing or if I should make an effort to see people, but as I grow older I realize it’s the way I prefer to live. Being alone makes me consider my life from a deeper perspective. It also fills me with energy, wonder and gratitude. Time slows down and I return to my work joyously, in tune to my inner urges to create. I recently read a test that asked, if you had six months left to live, what would you do? My honest answer was: I’d stay at home and create. I sometimes spend a full day drawing. I get my best ideas when I look at books on ancient art, and lately I have been immersed in Oceanic and Celtic cultures. I rarely copy what I see, but instead I look at specific qualities that I can reinterpret (texture, proportion, gesture), or I take a subject and draw it my way (how would I draw a rooster or a king?). Some drawings will become pendants or rings, but I'd also like to see them in paintings or pillows. I need to wake up earlier... My uncle John was a diver who lived on a boat. He once found an ancient coin in the bottom of the ocean, he hung it from a chain and never took it off. The pendant mystified me because it seemed to tell a story, not just of one person but of an entire culture. Since then, every time I go to a flea market or a thrift store I seek my own pendant. One that is powerful enough to tell my story and also connects with the world around me. Since I haven't found it yet, I decided to make one. My latest silver pendants come from the drawings I shared yesterday, and are part of my Unearthed Series. Unearthed Pendants. Soon in my online shop. |
welcomeI am Jennifer Musi, the jewelry artist behind MUSIBATTY, and this is my blog archive.
Here you can find posts from December 2013, to May, 2016. I will no longer update this site. Please click on the link below to see my recent work. @musibattyOn Social Media
ConnectRespectI made this blog to share my work with you. I believe in generosity and I want to live in a world where we all inspire each other.
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