This frase has been coming back to me, as I slowly crawl out of my creative closet and begin to use my voice.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and 100% recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.
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I was with some friends in a coffee shop in Paris during my twenties, when one of them remarked, “Jennifer is an observer, she hardly ever speaks.” To which an older friend replied, “elle achète, après, elle vend,” which means: she buys, later, she will sell. This frase has been coming back to me, as I slowly crawl out of my creative closet and begin to use my voice. Crystallized ring. Handmade with tourmaline quartz and 100% recycled sterling silver. Soon in my online shop. Today I realized that the ring I was about to finish was not going to work. It was already 2 pm, and I only had a few hours to make something better. Rushed and stressed, I stopped and took a deep breath. The reason I am making a jewelry piece a day –I reminded myself– is to have the pleasure of making a piece a day. Rushing to finish it makes no sense at all. Stressing about the outcome, removes the joy I get from playing around and discovering something new. So I let go, and began again. This time, I did not follow a sketch, nor did I have any idea of what I’d make. I looked closely at the quartz I was going to work with, and noticed the inner filaments of black tourmaline. They made me think of windswept fields, so I decided to work with wire to create that image. The resulting ring has movement, and feels slightly Art Deco. Turned upside down, it also looks like a jelly fish –which I can appreciate, because there are days when I feel I am swimming underwater, and there are others where I move like a gust of wind. Windswept ring. Handmade with tourmaline quartz and 100% recycled stelring silver. Soon in my online shop. Imagination will take you deep into the wilderness. Lush ring. Handmade with tourmaline quartz and 100% recycled sterling silver. Soon in my online shop. Things I’ve learnt (so far) from my one-piece-a-day jewelry challenge: Time is extremely limited. Everything that can go technically wrong, will. Decisions have to be made fast. Always shoot 400 pictures to get 4 that work. The natural light needed to take pictures is gone by 4 pm. It is possible to go from intense metalsmith mode to relaxed model pose in minutes. Editing pictures of a piece takes longer than making the piece. Photoshopping damaged fingers takes longer than all of the above. Aligned ring. Handmade with taupe moonstone and 100% recycled sterling silver. Soon in my online shop. No electricity all day. No power tools to work with. A dim studio. An afternoon doctor’s appointment that shortens the workday. The perfect combination to create a Whirlwind ring. Six years ago, I made a small jewelry collection to sell at a local design fair. I did not know what to expect, because it was the first time I showed my work, and my prices ranged from $20 to $50 dollars a piece, which seemed like a fortune to me. When most pieces sold by the first day, I could not believe my luck. People liked my work, and they paid money to own it! Today, my rings no longer cost what they used to, which makes me even more grateful for your support. Thanks to you, my work has evolved and matured, and I am now able to make pieces that are much more interesting. Because of you, I will continue to create uplifting jewelry for many years to come. Tandem ring. Handmade with pink moonstone and 100% recycled sterling silver. Soon in my online shop. Last week I began the challenge to make a piece of jewelry a day, five days a week. I thought I would end up exhausted, but making my creative work a priority fills me with energy. I’ve been wanting to make only one-of-a-kind pieces for so long, that it was a relief to begin this adventure. I’m always amazed at how complicated I can make my life when I loose track of what I want, which is to make jewelry that moves me and others deeply; to expore the beauty of primal and rudimentary forms; and to inspire others to do their best work, because this will make the world a better place. I have set guidelines for this challenge: I will explore all of my ideas. Often what seems too simple on paper, is very interesting in three dimensions. I will not judge my work. It doesn’t matter if each piece is amazing, what matters is that I complete a piece a every day. I will not let perfectionism stop me. I am doing the best I can. I will relax, have fun, and get inspired on weekends so that I can return to my craft refreshed (this seems obvious, but when you are self employed, disconnecting from work is easy to overlook). I've just added the five rings I made last week to my shop on Etsy (plus the ring I made the day I decided this weekly ritual). Although I worked on each piece individually, it was important to me that they also work as a group. Now that I see the rings together, I find that they come from the world of biology. I see insects, seedpods, and microorganisms. Thank you for your encouragement and support on this adventure. I am honored that you chose to come along! May you always be inspired to explore your creativity, and may your path be filled with discovery! Most of the decisions I make in my work are intuitive. If something feels right, I do it. This is how I chose the moonstones that I am going to work with this week. I am attracted to their soothing energy and their subtle neutral tones. They remind me of silver lakes and evening light. Subtle ring. Handmade with silver moonstone and 100% recycled sterling silver. Soon in my online shop. I found an old Atlas in a used bookstore this Summer. I decided to use it as a canvas to paint on, because the paper was thick, and the pages could be easily removed from the metal binder. Projects like this remind me of how free I feel when I work with inexpensive materials and pre-existing elements. It’s the reason I love working with silver: when everything fails, I can always melt what I’m doing and start again. I can also work with whatever wire, sheet metal, or gemstone I have at hand, and let each object give me ideas. A blank canvas tends to paralyze me, but a surface that already has an image and a distinct graphic layout awakens my imagination, and adds an extra layer of interest to each piece. This is still a work in progress, as there are many pages left in my Atlas, but in the meantime, here are my first paintings. I made them with gouache, and was inspired by what was on each page. I hadn’t wanted to show them to you because I was being too self critical, but I shared them with my dear friend Iris, and she encouraged me to do so. I hope they inspire you. Each painting measures 12.20" by 13.77" (31 by 35 cm). I hadn't realized how many pieces I made this year that I never posted to my online shop. When I make a listing for each piece of jewelry on Etsy, I need to write detailed descriptions, provide accurate measurements, take photographs from various angles, and translate everything into Spanish. Now is when I most appreciate having an organized mother as a role model. These hands work for hours to create what I envision. They get stronger and more agile every day. They are my eyes, my heart, my wings and my companions. Painting on a white canvas has always felt intimidating, so I decided to make a new series using collage as a background. I tore out sheets from an old chemistry book and glued them onto thick paper. Then I painted on top of that using black india ink. I like how the two layers interact. 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. |
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.
All of my designs and photographs are copyrighted. If you would like to reproduce them in any way, please email me first. Archives
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