Squid

er, PolyChrome Sea Creature

Page and I have a long history of giving our pieces, especially necklaces, nicknames not suitable for consumer use: `the tick'; `the spider'; now we have `the squid' (Its official name is Polychrome Sea Creature or something unthreatening like that. Since this one is going to stay in my personal collection until someone offers me a lot of money for it, I figure it's okay to let the cat---or squid---out of the bag.)

I've been saving some of the dichro focals I particularly liked; this smaller one was my favorite of the series I made during late 2003/early 2004. I was especially pleased by the way the garnet multistrand piece I'd made for Page in late 2004, and decided to string this dichro up in the same format, but with a greater chromatic range.

Check out the largest version of the image for fun little things like artist textured sterling 8mm rounds. Artist-made lampwork (soft glass), austrian crystal, czech fire-polish, glass seed beads, semi-precious stones including malachite, garnet and amethyst; Chinese cloisonne; Indian, Bali and US made silver; strung on beadalon.

It took months to finish, primarily because, as has often been the case lately, my fondness for putting in just a little bit bigger beads (to allow for this really cool, pretty bead) clashed with the flowing lines I obtained in the garnet piece, which largely resulted from the fact that nothing in the body of the piece was greater than 8mm in width. Though I still prefer the flowing lines of the older piece, I am very happy with its palette (note its similarity to the tourmaline series and also its tassel shape, which is thicker at the top and tapers to a point, like a sea creature.

But of course, when I photographed it, I got hot spots on the dichro. Rats.

The original title of this post was raw squid, because we attempted to photograph the piece in .RAW format. It gave a wonderfully grainy arty look, but not one particularly suitable for documentation. So there the post sat for the next year or so: the original attempt was 0062; the second round of efforts were numbered 1215, despite the fact that I loved the necklace and wanted to show it off. Now, roughly 12 months and 1800 images later, I finally feel I have something useful, despite the fact that the necklace is not particularly nicely composed, and the background is full of crumbs and crap: this image, like a lot of the ones I've been taking lately is made with a copystand, a diffuser to one side, and mirrors to bounce the light on the other. Not perfect, but quick and easy.

Squid (Polychrome Sea Creature)---sterling silver, glass, semiprecious stone, beadalon. 2004/2005? Post probably created apr2005, updated 18apr2006, with new images.