More on wandering wire

[redbird]

I took a look at the two pairs of earrings I have from elisem in something like the style that she taught me and kythryne about yesterday. The magenta ones seem to focus on a spiral made before it was anchored to the rest of the piece. The silver ones with the pale blue Swarovski crystals are closer to what she showed us, but with lots of lovely curves and fewer intersections and anchor points.

Also, googling on "wandering wire" gets me a link or two to Elise's work, and an assortment of things that have nothing to do with jewelry. If anyone else (except kythryne, soon) is using this jewelry-making technique, they're either not being discussed online, or they call it something else.

Also: Metalliferous has what look like the kind of pliers I need, and I think I'm going to pick up a cheap pair to play with while I figure out whether I want to spend a lot of time on this. (The price difference between the cheap ones and the Lindstroms that Elise and Kythryne were talking about is something like a factor of eight.) And I'm wondering about colored/coated wire. I definitely want more Swarovski crystals, and maybe some other small beads (I've been using what I got in Beads of the Month for earrings--the large packages for colors of night and pearls both have good small beads--but it's not enough.

Comments

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Someone who sells regularly at the U-District street fair here in Seattle does that kind of thing, but I don't know what she calls it. It's the only person doing it other than Elise I've seen.

MKK

a long digression on anchor points and the liveness of wire

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Got a photo of the magenta ones? I can most likely tell you when the spiral was made, and probably give the order of the rest of the steps.

The silver ones with the pale blue Swarovski crystals are closer to what she showed us, but with lots of lovely curves and fewer intersections and anchor points.

Reminding myself to use more work-hardening and ... well, design tensegrity stuff (if I may handwave for a minute towards the realm where the concept probably lives) rather than an overabundance of anchor points is a reminder I am giving myself almost constantly when working on sculptural pieces. Too many attachment points are like too many words in a sentence, if they're the kind of "too many words" that get in the way, that don't pull their weight. Particularly with metal, in wandering wire, using too many attachment points is a signal to me that I am thinking of the work as if it were either a fabricated piece (solder it! join it with a solid, non-flexible, permanent joint!) or a fiber-based one (gotta stitch that sucker down or it will get away! stitch it down over here, and over here, and over here, too!), and either way is Wrong for what I personally and particularly want to do with this technique these days. Neither of those ways of thinking about it includes the soaring curves that playing with the material's work-hardening process gives; I have to keep remembering very carefully that the material is wire, not sheet, not beads linked by boneless thread, but wire, which is more like a growing vine than it is like anything else, at least to me. The spaces and shapes grow out of the forces -- no, the properties of the wire, the way the wire responds to outside forces.

I think that's the difference: I'm not forcing a shape onto it from outside. I'm coaxing it and talking to it and asking if it wants to curve around a little bit this way, and I am never (OK, seldom) using a strictly mechanical bend, the kind that only takes into account the material immediately on either side of the bend. All my curves of wire must think about the whole long sweep of the wire on either side, to which (if I am doing my job right, and if my thumbs are cooperating, and if I am lucky enough and vigilant enough to notice when it works, and confident enough to leave alone when it's time for me to Stop Messing With It) they are joined in a relationship of physics, because the curve doesn't stop at the bend. Bends with no context? If I'm not careful, that gives dead wire, no soaring, no dance, no organic twining tendril lines of force.

I guess I want to be the hands that through the silver fuse drive the physics kinship with the flower, or something.

(Dunno if that was useful, but I think I'm going to excerpt it, so as to ponder it some more.)

As for coated wire, some people dislike the way the coating comes off if one grasps it firmly or pursues certain motions. Coated wire is not forgiving. (I'm hoping the anodized wires I've seen are forgiving.)

Re: a long digression on anchor points and the liveness of wire

[redbird]

I think it's helpful, and it's definitely pleasing.

I should ask cattitude to get out the digital camera, and take a picture of the purple wandering wire beads, and the extra bead in the most recent BotMo. Not tonight, though: tonight is about rest.