Then, the Patina Gods smiled upon me. In great, glowing gorgeous killer colors.

Each piece a fantastic palette of color + texture – never to be repeated.

Check out that fabulous pastel watercolor-wash on the Mod Drops! And the incredible charmed leopard spots on the Mod Pods – complete with a fingerprint resist, Mark of the Maker, yours truly . .

I’ll be listing these beauties up in my Etsy shop shortly. Sneak peak, my lovelies!

XOXO,
Winnie

It reminds me that work is play and play is work.

Safety glasses; dust mask. Sometimes a tool in one hand, or the piece I’m working on.

I blast music since no one cares, or is around.

I thought you might like to know that I’m having excessive fun making the jewelry you collect and wear. That each and every piece is a spark of pure joy and mischief, pure love.

Welcome to my party.

Writers, and the books they write, have always been like friends to me.

Sometimes close friends.

It is an intimate thing – to listen, imagine and yes, converse – for hours and hours – sometimes weeks and weeks – days and days.

Imagine talking on the phone for that long. It’s a long time to live in another person’s world.

Books, also, have great depth. They take time, attention. Unlike the shallow, schizophrenic world of television and other media that tells you what to think and hear and see as you sit in a passive trance – bombarding you with music, underlining each action with sound effects and laugh tracks, preempting any effort on your part besides dazed acceptance – reading a book requires a meeting of imaginations – a very vibrant act.

The author imagines and presents the world he or she imagines, and invites you to step into it and join him or her in the exploration. The rest is up to you, the reader.

If this is so, then Haruki Murakami must be one of my best friends.

Again and again, he offers the belief that a person like him must be hard to like; that people like him are so stubborn, so different and so unexceptional – or inward, or somewhat un-social – that no one would easily be attracted to him, or them.

Perhaps this is precisely why I like him.

I was struck, while reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, that Murakami – out of the blue – decided to write a novel, indeed began his career as a writer in the same year I was born – 1978. And further, he took up seriously running again, an event which has shaped much of his life, at age 33 – my current age upon reading this memoir.

Mainly, however, when I read his books I feel like I am talking to a good friend, an old friend who is always interesting, who always has peculiar insights and poetic ways to express them, who feels deeply and completely the mystery of life. His companionship is easygoing and comradely, though we delve at times into difficult or frightening themes. Reading Murakami, to me, is a little like having an intense, meandering conversation in a dream that goes on and on and makes perfect sense when you are asleep but merges with your consciousness so that when you wake up you don’t doubt a thing.

In this casual wonderful memoir there were certain what Murakami calls “life lessons” that he learned or observations that he made which I find particularly relevant to my own life. For instance, there is the strong vein of what other people believed he should or could do, and what he wanted to and ultimately, did. Whatever Murakami set out to do – open a jazz bar, become a full-time writer, close the jazz bar – people opposed his actions strongly. Being Murakami, he went ahead on his own anyway.

This reminds me of my experience on giving up the academic world, giving up the corporate path, giving up “success” as success – to work with my hands, to own my own business, to become an artist.

The whole society – and certainly members of my family – and friends – and random people on the street – all opposed this move. My father, a company man, couldn’t understand how I could possibly make a living. Becoming a professor or professional white collar worker was his idea of procuring a steady and successful living for oneself. It is what he did, and did well. Friends and acquaintances looked upon my work and my endeavors with incomprehension. Society, at first, was no different. “Starving artists” were rampant, according to the word on the street. I really had to dig to find examples of successful artists, metalsmiths, colleagues.

I also felt a sort of inferiority about not studying metalwork in school. With a degree in literature and only a few art classes under my belt, I started my real metalworking apprenticeship in Western China, Nepal, Tibet. I have taken some excellent classes, but I have never worked under a master and never completed any degrees. I am mostly self-taught, and without the luxury of time and resources to explore this new medium that students take for granted (and inheriting the respect for education my family and culture instilled in me) as well as the technical know-how years of study can impart I always felt a little behind the times.

Murakami writes:

I never disliked long-distance running. When I was at school I never much cared for  gym class, and always hated Sports Day. This was because these were forced on me from above. I never could stand being forced to do something I didn’t want to do at a time I didn’t want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I’d give it everything I had.

This is how I feel about my metalwork.

I’m giving it everything I have.

Murakami also speaks of closing his jazz bar and taking up full-time writing and changing his and his wife’s lives and schedules. Getting up early, going to bed early. Only seeing people they wanted to see. Going from a more open life of welcoming any and all customers – to a more closed life, of getting by more privately. And how some people also couldn’t understand this and even got mad at him.

Running your own business is damn tough and dealing with people is probably the toughest part of it. I’ve often torn my hair out negotiating custom work, or politely receiving rude, insensitive treatment, or introducing my work to a dismissive or indifferent crowd, so I know what it is like to deliberate over how to present oneself. I can be quite charming in my outward moments, but I am, like Murakami, essentially a person who “doesn’t find it painful to be alone. ” I enjoy it. That’s why I can spend hours and hours at my workshop, playing and working away.

So working with people as an artist and business owner is a worthwhile challenge, and it was nice to hear from Murakami his take on the matter.

In his words:

I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing, not all the people around me. I felt that the indispensable relationship I should build in my life was not with a specific person, but with an unspecified number of readers. As long as I got my day-to-day life set so that each work was an improvement over the last, then many of my readers would welcome whatever life I chose for myself. Shouldn’t this be my duty as a novelist, and my top priority? . . .
In other words, you can’t please everybody.
Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and said he’d come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten didn’t like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.
After A Wild Sheep Chase, I continued to write with the same attitude I’d developed as a business owner. . . There’s no need to be literature’s top runner. I went on writing the kind of things I wanted to write, exactly the way I wanted to write them, and if that allowed me to make a normal living, then I couldn’t ask for more.

Thank you, Murakami. My sentiments exactly.

These make me happy:

Best of Street Art 2011

A couple years ago I helped start up a little art support group in my area. Because it’s hard to make art in a vacuum. Because sometimes all you need is a critical (but compassionate) eye or word. Because it’s a great excuse to get together and laugh and make and eat excellent food. Here we are, goofing around about two years ago or so.

I got going about starting the group after reading an article by Harriete Estel Berman and I realized that doing it all alone is crazy.  – Thanks Harriete!

Over the years this group we call 518 MAKE (our area code) – informally dubbed Art Snob Society by Damon Cook – has saved my butt from the deadly doldrums on more than one occasion and lit a nice hot fire under it, too. It has kept me sane. And planted more than a few seeds.

So! . . Here’s our Halloween edition. My girl Mylissa decided it was downright sacrilegious I’d never carved a fall pumpkin in my life so she brought all the trappings for a real Jack O’Lantern fest. We like to get our hands dirty, so we dug right in.

There we are, ghastly at it. Mood lighting. Pumpkin guts!  Satisfying, for sure, to stab something and cut it right up. Reminded me a little of disemboweling and eating a lobster. Our rum-spiked hot apple cider in mugs . .

. . Crown or Uni-brow? – You decide. And check out that killer Hallo-Kitty! Even her tail is fuzzy-cut . .

And speaking of little punkins, we also had a very very special spooky guest. Right from the womb, Lyla Mae Cook inherited a love of Halloween and partying from both sides of the family. Here we see her catching a little downtime between rocking out and slamming it back.

Lyla is the newest and hippest member of both 518 MAKE and the FLUXettes, may she live blissfully and prosper! Yeah. This girl is sweet sweet sweet. Congratz x 1,000,000 Cindy and Damon for your amazing addition and creation!

This is the Ghost of Winnie Chai, signing out. Happy Halloween Y’alls!

I took these photos a few days ago.
Glorious autumn. Glowing months when the world is cold and aflame.

Every last nerve itches with the fantastic hunch that everything is alive, alive alive.
This autumn is flying, but so very intense. Days of billowing storm cloud with sun-dazzled trees in the foreground.
When I walk, the pine needles so slippery. The smell of pine;
The rustle;
When the wind whips through!
The silence.

* 1.4 million jewel beetle shells
* 3 months and 30 artist/assistants
* ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors in the Royal Palace of Brussels
* Jan Fabre

=  Heaven of Delight

Something unique and fantastical; in keeping with a magical reality. I love this work – Outlandish but undeniably and severely beautiful; a powerful metaphorical statement coupled with luminous ostentation and ornamentation suitable for royalty. But also its own individual sculptural wonder. I imagine the shimmering, swirling, scintillating patterns like an undersea emerald palace as one walks through the cavernous room.

In Jan Fabre’s words:

I am interested in man and, consequently, interested in angels. An angel is original, perfect, and unique, and man is the opposite of all of that. With that sculpture [Beekeeper], I aim to express the idea that man wishes to improve and seek what is perfect, unique, and never changing. Man fails in his attempt to achieve this and has to rise again to the challenge. I have confidence in man. In my work, I seek to create a more perfect human image—an ideal place or space. I believe this is possible. My work rejects all forms of cynicism. So much contemporary art is deeply cynical, so much of it is overly concerned with power and commerce. These languages are foreign to my thinking about art. There is an alternative to an art permeated by the society in which one lives. In many of my recent sculptures, I seek to render the body spiritualized—the body reduced to a shell. We have internal skeletons and beetles have external skeletons. My sculptures are bodies built up of hundreds of scarabs, in other words, of hundreds of skeletons.

I also often feel about the endurance, durability and longevity of work. Metalwork, in particular, tends to be quite durable, and I am drawn to that belief in a kind of immortality I suppose . . juxtaposed with fragility and ephemerality . .

Jan Fabre:

I use strong materials, which happen to have a fragile appearance. The color of those beetle shells will never fade, for the outer integument contains chitin, one of the strongest and lightest materials on earth, which was used for objects destined for the Mir space station. Scientists are once more studying the world of insects. I love the durability of things. I create for the future. I believe that my work contains many riddles and layers, which will reveal themselves more clearly to the beholder in, say, 50 or 100 years. Only then will my work be better understood. I find it such a beautiful thought: we live in a society where no one is concerned with durability, while artists are precisely engaged with issues of durability. Durability is a rather old-fashioned concept. You are no longer allowed to believe that your work will have value in, say, 100 years. I believe, on the contrary, that its significance will increase.

- From an interview with Michael Amy of Sculpture Magazine

- Chuang Tzu

Squared Ring : Hand-Fabricated and Patinated Geometric Cityscape Ring. Sterling Silver with Chrysocolla Druzy. US size 7. Chrysocolla Druzy cut by Cindy Liu. Available for purchase. One of a Kind.

It is said that every good artist must have her obsession.

Mine, right here and now, is Druzy. Drusy. Druzies. Drusies. Specifically, natural colored druzies – The stones with ripe, berry hues and crisp, glacial heavenly blues – Unreal, ghostly grays – Rich rare emerald greens of endless grasslands – Deep night-sky true blacks with the gleam of stars – And all a-glimmer with every movement of your body – Completely natural colors and textures but beautiful almost beyond belief -

Druzies: Natural minerals that – over aeons – form sparkling beds of even crystals like sugar-coated gemstones.

Each stone has its strong and unmistakable personality. Each tells me what to make with it, of it, around it, for it. Tiny landscapes, they are to me the natural world concentrated into the miniature realm of the jeweler and the jewel; the wearable and symbolic object; the beautifully deliberate together with wilderness incarnate.

Druzies fulfill my need for contrast in my work – Something willed, something wild. Something bright, something dark. Something polished, something very rough, ancient and barbaric.

Womankind [and mankind's] age-old fascination with gems and precious stones – I have always skirted the edges of it, preferring the clean forms and direct workings of metal itself – but druzies have seduced me with their brilliant + color-rich character.

Watch with me. Let’s see what happens.

Smoke Ring : Hand-Sculpted Ring with Sterling Silver, Chalcedony Druzy, White Sapphire. US size 6.5-7. One of a Kind. Chalcedony Druzy hand-cut by Cindy Liu. Available for purchase.

- Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

When I was a child, it was my favorite question. The most persistent, illogical, curiously annoying question of all;
And the most fruitful, perhaps.

Why, why, why. My parents must have been saints not to toss me out on my ear.

Marta’s video ‘Ofelia’  moved me very deeply – I must have watched it seven times just today.

Why?

The frame-by-frame time lapse footage of Marta working at her bench filing, sanding, soldering, sawing . . The dark studio, the lively bucking of the flex shaft, her sure and confident movements, her steady efficiency, and -

As a metalsmith, this film spoke to me directly of the work. The hours and hours of intense, specific labor. The beauty of deliberate action; deliberate action, which attracts me to the medium. That metal waits for you. It listens to you, and does exactly as it will – unless you tell it differently. It will stretch, it will form, it will smooth out like creamy butter in your hands. It will melt, it will fuse, it will scratch and darken and lighten and combine and separate and cleave and fall apart like lace in your hands, if you wish.

That the work is absorbing, utterly absorbing; a working meditation. Become distracted, and the material loses coherence. Lose patience, and there is nothing for you here. Metalwork demands patience. Skill which labor has trained. Scrupulous detail, and some knowledge, mostly gained from experience. A great deal of insight, to work in a progression of steps which support rather than hinder each other. A creative evolution every time we approach the bench. An absolute absorption in the possibilities. A siren-like vision – which leads us on – while each step, each moment, each process demands our complete attention, love, precision.

The second part of the film also moved me. It is so deeply fulfilling to see the piece worn, appreciated, and on the body. The child – the beautiful, finely-crafted object – comes to life. Also, it speaks of the pangs of childbirth – Photography. Models. Image. Presentation. Media. Sending your child out into the world and letting it speak with its own voice. I love the vulnerable, uncertain, very human expressions of the model in- between shots . .  I love the jagged, fleeting frames of Marta adjusting the jewelry on the model’s breast, peering beside the camera, looking out the window . . Photo shoots can feel like long, painstakingly drawn-out affairs, I know.

I love this film because it speaks to me about the things I love and why I love them.

I should be suspicious
of what I want.

-Rumi

I am finally getting the hang of this jewelry photography thing.

I used to think

a) It’s too difficult
b) It’s too time-consuming
c) I’m bad at it
d) I don’t like it
e) It doesn’t like me
f) I’d much rather be doing something – ANYTHING – else
g) Please someone – ANYONE – help – and take this responsibility out of my hands!

I now think

a) It’s getting easier
b) It just takes time
c) I’m decent at it
d) I’m enjoying it
e) The result are improving [concurrently with my attitutude; fancy that!]
f) Photography is its own art
g) It’s time to step up and own this part of the process. Taking good photographs is an important aspect of presenting my work to the public both clearly and stylishly – as I’d like it to be presented. It’s time to take responsibility.

Of course, a good setup, an open mind and an endless well of patience for myriad miniscule adjustments and trial-and-error shots are also KEY.

Mostly, it’s about attitude.

We did, in fact, visit a large Kali temple in Kolkata. But that is another story.

When we reached Kolkata – overland from Nepal – the cacophony of India inundated us from every direction and every dimension like a myriad converging freight trains of the senses. Enveloped within that mind-destroying noise and crush of sensory phenomena I happened upon a copy of The Satanic Verses. It proceeded to grip me by the the throat. Without the experience of being in India, Rushdie might seem nonsensical; When in India, he creates perfectly excellent, well-constructed arguments for the coherence of chaos.

It’s lovely to take a hiatus from reading fiction. You begin again, and it’s like all your old friends are back with all the latest gossip. The Enchantress was there waiting for me on the shelf in her bright red cover art like a seductive future mistress.

It is a story which includes the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great, partially set in Fatehpur Sikri. Fantastical – magical realism, they call it. It is Rushdie at his most lyrical in an irresistible story-telling trance that sucks you from one scene to another. Sleep, in this grip of this kind of fiction, is irrelevant.

It is also a story of story-telling.

I feel a special connection with Fatehpur Sikri, and with Akbar. Akbar, Akbar, Akbar, you hear in India. And Jehangir, too. And we visited those red sandstone walls, some falling into ruin, others with giant wasp or hornet’s nests in their great entrance gates. A beautiful, beguiling city. Fifteen years in the building, they say, and only occupied for fourteen years thereafter, as a sudden drought drained all the life-sustaining water away and even an emperor is a slave to water.

Here is Fatehabad when we saw it.

And that’s not all. After admiring the eloquent red sandstone architecture, delicate stone pierced screens and silent mosque we emerge from wandering the deserted ancient capital and – bewildered, exit the Buland Darwaza – the gigantic central great gate – and find a flood of sari rainbows and chequed shirts, sassy street girls with heavy eye makeup shoving at us and demanding rupees, performers with fire wheels, jugglers, gaily decorated fake palanquins swaying through the streets, and gangs of youths and adults shouting an aggressive, joyous, celebratory war-like refrain over and over again with raised fists marching, dancing, prancing through the streets. When we ask we were told brusquely,  Muharram.

I still don’t know what it means, and it may be hard to explain, but it felt – and was – powerful. We caught up with Muharrem celebrations later in our travels as well, but Fatehpur was where it was most heartfelt and startling. Yet surely fitting.

We were – literally – enchanted.

]]> http://www.winniechai.com/honeyheart/reading-list-i-the-enchantress-of-florence/feed/ 0 http://www.winniechai.com/honeyheart/new-work/ http://www.winniechai.com/honeyheart/new-work/#comments Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:16:44 +0000 winnie http://www.winniechai.com/?p=489

I’d often admired those great honking wooden earrings that seemed they would gauge a big hole in your ears with a wooden stick that you pushed through your earlobe to attach the two parts making it look sculpturally-fantastic and painful all at once. I’d also often wondered how they’d look in metal, being a metal-head myself. Wonder no more.

These babies look so slick and ultra-modern with their hole-y gold and their gunmetal-blue patina you can’t wait to stab them through your tender lobes. All sterling silver and 23 karat gold, and the modeled little silver spear-points are a nice touch. I guess I was thinking about javelins along with stabbing and wearable weaponry. I had also been itching to use the gorgeous scraps left from other, more rigidly controlled Keum-bo projects – Thus the hole-y gold, which I love. Since they are irregular, the hoop/posts are reversible and present differently from each angle.

It does take a bit more mindfulness and presence to put these pieces on, one must admit. And for that reason they are not for everyone, but for those who don’t mind tweaking their jewels/armor/adornments and like that bitter edge with their morning coffee. But once they’re started they’re easy to finish fastening and the nicely-finished metal posts must feel so much smoother and sleeker than their wooden counterparts. Maybe: Pistol meets bow-and-arrow?

Photographs by Hans Hansen.

The aftermath of western occupation and expansion . .

pink bleeds into the
night sky. I use my
pen knife to cut the

hole in my chest,
reaching behind the
pocket of my shirt.

What a tough muscle
to pull the hook through.
The heart is astonished

to be in this other world
and trembles and shivers like
a moth discovered in daylight.

I try to calm it by stroking it
by telling it that it will all be
ok, but what do I know.

The breeze picks up and chills the cavern
in my chest. It feels good to
be empty at last. I cast my heart

across the water. I cast it again
and again. Sometimes it floats on
the surface, other times it sinks

below. Something will strike at it
that I can’t see. I pray
I am using the right bait.

The tough outer layers
soften in the water. The heart trows
smaller, more pliant.

It has become a beautiful
blue jewel. I begin
not to recognize it.

Was this me?
It waits. I wait.
The boat rocks

slightly in the breeze
lifted and lowered
by the tide.

- Stuart Kestenbaum, House of Thanksgiving

- Osho

All right all right, twist my arm, I admit it :

I covet and collect handmade functional ceramics with a PASSION.

I see it, I feel it, I love it, I buy it.

Later I get a little chuckle of glee and a sparkle of wonder whenever I drink my coffee or tea or eat that piece of homemade gingerbread brownie from my delightful mug/cup/plate/bowl.

Here is my latest favoured vessel:

Spotted Grey Cup – handmade with great artistry by Janelle Songer. In her words: “It is wheel-thrown porcelain which is then altered to achieve an asymmetric, organic form that looks as if it’s rising up/growing.” See more of her work here:  Janelle Songer’s Ceramics

It looks and feels different from every angle and the saturated colors are simply exquisite. It is perfectly perfectly perfectly imperfect . .

Drool all you want at those glowing conceptual art pieces floating in a white stratosphere in nanospace somewhere . . . .

I’ll sip my Tulsi from Spotted Grey Cup.

Made these Seed Posts as a custom request for a client with bright silver in the centre instead of gold. Always a fan of looseness and flow in life as in the oxidation process, I don’t mind some poetic license in the way the patina gets a little free rein, giving the textured concave surface a  continental-drift kind of look . .

All told, they look great from a distance as well, and I am considering adding these to my existing line. Thoughts? . .

]]> http://www.winniechai.com/honeyheart/382/feed/ 0 http://www.winniechai.com/honeyheart/play-shape-make/ http://www.winniechai.com/honeyheart/play-shape-make/#comments Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:16:34 +0000 winnie http://www.winniechai.com/?p=350 Last night fusing gold to silver at my bench I had the most delicious feeling of being in kindergarten or first grade.

Keum-bo can be detailed, almost tedious work. And yet it isn’t quite repetitive; to reach every little nook, corner and hidden crevice of a tiny textural landscape it takes a certain sensitivity and focus – not pressing too hard, wrists loose and tools held lightly, like a violin bow.

My contact lenses dry out as I hover intently above my kiln; I am careful not to burn myself as I tweezer miniscule objects to and fro. I trace approximate shapes and trim them with fanatical care via miniature scissors; I quench my burnishers often to keep them from sticking to the hot metal and breathe subtly so that I don’t blow the fantastically fragile gold foil into kingdom come. Sometimes, I get impatient.

Mostly, though, it is peaceful, solitary, meditative work. I turn off the music; anything is distracting in this raw late night space. Delicate, specific work; like a surgeon’s or a child’s.

And it reminds me suddenly of that beautiful time I had almost forgotten – a lost long-ago world of concentration and bliss in the coloring of a shape; cutting a twist, a curve and a brutal angle with plastic-handled scissors to join all the other twists and curves; submerging completely into the rich waters of a single, intense pursuit as simple and as and pure as the marking of a line – then another, then another line.

It’s a funny, endearing feeling; to re-remember these beginnings, these sources. I feel completely a child-me as I cut, and place, and burnish, loving the waiting, loving the silence, loving the sweet melting of gold into silver.

in a mountain place fills with companionship for this
one, dead-weariness

for that one. This person loves being in charge of the
working of a community. This

one loves the ways that heated iron can be shaped with
a hammer. Each has been

given a strong desire for certain work, love for those
motions, and all motion

is love. The way sticks and pieces of dead grass and
leaves shift about in

the wind and with the directions of rain and puddle water
on the ground, those

motions are following the love they’ve been given.

- Rumi