I was recently interviewed by Amy Mercer, creator of The Smart Woman’s Guide to Diabetes. Check it out!
A Smart and Creative Woman with Diabetes, Ana Morales
Thanks, Amy!
Working with Metal Part 3
October 22nd, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink
Click here for Working with Metal Part 1 and Working with Metal Part 2 :]
If you’ve been reading my posts about a metals class I took, you should know what this last one is about. A ring! Our final project was left pretty open–we just had to make one ring that was fairly detailed or a set of simpler rings. Like always, we were encouraged to think outside the box, but making a traditional ring was acceptable too. I love rings, especially big ones, so I already knew I wanted to make something big that I could actually wear. After going over some ideas with my professor, we decided that my idea with the most potential was a simple band with a large hemisphere shape on top that consisted of sheets of metal soldered together.
The first step in creating this ring was to create a circle template which I did on Adobe Illustrator. I then adhered the templates to sheets of copper and brass and began sawing away. I cut out a total of 10 circles in order to get the size that I wanted. Then it was time to start soldering. Since I was soldering sheet to sheet, I had to use sweat solders:
My layered idea meant that I had to do multiple sweat solders..a challenge because I risked melting previous solders and having the layers slide apart. Anyway, this was my soldering plan:
The sheets of metal alternated between brass and copper. I spent several hours soldering the ten circles together and when I was on the last one, there was a gap in the solder that I tried over and over again to fill, but without success. My professor helped me by holding one blowtorch while I held another and we held the flames to the metal until all of a sudden the gap was filled and everything else stayed in place.
Now that I had all of the pieces soldered together, it was time to smooth out the edges into a dome shape. I did this on the sanding belt. It took a while, but I finally got the shape I wanted. After smoothing it out with sandpaper, I started on the band for the ring. Since I spent so much time on the ring, I made the band as simple as possible, for lack of time. I took a pretty thick wire, flattened it, bent it to the size of my finger, and smoothed out the edges. Finally, I had to solder the band to the dome part, which was surprisingly harder than making the dome itself. After several tries, I finally got it to work, and aside from some finishing touches, the ring was done:
After showing it to my professor, he told me that I could work on the dome part a little more, because it was still a bit uneven. I took his advice and and sanded it down a little more. Now it was really done:
You may notice that the copper looks darker in the final pictures–that’s because it had been gradually oxidizing since I finished it. One thing I would change about the ring if I did it again is the band. I would spend more time on it and make it thicker since the dome is so large. It seems unbalanced with such a small, narrow band. However, I was very satisfied with the final product. I put a lot of work into it and I’m very proud of how it turned out :] Thanks for reading!
Check out my art-related post on The Girl’s Guide to Diabetes
October 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
What I’m Doing Right Now
September 26th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Wow, I have been so busy this month! I can hardly believe that I’ve only been at JMU for a month and a half because I’ve done so many things, it feels like way longer. Anyway, let me fill you in on all the crazy shenanigans that have been going on lately.
First of all, I love all of my classes for once! Here is what I’m taking: Secondary Art Education Methods, Intermediate Painting, Ceramics (Potter’s Wheel), Aesthetics (pretty much the philosophy of art), Printmaking, a mandatory 7-week RA class, and I’m also doing my art education teaching practicum. My professors are great too. I’m in class 24 hours a week and since I have a lot of studio classes, I have a lot of outside work every week as well. My practicum is half an hour away, so that takes up almost 3 hours a week. For my education class, we also teach a small art lesson in a retirement home for 4 weeks (once a week). My partner and I doubled up with another pair so we’re actually going 7 weeks. In my painting class, we are allowed to work very independently and I’m working on a series of paintings that reflect my life with diabetes. They are coming along well. Oh and did I mention I’m using oil paint? I’m in love. I’ll post more info about those pieces in the near future. My ceramics class is challenging, but lots of fun. I always end up with clay all over me, though.. Aesthetics is great because my professor is very entertaining, which keeps me awake! Printmaking is lots of fun too; instead of clay, I get ink all over me.
Aside from classes, the other thing that takes up most of my time is my job as an RA. I love it so far, but it’s more work than I thought it would be. I’m definitely glad I applied for the job though, I’ve already created great relationships with lots of people and learned a ton of valuable information. I feel like I have something to do all the time, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m definitely ready for a break though!
Here’s a peek at what I’ve been working on recently:
Happy Diabetes Art Day 2011! (a little late)
September 9th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Hi everyone! I’ve been so busy, but don’t worry! I will be posting every Monday again, starting next week. In the meantime, please check out The Girl’s Guide to Diabetes to find out the story behind this piece that I made this past August for Diabetes Art Day (September 1st):
:]
By the Way
August 8th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
I post new stuff every Monday so be sure to check it out :]
Working with Metal Part 2
August 8th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Note: If you haven’t read part 1 yet, check it out here!
If you read part 1 of this series of posts, you know that I took a metal and jewelry class last semester at JMU. After spending roughly a month creating flatware, my professor introduced the piercing project. The first thing we did was have a discussion about the definition and functions of piercings. We concluded that a piercing is an adornment usually worn on or through the skin or other body part. We talked about what society thinks about people with piercings and what message these people are trying to send. Our discussion also included identifying which metals were safe to go through skin and establishing criteria for a good piercing such as easy to put in, stays in, doesn’t poke, lightweight, etc. However, my professor emphasized that we didn’t necessarily have to make a “good” piercing, for example a heavy earring could symbolize some type of hardship or obstacle.
After the discussion, my professor instructed us to brainstorm. This meant coming up with a list of 100 piercing ideas, and then taking 20 of those ideas and sketching them. It was much harder than I thought it would be to do this, but I eventually dragged out 100 ideas from my brain and picked out the best ones to show to my professor. My initial idea was to do two different earrings (because I like asymmetry when it comes to earrings…). One would move up and around the ear and the other earring would dangle from the other ear. I also decided that the dangly earring would be made in two parts, a front piece and a back piece. Like the first project, I ended up focusing on design and came up with these sketches:
I started with the dangly earring first, deciding it would be a bit easier to make. First, I got some pieces of copper wire to practice making the curves and having all the pieces fit together so that I’d be able to solder them. After kind of getting the hang of it, I started the real piece. I used different wire gauges for each section, cutting them longer than I needed them. Then I noted each end that would be curled and sanded those down to a point with a sanding belt. After smoothing the ends out, I curled them with pliers and then bent each piece until they fit together enough for me to solder them. The soldering was the most difficult part since I was dealing with thin pieces that I couldn’t keep together very well. I had to solder some parts over and over again (this included waiting 5-15 minutes to get rid of the oxidation in between) before I got them to stay together. I ended up with random spots of solder on the wire that I would have to sand off later. Finally I got the whole front part of the earring to stay together, and it looked like this:
I decided to start on my second earring at this point. I wasn’t even sure how to begin, so I just got a long piece of fairly thick wire, sanded down the ends into points, and started twisting and curling. I was a little disappointed because the end product was not what I had in mind:
It looked rough and was hard to get it to stay on my ear. Sooo, I decided to make two dangly earrings. This was kind of a last minute decision so I spent about 8 hours of my precious Saturday (or was it Sunday…) making an earring as close to the first one as I could. It was definitely easier the second time around, although I accidentally melted one of the tips so you’ll notice that one earring has a curled tip and one is in the shape of a ball (oops). Finally, I soldered a sterling silver post onto the back of each earring. Once I finished, I focused on the back piece and decided to have something abstract-looking hanging from behind the ear. I basically took scrap metal and alternately akneeled and hammered the pieces. Then I took small pieces of sterling silver sheet and drilled two holes in each piece (cutting my finger in the process). I also drilled a hole in each piece of abstract scrap copper. I bought a few yards of copper chain over the weekend to connect the silver and copper pieces. All I had left to do were some finishing touches and…
Voila!
P.S. You can’t silver plate copper! I found that out too late..Oh well 
Working with Metal Part 1
July 27th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink
Last semester, I took a Metal and Jewelry class at JMU. I was excited because I love jewelry and I get to learn how to make it? Awesome. Looking back, it was a roller coaster of a class, but all the ups and downs (including minor injuries) were worth it. I learned how to use a variety of tools and machines and developed a knowledge of skills such as akneeling the metal to make it bendable, creating a patina with heat or chemicals, soldering various forms together, silver-plating, sanding and filing, riveting, sawing, drilling, cutting, twisting, and so on.
Throughout the semester, we had ten exercises and three projects. Some of the exercises included sawing a curved line, giving sheet metal a texture, soldering a wire to a sheet, and creating three different rivets. The first project was a flatware project. We had a discussion about flatware and the difference between cheap flatware (such as plastic utensils) and quality flatware. For instance, the weight of a spoon is an effective indicator of its quality–the heavier, the better, as long as it’s still comfortable to hold in your hand, place in your mouth, etc. While we were allowed to stick to traditional forms and focus on handle designs, my professor encouraged us to push the boundaries a little. He said that our flatware could be functional or non-functional. We could make flatware for a certain type of person (a skinny model…) or a certain type of food (french fry picker, anyone?).
After lots of brainstorming and sketching, I decided to focus on just the form of the flatware itself. My idea was to create a relationship between soft curves and hard straight lines within each piece. The first thing I did was practice how to effectively curve back one side of a metal handle. This involved a lot of sanding, a lot of heat, and a lot of hammering. The final sample piece looked kind of rough but now I knew what to do. I started by drawing the layout of each utensil on a piece of paper and then gluing the paper to a piece of 14 gauge copper sheet. Then I cut everything out with a tiny saw, sanded and filed down the sides that would be curved back, akneeled each piece, and started hammering away. Here’s how they looked at this point:
After this point, I cut out the tines of the fork, sanded those a little, and gave the spoon its bowl shape, which was a lot harder that I thought it would be. The last thing I had to do was basically refine the utensils, and this seemed to take the longest time. Because of so much hammering, the pieces had lots of marks and dents that I couldn’t leave, so I spent hours upon hours sanding and filing, trying to get rid of them. (Part of the assignment also required us to use two different rivets within our project, but those didn’t turn out too well and are not pictured in the final image because I took them out.)
After about a month of working on this project, here is how my “copperware” turned out:
:]
Save Your Stuff!
July 18th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink
See this duck? It doesn’t look finished, right? Well this is the only image I have of it and it’s from my cell phone. The real file got lost forever it seems. And I did finish it by the way..
I took a computer graphics class last semester and was introduced to Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. The picture above is from my Illustrator project which initially made me freak out because I just could not figure out how to use the program until one day it just clicked. After that I was on a roll and I was really happy with the final product. Silly me, though, I only saved it on my flashdrive and the file got damaged somehow. My professor was nice enough to not make me do it over again since he already saw it when it was done and also since I’m not a graphics major.
So the point of this short post is to encourage you to always save your stuff in more than one place!! Sometimes old school CDs are more reliable than flashdrives. Whatever you do, just make sure sure to save and save often. Don’t let the above happen to you :[