Heart of Stone Studio Blog

More shows worth seeing

  So far, I've discussed four shows and I've just scratched the surface of what Tucson has to offer. Here are some others worth seeing:

   GLDA (Gem & Lapidary Dealers Association) Wholesale. This show is at the Starr Pass Marriott Resort, southwest of downtown. Marriott Starr Pass is a fairly new resort complex set into a hillside desert landscape and is quite spectacular. Although it is at the west end of Starr Pass Road, it's actually not that far from downtown. If you get there early, you can park in one of the hotel's remote lots (there are no visitor parking lots immediately adjacent to the hotel). A shuttle bus runs quite frequently between the parking lots and the resort complex.

   GLDA used to have its show at the former Holiday Inn next to the convention center. This is the third year at this new venue. The primary strength of this show is finished jewelry, although it does sell loose gemstones, including colored stones and diamonds, also fancy colored diamonds. If you are in the market for top-quality finished jewelry, this is the place to visit.

   Days Inn. Open to the public. I've been to Marrakesh and Fez in Morocco and this show is the closest I've come in the States to the experience of a souk, or outdoor market. It's a cross between a rock show and a bazaar, complete with food cooking on sizzling grills, music, jugglers and dancers, ethnic jewelry and statuary, and wares laid out on carpets on the ground. You might want to save it for last and come just for its entertainment value, but don't bypass it entirely because there are some wonderful small gem dealers here with beautiful stones at great values. The Days in is on the west side of I-10 close to downtown.

    Rio Grande's Catalog in Motion. Open to Rio Grande customers, which is open to anyone who wants to register. This is a cross between an equipment show and a major educational conference. For those who don't know, Rio Grande is one of the largest jewelers' supply companies in the country, if not the largest. Every year they rent out the lower portion of the Tucson East Hilton on east Broadway and invite all their customers to come see what they have to offer.

    If you are a jeweler with a fascination for tools and equipment, you will walk into the ballroom of the Hilton and thing you've died and gone to heaven. The entire place is packed with booths featuring everything from tiny saw blades, jeweler's files, and rotary disc polishers for Foredom tools, through pearl stringing tools, stone setting tools, engravers, wax-carving tools and injection machines, casting and soldering equipment and laser welders, all the way to CAD-CAM programs and machines that will automatically carve 3-D waxes of whatever you design on a computer. Just about every category of tool and equipment that Rio Grande sells has at least one product, often new, on display.

    But what is absolutely the neatest thing is that for every piece of equipment out on display, there is someone demonstrating how to use it.  You get to watch and ask questions, compare different models, and often save money because many of the items are slightly reduced in price for the duration of the four-day show. For people like me who love to learn how to work things, this is paradise.  From the proper way to hold an engraver, to how to use a mini-lathe, it's all demonstrated here at your request.  Plus, most of the books that Rio carries are out on racks for you to leaf through so you know what you're buying. Can this get any better? Well, yes, it can:

   In addition to the small sales-related demos going on in the ballroom, the lobby has an area set up as a lecture hall with a jeweler's bench on a raised platform and a special closeup camera set up so that you can watch a live video on a big screen with a closeup of whatever the lecturer is doing at the bench. And for all four days of the show, jewelry experts will be offering free demonstrations of special techniques, from texturing metal surfaces to carving wax seats for gemstones. There is seating in this area for about 100 people, and most every session is SRO, so make sure you get there at least 20 minutes early if you want to get a seat.

   In addition to the free lectures, there are also fee-based workshops on everything from pearl-stringing to beginning jewelry topics. So if your town doesn't offer jewelry-making classes, you can come to the Catalog in Motion and soak up a wealth of information on techniques and equipment. If you are new to jewelry-making, or you are a beader or wire-wrapper and want to get a better idea of what is involved in metalsmithing, you can come here and get a hands-on introduction.

   Rio Grande offers this event both to serve its customers and, of course, to sell more equipment and supplies. So you have to register, but you can do that at the front desk. I really don't know whether or not you must have a customer number to get in; if you are concerned about that I suggest you contact them at their website: www.riogrande.com or call them at their 800 number, also listed on the site. And while you can't buy anything directly at the Catalog in Motion, order forms are handy and you can place orders right there, which is really helpful if you want to save on their discounted show specials.

    Arizona Mineral and Fossil Shows, The Executive Inn Mineral and Fossil Show, and The Mineral and Fossil Co-Op  Even if you don't collect fossils or use them in your jewelry, I would urge you to stop by at least one of these venues before you leave Tucson. They are absolutely fascinating. Yes, they have flats of ammonites, slabs of fossil fish, piles of shark teeth and other fossil-y things for sale, but they also have the most amazing things on display. One year I saw full standing skeletons of a wooly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, a small dinosaur, and an ancient crocodilian on display. And the Chinese usually bring their restored baby wooly mammoth that was found frozen in an ice sheet somewhere. It's more fun than a museum because you can get up close to all the displays, and also talk to people who know all about them. A must for fossil-lovers.

    Lastly, there are several bead shows that are all worth visiting, as well as various mineral shows in the smaller hotels. You can easily spend five days here shopping continuously and still not see everything. But I hope this gives you a "taste of the Tucson show."  If you don't have the time, the money, or the inclination to come out here and fight the crowds and walk eight hours a day sorting through zillions of items until you find fabulous gemstones, don't worry, because I'll be there doing it for you, and bringing the best of the show back to the Heart of Stone Studio website!

    Next, tips on what to pack....

   

   

Other Tucson shows

     Here are some of my thoughts on other Tucson shows:

1. GJX, the Gem and Jewelry Exchange. Wholesale only. Talk to most wholesale buyers and they'll say this is their favorite show. Located across the street from the convention center, it seems to have just the right mix of faceted gemstones, cabochons, finished jewelry, pearls, chains, ethnic items, even a bit of small sculpture. Everyone is selling quality material and the prices aren't as high as across the street. To me, it also has a very nice "feel" and is relatively uncrowded and easy to move around in. If it's any indication, many excellent dealers who aren't located at GJX will tell you that they are on the waiting list to get in.

2. The Pueblo Inn, aka, the Riverpark Inn. Wholesale. The motel hosting this show seems to be always changing its name, but that's a behind-the-scenes issue. The show is located on the opposite (west) side of the freeway within walking distance of the convention center and GJX. The show is worth a visit because some top-notch international dealers are located there. In addition to the usual mix of jewelry and gems, it also has dealers offering mineral specimens and rough, plus dealers carrying findings and equipment.

3. The Holidome. Gem and Lapidary Wholesalers. GL&W runs several shows scattered throughout the city, and this one is on the far south end of the city. You can drive there or take a shuttle. If you drive, I suggest that whatever day you choose to go, get there at least an hour before the show opens, otherwise, you'll end up parking a half a mile away and having to hoof it through the dust just to reach the show.

   The Holidome has the usual motel venue, plus a huge tent with dealers carrying everything from fused glass jewelry, Swarovski crystals, and an amazing selection of sterling silver chains, to equipment like diamond-coated drill bits, even photography equipment---It's where I bought the studio setup that I now use to photograph stones for my website. The Holidome has more finished jewelry than anything else, and even has a booth where you can bring gemstones that you buy elsewhere and you can pick out a setting from that booth and they will set your stone while you wait.

   The problem with the Holidome is that it usually is a mob scene. On opening day the aisles in the tent and in the ballroom are so packed with people, you can barely move, and you certainly can't see much. I suggest going either early in the morning or an hour or two before closing to have the best experience.

    While you're in the area, there are several other shows you might want to visit, including The Best Bead Show at the Kino Sports complex, and other shows in that general neighborhood. Many of these other shows are open to the public; check your map and the designations in the Tucson Show guide or online at: http://www.tucsonshowguide.com/tsg/show_index.cfm. Be aware though that the smaller shows will be "heavy" on mineral dealers, which may or may not be of interest to you. To save your energy, if a show looks interesting to you, go online and check out its list of dealers. Often you can get an idea about whether it's worth a visit.

   Next, more shows you should know about...

Tucson's AGTA show

  The creme de la creme of Tucson has traditionally been the AGTA show. AGTA, the American Gem Traders Association, is built around purveyors of colored gemstones, although its current dealers offer much more than that. AGTA is the most difficult wholesale show for shoppers to get into--they don't want any "lookie-lous" walking around, just serious buyers. Most everyone at this show, men and women alike, are wearing some version of the black business suit. The show is held at the Tucson Convention Center and it is big in more than just size.

    Excitement builds up long before the doors open for the show. When you arrive and have checked in at registration, you can walk over to windows that look down onto the convention floor below, where a grid of hundreds of sparkling display booths with brightly lit glass cases and crisp, white-skirted tables are neatly arranged across the carpeted floor. The hum of last-minute preparations is in the air, and 40 minutes before the show opens, people are beginning to quietly line up to get in.

    Once you are inside, it is gem wonderland, truly a magical experience if it is your first time at a show like this. Up and down the aisles, dealers are displaying cases filled with colored gemstones--whole booths devoted to nothing but sapphires in every color of the rainbow; or rubies, emeralds, tanzanites, tourmalines, beryls--every colored gemstone you can imagine is here. What is astonishing to the first-time visitor is how many tiny stones are for sale--imagine thousands of flat, 3"-square plastic trays lined up on tables and in cases, each tray filled with hundreds of 2 and 3-point faceted stones that sparkle like glitter as you pass by. Larger stones get their own stands, and many, many of these are just astoundingly beautiful, and expensive.

     Some booths are hosted by master cutters, so you can find a mix of larger gemstones in breathtakingly beautiful fancy one-of-a-kind cuts. Other booths have top-end finished jewelry for sale. Then there are the pearl-sellers. No twenty-dollar cheap strands here. I remember going up to a booth that had a tray with pearl strands in it and a sign that said, "Show Special."  Show specials are items, usually just a few, that a dealer puts out at a discount just for that show, to draw buyers in. I picked up a pearl strand at AGTA and was stunned to find that the "show special" cost $5,000! Of course, what was I thinking? They were Tahitian black pearls, and quite lovely, too.

  Many people think that AGTA is where you go to find that perfect $3,000 sapphire that will grace a $15,000 ring. That's true, but I've found real buys there, too. What's more, AGTA has an interesting "back room," that many people don't know about. It's actually accessible from only one corner of the convention main floor. Its main tenants are the jewelry supply companies, the purveyors of jewelry-making equipment, as well as the metals suppliers--the all-important places where you obtain your gold, silver, and platinum sheet and wire.

   This back room is where the bench jewelers love to congregate and watch the newest equipment being demonstrated, or where you can see samples of the latest colors of gold. (Gold comes in different levels of purity, as well as in yellow, white, super yellow, pink, green, peach and whatever color they're coming up with this year).

    The other dealers in this room are jewelry designers, who actually rent booths and show off their creations. AGTA also opened another room for jewelry designers on the upper floor, and these two rooms are the only places I know of where more unique jewelry is for sale. Otherwise, most of the fine finished jewelry sold in Tucson is of the conventional "jewelry store" type. So these rooms are really special, and it's inspiring (and daunting) to walk past these booths and see the stunning work these designers have created. 

    But the absolute best treasure in the back room is a little area with a jeweler's bench, camera setup, and about fifty chairs set up in rows. This is the free demonstration area, and all throughout the period of the show, the top jewelry educators in the country come here and give free demonstrations and lectures on jewelry techniques. Anyone attending the show can check the schedule and show up for whatever demonstration interests them, and believe me, it is like having thousands of dollars of workshops available for free. I have attended many lectures here and always come away with a notebook full of valuable information.

    Elsewhere in meeting rooms next to the convention center, AGTA offers free seminars, mostly on the business of selling jewelry. I attended a couple last year that dealt with new trends in colored stones, which were really interesting. AGTA also offers fee-based mini-courses in stone identification, pearl grading, and related topics that members can take during the show period. There is even a yoga class every day to soothe those aching backs and feet!

    Lastly, there are a variety of informational booths and displays off the lobby. It's where I signed up to join SNAG, the Society of North American Goldsmiths, which is the professional organization to which all serious metalsmiths, designers, and jewelers should belong. At other booths, you can subscribe to a variety of magazines, and learn about GIA, the Gemological Insitute of America, where you can actually get a college-level education that certifies you to analyze, work and design with, and be an expert in, gemstones. And before you leave, be sure to visit the display of that year's winners of AGTA design awards that go to the most stunning jewelry and gem cutting designs.

   Yep, AGTA is quite the show. Next, some of the other, equally interesting shows in Tucson....

What the Tucson shows are like

   The shows are a microcosm of the world community. There are the posh, very exclusive top-of-the-line wholesale shows where you must be able to provide documents showing you own or work for a successful jewelry business in order to get in. The floors are carpeted, the atmosphere is professional, and everyone is dressed up.

    Then there are the shows open to the public. These include the big Tucson Gem and Mineral Show at the Convention Center, which this year runs the weekend of Feb. 8-11. Then there are shows just for minerals, some wholesale, some open to the public as well. Beyond gems and rocks, there are at least three bead shows, a couple for fossils, at least one for New Age items, and others devoted to African and Indian Art. Some shows, like the one at the Holidome, carry lots of finished jewelry as well as loose stones, chains, and equipment. The jewelry supply company Rio Grande has its own show for its customers called Catalog in Motion. A full list of the shows and whether or not they are open to the public, can be found here: http://www.tucsonshowguide.com/tsg/show_index.cfm

    Seventeen years ago, when I first started coming to Tucson, I was interested in obtaining sculptural mineral specimens and nature-theme jewelry to put into a catalog I was creating called Heart of Stone. I didn't realize it then, but I was joining the ranks of thousands of gift shop owners from around the country who were hunting down their coming year's inventory. New jewelry designs, with the "in" stones, were available in Tucson before the rest of the country saw them. The latest souvenir idea--be it bookends, geodes with little statues inside, or fairy necklaces--would be interpreted in dozens of ways throughout the shows.

     To give you an idea of what the shows are like, let me take you inside one of the motels along I-10. You have to get there early if you want to find a parking space in the motel's parking lot. Otherwise, you'll have to park far away and take the shuttle or walk. (In actuality, the city offers regular free shuttle buses that run routes past all the show venues, so the shuttle is actually a very smart thing to use.)

   Even before you get inside the show, there are usually white tents set up outside the motel, for dealers who need more space. Under the tents are tables laden with minerals of all types--specimens from golf-ball size, coffee-table size, all the way up to huge ones weighing hundreds to thousands of pounds. Usually the dealer prefers to sell his minerals in flats--boxes containing anywhere from a dozen to a hundred specimens. The flats are usually sold at wholesale prices. Depending upon the type of minerals he carries, a dealer might also offer slabs, bookends, statues, spheres, eggs, bowls and plates--and all of these are usually available in quantity as well.

    Once you're inside the motel, every public space will be given over to displays--parts of the lobby, the entire ballroom, every meeting and conference room, any courtyards, even wide hallways have tables lining them. Moreover, you'll find that all the rooms have been booked. Not for regular people, but for the dealers. As you walk the halls, each and every room holds a different dealer and his wares. The usual way that it works is that a dealer and his/her assistant (often a spouse) rent that motel room and live in it for two weeks. All the furniture (except for the bed and a chair or two) is replaced by the dealer's tables and showcases. Every morning, the bed is made, the bathroom door is closed, the halogen display lights are turned on, and the room becomes a store. Little signs above each doorway stick out and let people walking down the hall find that business. And from 10am to 6pm every day for two weeks, those poor dealers live, work, sleep and eat in the same room.  I've talked to the dealers and it is a grinding marathon for most of them.

   Although it's keenly interesting and often great fun to shop these shows, in the long run, it's also exhausting to tour one of these hotels after another. Many of them have at least two wings of rooms, three floors in each wing, totalling hundreds of dealers, and millions of items to be seen. Ground floor dealers let their wares spill out onto patios behind and patches of lawn in front of their rooms, which are so expensive to rent that every inch of display space is very precious. Some years the weather is hot, so the rooms are stifling, especially if the air conditioning fails, which it sometimes does. Last year the electricity went out in one motel, leaving frustrated dealers and buyers sitting in the dusky semi-darkness.

   The positive thing about the rooms is that they create their own little worlds where you can not only shop, but also get to know the dealer. If things are slow, they love to talk with you and tell you about the materials they're selling. You can introduce yourself, tell them about your work, and begin to build a business relationship that often will last for years. When you buy from them, you give them your business card and that will get you on their mailing list. They will send you either a catalog, or notices of other shows they're doing, or at the very least, their location at next year's Tucson show, so that you can find them again. Often, by the second year, they will remember you and you'll become a regular customer, eligible for special treatment.

    The negative thing about the rooms is that when more than three people walk in, the place usually gets very crowded. It's hard to see what's in the displays without bumping into somebody. If that becomes a problem, then what I usually do is leave (carefully jotting down the location and what I saw there that I want to see again), and come back later.

     The definitive online guide to the Tucson show, including maps, times and dates, and a listing of dealers by name, show, or type of wares, is this website: http://www.tucsonshowguide.com/tsg/show_index.cfm   However, once you're in the city and the show has started, stop by the front entrance of any hotel or even the convention center and pick up a printed version of the guide, which is very helpful.

   next, my take on individual shows...

The Tucson Show

   There is nothing like the Tucson Gem Show. Locals who are not involved in the jewelry or the hospitality industry try to ignore the show, which is possible to do if you stay away from every hotel in town, avoid the freeway and major streets, and don't eat out for two weeks. To cabbies, restaurant and hotel people, and police, it's probably the busiest time of the year. Every hotel room in the city is booked, often at rates half-again as high as normal. The better restaurants, as well as ones in or near show venues, are jammed. Depending upon your viewpoint, it's either: the most exciting, thrilling circus, a human zoo, or a draining marathonl. Unless you're just coming for a day, it's not for the faint-hearted. It takes strength, determination, and stamina just to survive it.

     Tucson's weather is variable for this event. You might find yourself walking around in shirtsleeves and sweating out in the 96-degree sunshine, as I did last year. Or you might have to pick your way through flooded streets during torrential winter rains, which occurred for several days the year before. This year, it promises to be downright cold--two days ago my daughter called from Tucson and told me that it was colder there that moment than in Washington, D.C.

    Whatever the weather outside, one thing is certain: It's going to be warm, even hot inside. No matter which show you visit, the combined outflow of thousands of halogen lamps used to light up the jewelry displays, as well as the body heat of tens of thousands of milling shoppers, combine to make the interiors of the venues HOT. Wearing layers and bringing your own water are musts.

   To get a sense of what is going on in this city during the show, picture a medium-large city with a convention center and high-rise hotel next to it. Then add a string of large and medium-sized motels strung like beads along the chain of the freeway near downtown--two or three miles' worth of motels, with parking lots inbetween. Then add a new, very fancy, designer resort a short drive away into the desert. Head just north of downtown into an industrial area with a mix of older hotels and some warehouses. Then get on the freeway and head south of downtown towards the airport. Picture several industrial parks, some with hotels, near the airport. Oh, and there are several warehouse areas and a couple of smaller conference centers out that way too. Pull out your map and locate a dozen or so more motels sprinkled throughout the rest of the city.

   Are you picturing all that? OK, add tents. Big, white, tents large enough to hold eight or ten tennis courts, and smaller tents as well. Put those up all over. And like salt added to a stew, sprinkle in hundreds of little one-business tables, or even cloths spread on the ground, scattered through parking lots, along roads, near intersections.

   Now, in every single place that I've mentioned--convention centers, hotels, motels, every room, every lobby, in those hotels and resorts, all the warehouses, neighborhood centers, parking lots, tents, street corners--all of them are packed with thousands of dealers selling jewelry, gemstones, and minerals. So much material from the earth is brought in from all around the world during the show that the city seems to sink under its weight.

   You can buy a necklace of fine silver beads handcrafted by members of a hill tribe in northern Thailand, or a 200-lb slab of bas-relief fossils from Morocco. You can find sliced-open amethyst geodes that are three feet tall, or a strand of breathtakingly perfect Tahitian black pearls. You can find collector's mineral specimens for under a dollar, or over ten thousand dollars. You can see every kind of jewelry, from amber set in sterling, to diamonds set in platinum. You can buy loose gemstones directly from the companies who have supervised their mining and cutting--from rubies and sapphires to tourmalines and zircons. You can buy rough (uncut) cabochon material from the individual miners themselves, or walk around reconstructed fossil skeletons of ancient crocodiles. You can see things of incomparable beauty surrounded by incredible junk. You can find deals, and you can get rooked. That, in a nutshell, is the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

    next, more about the individual shows...

   

Thoughts on Tucson

  Next week the annual Tucson Gem Show begins, arguably the largest gem show in the world. One thing's for certain, the world will be there. For people who haven't been there, I thought I'd talk a little about it to give you the flavor of it.

  In my opinion, Tucson is a lovely desert city. It doesn't have the sparkle of Palm Desert, the glitz and glam of Las Vegas. or the elegance of Santa Fe, but it does have a special something all its own. Beautiful mountain ranges frame its north, east, and west boundaries, and you can usually see a mountain of some sort from most anyplace in town.

   I recently heard comedianne Paula Poundstone diss Tucson, but then she came through it on a hot and muggy summer day, and probably only hit downtown, which is a smaller version of any urban center. There's lots more to Tucson. Its most famous attraction is the Sonoran Desert Museum, a cross between a museum and a zoo with indigenous mammals, insects, reptiles, and plants, all set like a jewel into the gorgeous desert landscape.  The area benefits from a rains during the winter and a second rainy season, called the monsoon, in late summer. As a result, the desert landscape is comparatively lush and varied.

    Tucson suffers from the same growing pangs of any mid-sized city. It has its rough neighborhoods and its poor ones. But it also has the University of Arizona, which sprawls across its turf on the edge of downtown and has some very pretty parts of campus. The U of A also has a renowned medical center. On the north edge of town are gorgeous residential areas with fabulous houses tucked into the foothills of the picturesque Catalina Mountains. There is only one freeway, interstate 10, that runs along the western edge of town, so all other driving is done on surface streets, which probably gets tiresome for commuters. Fortunately, the city is not that big, so getting around is not impossible. And the variety of great restaurants, interesting shops, art galleries and neat things to do, makes the drive worth it.

    With its proximity to Mexico, the city has a decidedly Latin flavor, and you can hear Spanish spoken often. The difference between Tucson and other cities, though, is that Mexican-Americans are not immigrants here---this area was part of Mexico originally. It's everyone else who's the immigrants, and they are graciously welcomed into a wonderful mix of cultures and artistic influences.

    Next, how Tucson changes with the gem show....

My travel sketchbooks

    Sometimes I envy artists who can do a quick thumbnail sketch and realistically capture the bustle and color of a street scene, the architectural detailing of an historic building, the smile on the face of a child. Now those people are ones whose travel sketchbooks are worth seeing.

   My travel book is much more mundane, but nevertheless really valuable to me. I use it to jot down notes from looking at art in other places.

   Now let me be clear here. There is nothing that bothers an artist more than being copied. If I were to see a stained glass pattern, a spectacularly beaded necklace, or a piece of jewelry that I liked and I made a copy of it to the best of my ability, I would not be flattering the artist, I would be breaking the law. Unless a design is in a book sold specifically to be copied, all other designs, especially those developed by an artist to make their style unique,  are the property of the artist and federal copyright law protects them even though the artist might not go through the official process of getting that design patented. An artist's distinctive designs are considered his or her intellectual property and are protected by copyright law.

    That's why when I go to galleries and museums for ideas, I don't necessarily focus on jewelry and fused glass, where I do my own work. I start out by looking at paintings and sculpture. The paintings give me inspiration for color combinations, themes, even topics that I can interpret in my own designs. As for sculpture--What is jewelry, after all, but sculpture in miniature? It poses the additional challenge that sculpture doesn't have, which is it has to be wearable. But sculpture works in three dimensions, and that is SO helpful to me to watch.

   Another thing that I get from sculpture that helps in my work is how things are constructed. I work with glass in my jewelry, so I am forever looking for interesting ways of cold-joining (assembling without the heat of soldering), and sculpture can be very helpful in that regard. The scale is different, of course, but the lessons are the same.

    Probably one of the most useful ideas I got from a gallery was when I walked by a statue of dolphins. It was made out of acrylic, and I happened to glance down and noticed acrylic water holding the dolphins up. "Wow,"  I thought, perhaps I can cast glass to look like water. If it can be done in plastic, it should be doable in glass." Thus began my quest of building molds and developing my own techniques to do this, and now cast water is one of my "trademark" effects.

   The thing that's useful about having a travel journal at moments like these is that you can jot down or sketch out your idea immediately, and thus not forget it. Plus, you can note the work of artists that you especially like, and find more of it on the internet later.

The travel notebook

   The first travel journal I ever saw belonged to the architect Harry Weese. Fresh out of college, I was his research assistant, and he was my mentor. He traveled constantly, off to presentations and meetings around the world. His most interesting trips were his vacations--I remember he took the Concorde to Paris shortly after the airline started flying, and he also went with fellow architect I.M. Pei to China. Every summer, he and a crew from our office sailed his two-masted ketch in the 333-mile Chicago-to-Mackinac Island race.

    Everywhere he went, he took with him a little black blank book that he could fit in his shirt pocket. He showed one to me once, after a trip. It was filled with sketches that he drew with his fountain pen and often filled in with paints from a tiny watercolor set that he also liked to carry. He also jotted down ideas based on his travel experiences. When he got back to his large, skylit office, that book would be out on the big round table he used for a desk, and whenever he had a spare moment, he would go through it and transfer his ideas into actions.

    My sister Mary also keeps travel journals. She teaches enameling and in the past couple of years has taught in Japan, Mexico City, Georgia (the country, not the state) and twice to Turkey. Her travel journals contain sketches that are like little slices of life that she witnesses in each country. She also tucks in gallery opening announcements, museum shows, etc. that she attended. She augments her journal with photos and short video clips that she can take with the same camera. She recently showed us a thick, heavy photo album that she assembled from her travels. It has photos not only of the people she met and the places she visited, but also architectural details, still lifes from open air markets, and other scenes that will serve as inspiration for her art in the future.

   My travel notebooks are much simpler. They are blank sketchbooks that are just small enough to fit into a purse or backpack, but large enough so I can see what I'm drawing. Unlike Harry, I make lots of changes when I draw, so I bring a mechanical pencil with very thick lead (a wonderful find after years of constantly breaking those skinny pencil leads), an eraser, and a sharpener.

   About 10 pages from the back of the book, I keep a little journal of my experiences--just what I did when. In places that I'd like to return to, I also keep a list of favorite places such as galleries, museums, nature preserves and restaurants and how to get to them. The last page of the notebook I fill when I unpack: I make a list of everything that I packed for that trip, with notes about things I should have left home, and things I should have brought. I like traveling but hate to pack, so this list comes in handy because the next time around, I can just dig out the list, follow it, and not have to think about it.

    In my next post, I'll talk about things I put in the front of my travel notebook.

Pros and cons on keeping notes

   I have at least a dozen drawing tablets that I've filled up over the years since I first started taking a stained glass class. I keep them by different categories:

• notes from courses and workshops in glass
• notes from courses and workshops in jewelry
• sketches with glass designs
• jewelry designs and construction notes
• a binder with my kiln firing schedules
• diagrams of how I layer my dichroic glass for firing
• small travel notebooks

   OK, there are some of you out there who are going "WHEW! That's too many notebooks! That would cramp my creativity." OK, I concede that I am an inveterate note-taker. There are people out there who can be shown something once, and who can then do it and remember how to do it years later. I applaud you. It's as though the knowledge is soaked up by the muscle cells in your hands and you'll always have it. I don't have that ability.

   There are artists who like to be totally spontaneous with their work. I admire you guys, and will probably devote a future post to you. But here's a question that I want to ask all those folks who sit in workshops and don't take any notes: Do you actually DO the technique when you get back home? If I were to come up to you a year later, would you still know how to align the tubes in a hinge, or what temperature to fire your PMC to, or how many times you should heat and quench your metal before reticulating it? Ah, I can hear you saying, "I'd just look that up in a book." Fair enough.

    Let me say that the reason I wrote The Surefire Handbook was that as a beginning glass fuser, I couldn't find the answers I wanted (beyond my class notes) in a book, or even in several books. People tended to write in generalities and nobody--including my fusing teacher--addressed the issues of firing in a mini-kiln. So it took me a long time to research and do my own experimentation and make my own mistakes. I wrote The Surefire Handbook so that all the information a beginning glass fuser needed was all in one place.

   Another reason I keep design notes and workshop notes is that I know how my own mind works, and doesn't work. I didn't grow up as an artist, so I don't automatically remember exactly how to do things unless I'm continually doing them over and over. I have to write them down.

   By writing down what I learned, I rarely need to waste time leafing through books. This applies to everything new that I do, not just other people's workshops and classes. By writing down how I figured out how to build something, or how I assembled something, or how I solved a particular problem, means that I can go back to my notes months or even years later and just follow my own instructions on how to do it again. 

    Even if you don't take classes, you should have an "idea" book where you jot down ideas for things you want to do in the future. How many of us have had brilliant ideas at odd moments like driving, showering, even dreaming, that we've said to ourselves---That's such a great idea; I'll be sure to remember it---and then hours or days later, we can't? That's what notebooks are for, to catch those ideas, even in their unfinished form, and hold them for us to process, to add to, to refine, when we have the chance.

    If you're not a brilliant sketch artist, you shouldn't let a blank drawing tablet intimidate you. Your idea or design tablet is not something you show customers; rather, it's a tool to stimulate your own thinking and keep roughed-out notes on your own ideas. You don't need perfect perspective drawings, in fact, you don't even need complete sketches--you just need something that you can look be able to recognize and understand when you look at it days, months, later.

  If you start working on your own idea tablet, you will soon develop your own "shorthand" of rough sketches and handwritten notes that will capture your idea and hold it well enough for you to be able to pick it up again in the future. Learn from my mistakes: You don't want something so vague you go back to it a few weeks after you've drawn it and say to yourself--What IS that? What was I thinking? If you can't capture it in a sketch, then add words to describe it. It's useless and extremely frustrating if you don't understand what you've drawn when you go back to look at it after a time.

    Once you've begun making sketches and notes on your ideas, you'll find that they seem to feed each other...one thought leads to another, and soon you're wandering down a whole new path of ideas. Don't be afraid to follow that path, even if it leads to a dead end. Like physical hiking, the more you do it, the better you get at it and the easier it is to do. If you don't like where you've arrived, turn the page and start out next time with a blank sheet. Soon, you'll find you're making notes on what tools or equipment you'd like to have next (or build), what colors work really well together, what order of certain beads is really spectacular and worth doing again, or what new techniques you've figured out could be combined with old techniques that you've already used, to create a whole new look. Your notebook will become your most important design tool. It will also be the place you go back and leaf through when you hit a dry spot in the idea department.

    I've also found that my design notebook contains a whole range of ideas, some of which don't look so appealing when I go back to review them. That's OK. Someday I might open that page and look at that unappealing design and suddenly it comes to me---A way I can improve that design to make it really work. Also, having a whole bunch of possibilities helps me to decide which is the BEST design, or design path, to start on next. Jewelry-making, as well as glass fusing, takes time, and I want to spend that time wisely and well.

   Those are some of my thoughts on notebooks...What are yours? 

Generating new designs

   In an earlier post, I started talking about Monet and his ability to come up with a unique idea. To me, seizing on a unique idea and then expressing or interpreting it in your own unique way, is the basis for developing your own artistic style. But, getting from the lecture: "This is how to make a bezel setting" to a unique and recognizable artistic style is for many, a long and frightening journey over unfamiliar territory.

   There comes that moment of panic for many jewelry students, when the teacher says, "Your assignment is to design and build three new pieces using the techniques you have learned." I know what it was like, pulling out a pencil and facing the terror and challenge of that blank page in the notebook. What could I possibly do? The idea that I could do anything I want was more daunting than joyful.

   So I'd like to spend some time talking about how artists evolve their designs. I'd love if people would write in and add their own experiences to this discussion.

    One thing that artists do is assemble the components and materials they want to use, and let the design evolve from there. For example, I would pull out my collection of cabochons and beads, and assemble them in various combinations, and soon I'd get an idea of what I wanted to build next. This is a very common approach.

  Artists using this approach have made their work distinctive by their choice of materials, such as found objects (from decoupaged postage stamps, folded paper, bottlecaps, coins, pieces of toys, parts of metal cans or containers, etc.) or materials not usually associated with jewelry, such as acrylic, plastic, rubber, steel, ceramic, or wood. Beyond the components themselves, artists can assemble these components in unique ways. Another thing worth considering in this vein is assembling repeating elements, from the obvious, such as linked rings, layered rectangles, or progressively enlarged triangles, to safety pins, paper clips, even matchsticks--the sky is the limit on this one.

   Another idea is to focus on a technique. Did I especially enjoy reticulation? Then I would focus on doing a reticulated piece as the centerpiece of my design. Does forging sound like something you'd like to do more of? Then focus on that. An additional step that people might not think of is playing around with combinations of two or more techniques, such as combining reticulation with woven chain-making, or married metals with patination. If you can hit on a winning combination of two or more techniques, it will make your work more distinctive--it will stand out among the work of people doing just one technique or the other. That's why jewelers who take basic metalsmithing courses are often interested in expanding their command of different techniques by taking additional workshops.

   Beyond the simple approach of combining elements, there is the concept of sketching out designs. I'd like to talk more about that in my next post.