SNAG Conference in Seattle

Team Metals from ASU promoting the 2012 SNAG Conference in Phoenix, AZ!

From left to right: Lynette Andreasen, Becky McDonah, Tedd McDonah,

Katie Poterala, Victoria Altepeter, Michelle Startzman

I had a really great time at the SNAG Conference (Society of North American Goldsmiths) that was in Seattle this year. The SNAG conference is a gathering of metalsmiths from all over the world and is held every year in a difference city. This was my first conference, and it was both inspiring and overwhelming. There was a lot going on and it was hard to see everything over the 4 days, but there were some really good speakers, particularly Lola Brooks, John Grade, Masako Onodera and Heidi Schwegler, among others, all of whom I found to be very interesting and inspiring.

Slide from John Grade's presentation

Slide from John Grade's presentation

Slide from Masako Onodera's presentation

There were also some amazing exhibitions that were shown! I didn't have time to see all of them, but the ones I did see were very impressive. The Geography show was absolutely stunning. I was also very impressed with the exhibitions at the Facere Gallery and Fancy Gallery.

Hotel where the conference was held - it was very tall and the elevators were a nightmare with all the people at the conference! There were over 900 people who attended this year, making it the largest conference in SNAG history!

View of the Seattle Space Needle from our hotel room.



We arrived in Seattle a day early to do some sight seeing, and we rented a car to drive around the Olympic Peninsula. We stopped to see the Olympic National Forest, a rain forest in Washington. It was beautiful! (And of course raining)

We also saw this beautiful beach, but it was way too cold to touch the water!

Driving along we came across this lake, which was gorgeous with the clouds settling into the hills.

My traveling companions: Lynette Andreasen, Katie Poterala and Logan Woodle

The city of Seattle was also fun to walk around and explore with the little extra time we had.

Band playing in front of the original Starbucks

Pike's Place Market

I had a lot of fun at the conference and gained some inspiration, but it's nice to be home again. I'm ready to get back into the studio and start making again!

New items in Etsy Shop!

I have finally listed some new pieces in my Etsy shop! I will be working on more pieces in the next couple of weeks as well, so I should have more then. Click here to go to my shop! Here is what I listed:

Have a great week!

Summer!

I made it through my first year of graduate school! Yay! It's such a wierd feeling. It went by so fast! Now I have a little time to relax and to spend more time working in the studio. I'm planning to build up more of an inventory for my etsy shop, so watch for that in the next few of weeks! I have some pieces that I will be listing next week too!

The very first thing I did after finals were over was to plant my garden! I added some tomatoes, chives, oregano, thyme, and I figured I'd give some flowers a try, with marigolds and vinca flowers. My hot pepper plant is doing amazingly well (I'm still not sure what kind of peppers they are though), and my basil is starting to come back with full leaves. And surprisingly my parsely plant is still alive from last year. I can't wait for tomatoes! Hopefully they'll work out this time!

chives, thyme, oregano, vinca flowers

hot pepper plant, tomato plant, marigolds and vinca flowers

marigolds in a little bicycle!

Have a great weekend!



University of Arizona MFA Thesis Exhibition

My talented and wonderful boyfriend Jorge just had his MFA thesis show! The opening was April 21st, but I just now have had the chance to write about it. It is showing at the University of Arizona Museum of Art and will be up until May 15th if you want to go check it out!

Here's the postcard from the exhibition:

And here is Jorge's amazing work! I'm so proud of him! It's about border issues here in Arizona. It is definitely a piece you will want to spend some time looking at because there is a lot of interesting  information. I noticed at the opening that people were really drawn to this piece and spent a lot of time reading through it.

Titled: Borderland: A "Do It Usted Mismo" For Perilous Living

I'm so happy that he made it to the end! (Not that I had any doubts)

Here are some images from the rest of the exhibition. I have to admit that I didn't have enough time to look really closely at too much of the work at the opening, but I will surely go back because there was a lot of really good work in the show:

I found these pieces to be very intriguing. They are by Sonja Johnson, and are relief prints on mylar that are in light boxes. It's hard to tell in the image, but they are in differnt layers to give it more of a 3D feel, and are really beautiful.