Something New in Art…

Many years ago, when I was about 19 years old, I decided on art as a professional career, and with the help of Lee Krasner, Elaine deKooning and others, I did rather well, with a few sales in the six-figure numbers, although just barely squeaking by on that measure.

My average softball-sized bronze sculpture went for about $350 at first, in the sixties, then gradually topping off in the $22,000.00 range in the 1980s for my larger and more complex — and therefore more expensive at the foundry — bronze sculptures, usually with onyx bases. Continue reading

On Elementals

Ancient Persian 2400 B.C. Lapis, Linked Necklace & Earrings.

All jewelry — in fact, ALL engineered structures — have one thing in common; they are each and every one, no matter how complex or simple, is made up of a collection of elements.

Okay, so what the heck is an element?

It is a single repeatable item — in the case of Jewels of Ancient Lands jewelry, this consists of a bead or a small grouping or series of beads strung onto a copper, silver or 18k gold wire in the following manner:

  1.    Form a loop at one end of the 4″ long .20 gauge copper wire.
  2.    Wrap the end of the wire to finish the loop.
  3.    Press the cut end of the wire deeply into the wrapping so it doesn’t catch on anything.
  4.   Thread on a 4mm round copper bead.
  5.    Add a spacer bead.
  6.    Add a bead cap if wanted, with the hollow side toward the main bead.
  7.    Add the gemstone or main bead.
  8.    Add a bead cap rotated opposite the first cap.
  9.    Add another spacer bead.
  10.    Add another 4mm round copper bead.
  11.    Make a loop to close off and finish the element.

Okay, now you can wire another element onto that one, and so forth, until you’ve made a necklace, bracelet, earrings or pendant.

Continue reading

Top Searchwords on eBay for Art & Artists

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Graphite Drawing 1949, available as a 24″ x 36″ — spectacular fine art print on watercolor paper retail $950, new signed VERY limited edition of only 22 copies.

Read it and weep — we’re going to wade through a bit of negative news first, but I assure you that there’s GOOD NEWS at the end of the trail — here is a list of the top 14 eBay searchwords for ART, listed in the order of their relative importance, most-popular searchword in the first place, least popular searchword in last place, thus:

  1. Poster
  2. Wall Art
  3. Mondo
  4. Mondo Poster
  5. Antique Oil Painting
  6. Canvas Art
  7. Original Oil Painting
  8. Oil
  9. Canvas Painting
  10. Sculpture
  11. Etching
  12. Watercolor
  13. Metal Wall Art
  14. WPA (Work Progress Administration — Depression Era Art)
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/FLUAAOSwoJZXR3ir/s-l500.jpg
One of the less-objectionable Keith Haring “artworks” generated by the Warhol Marketing Plan, which was to rip off everyone mercilessly without regard for public safety, sanity or aesthetic.

Continue reading

Death, Spirit, Remembering, Awakening, Enlightenment

Why my coins are not hobo nickels:

Simply put, I have a fine-art approach to the coin carving, not a numismatic one. I don’t care much for hard-edge art and care even less for literalism and so-called “realism”, which isn’t anywhere close to realness. I use a free-form line, more drawing and sketching than the tightly repressed world of gravure you generally see, although there are more artists discovering coin engraving every day, and more artistic renderings are available.

Look on eBay to see many examples of recent hobo nickel art and other coin carvings.

The story of the hobo nickel arising out of the hobo jungles of the 1929-1939 Great Depression is simply that when you got hold of a spare nickel, you could carve it into a dollar’s worth of food and lodging. I like to use the same spirit in carving my coins as the hobos enjoyed in their day, meaning that I scratch at it — I don’t slice and cut the way a modern engraver would and should do. My approach is more “Paleo”, more basic, more street-wise and less technological, less dependent on civilization to maintain it.

Most hoboes used an ordinary 6-penny nail or a broken file to scratch their carvings into the nickel, and it’s those moves I’m trying to duplicate. Continue reading

ZOOMSHOP – Make a Celtic Spiral

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Start winding your spirals at the BOTTOM of the wire.

Start winding your spirals at the BOTTOM of the wire, not the top. You will put a hanging loop at the top later on, but NOT NOW.

Take hold of the wire GENTLY with your needlenose pliers, and slowly and gently COAX the wire into a spiral shape by moving it SIDEWAYS to form the first spiral. Continue reading

ZOOMSHOP – Royal Hellenistic Earrings

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Start out with a 6″ straight .22 or .24 gauge wire.

The first choice comes when you select two stones for your Hellenistic earrings. Try the .22 gauge wire first. Gently push the wire through the drill-hole in the bead to see if it will work. If EITHER bead is reluctant to accept the .22 gauge wire, switch to the much thinner .24 gauge wire.

The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Sumerians and Babylonians were incredible builders and engineers. This earring depends upon a bridge-engineering discovery they made many tens of thousands of years ago, that translates into bead technology as: a vertical wire will support a bead better than a horizontal wire. Continue reading

Time Travel with Ancient Beads

Be free from the confines of time, new for 2015.

If you’ve ever wanted to contact a past life, ancient beads are a great and inexpensive way to make solid and powerful quantum connections. Since I acquired my ancient beads, which was from 1960-1989, I’ve been salting them away for psychometric use.

Many of the more expensive beads went into Jewels of Ancient Lands productions, sold many years ago in Beverly Hills, San Francisco, New York & Atlanta jewelry boutiques for many thousands of dollars.

Those fabulous ancient and medieval glass and stone beads are long-gone, and cannot be repeated. The bead market that came out of Mali, Africa, has vanished forever — all you’ll find at that once-great international bead market are beads coming out of other places, notably Pakistan, China and Ethiopia. Continue reading