Back to my childhood hobbies

I think the first craft I learned in my life was to do embroidery when I was a child and living in the beautiful state of Chiapas in south Mexico. I still remember all the times I pinched my fingers with the needle and instead of letting this hobby go I embraced it and enjoyed it very much.
It was my happy time when I did it, I love putting color in a piece of fabric and my main inspiration was the amazing clothing by the Native Indigenous in the area. 

Visiting San Cristobal de las Casas in the weekends with my whole family was the best trip for me because the trip was great and the little town was so magical and full of art crafts made the Native Indigenous.

The women wore gorgeous dresses that they embroidered themselves.

With time and life changes I lost the habit of embroidering and I wanted to go back and start doing it and incorporating it with my jewelry. 

Today I decided I will get into this wonderful craft and I was surprised to see I still have the passion and happiness when I made it. I felt the same way I felt when I was a child, time flew very fast and I just could not stop.

I will have to keep doing it to be more prolific in the work but I am happy with what it became after I finished.

Chiapas
©2011 Lorena Angulo
Copper, rivets and embroidery.

My beginnings

I clearly remember my first time working with a new material that looked like clay but was not clay at all. I just could not believe this clay was in reality pulverized pure silver mixed with organic binders to make the metal have a consistency of clay.
I was starting taking metalsmithing classes at  Southwest School of Art in San Antonio with the wonderful Chair of the department (metals) at that moment, Claire Holliday. She mentioned to me about this great material that she tough I will love to learn how to use it. I was very curious to see this "magical" clay and decided I will be taking her introduction class. When the class started I was anxious to get my hand into this material and see first hand what was all this about.
I do have to be honest with you when I first put my hands into the clay I was so stressed because I have an obsession of having my hands clean ALL the time. The clay was in my hands and fingers and I had to clean them very often, I did not realized I was washing away SILVER !!!! The class was fun but I was not very much convinced about it, mostly because I did not like the idea of my hands getting dirty. I continued with my metals classes and left the metal clay on the side for a while. I just did not know what to do with that material, it was until I got in another class with Claire Holliday that I finally realized the great potential this amazing material has. Since then I have been creating most of my work with metal clay (PMC3) and every year that goes by I can see through my work how much I have progressed. 

These are some of my first pieces I made with silver metal clay. As you can see my obsession with hearts has always been present in my work.


The Milagro Heart at the bottom left corner was made during my first ever class with metal clay.




Next to this piece you can see a hollow carved bead, my first bead I ever made too.




The earrings were the first time also using a stone in the jewelry.




The heart on top was made because someone love my first heart (the one at the bottom) but I already had sold it so I had to recreate another in a bigger size.

This rosary was made a very long time ago !!! I used my first cross I made during my first class and a center piece also made on my first class.
I can definitively see how much my work has change since the time I made this piece.  


When my teacher and mentor, Claire Holliday, retired from Southwest School of Art; the students decided to make pins or pendants for her as a way to say Thank You to her great teaching and guidance all these years. I could have done the piece with sterling metal sheet but I decided to make it with metal clay since she was the person who taught me how to work with it. 

Later on more types of metal clay came to the market, first was bronze clay. I was eager to try the new clay and I played in my studio with it making these pieces.

It is so great to go back at my pictures and see what I was making more than 5 years ago, very few of this pieces are with me now. 
I can see how with a lot of practice and not getting discourage because maybe something did not fired correctly, I was able to mature and get better.
Now I do not care if my hands are dirty any more, on the other hand I WANT to get dirty with the clay and create, create, create !!!!


How was your experience when you started creating your art?

The Art and Design of Metal Clay Jewelry 2012

I am very happy to be part of The Art and Design of Metal Clay 2012 Calendar by Holly Gage. This is the third time I am selected to be in the calendar and I am very honored to be next to wonderful artists of metal clay jewelry.
The calendar is scheduled to be release at the end of October 2011.

Holly Gage and three experienced metal clay artists served as jurors. Emma Baird, Tracey Spurgin and Lesley Messam had the difficult task to select from more than 300 images the pieces that will be selected for this year's calendar.
The 28 page collectors calendar features jewelry pieces created with silver, copper, bronze, rose gold and steel from today's more up and coming Metal Clay Artists around the world.
The diversity of all the pieces is incredible, every page will be a great inspiration.

My piece selected for this year's calendar is my "Bird's Nest" ring.

Bird's Nest
©2010 Lorena Angulo
PMC3
Photo by: Speedy Peacock

The Winner of the Ring a Day book is ...

Congratulations to

KERIN ROSE

You are the winner of this great book !!!!

Thank You to all for participating and for your wonderful comments !!

I will be posting more book giveaways soon !!

Love,

Lorena

Blogs We Love: Lorena Angulo

I am honored to be featured in the Rio Grande Blog.
Thank you Yvonne Padilla for such a beautiful post about my work !!

Blogs We Love: Lorena Angulo 

(click the link to visit the blog site)

Ring a Day Book Giveaway

I wrote about this wonderful book a couple of weeks ago and now I want to give away the book to one of my followers. I am sure you will love to have it and will be very inspired by the work of so many talented artists.
I am honored to have 12 of my rings in this beautiful book and I can honestly tell you this has been a magnificent experience and I have learn so much out of it.

To win this fantastic and inspirational book, Ring a Day, all you have to do is write a comment here in my blog and in any other social media you may have. The winner will be selected this Thursday, September 8.

Good luck !!

Love,
Lorena Angulo

Ring a Week 36/52

Continuing my journey in this great challenge, Ring a Week, I decided to create a ring inspired in the wonderful paper mache suns from Mexico. I wanted to make a piece and be able to add lots of colors to it, this is why I decided to make it with Creative Paper Clay.
Yesterday I hand sculpted, carved the body and formed the face; Today I added the rays to the face and colored it.
I am very pleased with how the ring looks like, I was not sure I could be able to make the sun the way I imagined it in my head but I think it looks nice and has the life and presence I wanted to transmit.

Sol Piñata
©2011 Lorena Angulo
Handsculpted Creative Paperclay, colored
pencils and acrylics.

Sol Piñata
©2011 Lorena Angulo
Handsculpted Creative Paperclay, colored
pencils and acrylics.

Sol Piñata
©2011 Lorena Angulo
Handsculpted Creative Paperclay, colored
pencils and acrylics.

Sol Piñata
©2011 Lorena Angulo
Handsculpted Creative Paperclay, colored
pencils and acrylics.

I am in the "Blog by Latinas" directory !

I am so happy to be part of this community of talented Latinas who share their passions and interests in their blogs.
Blog by Latinas is the idea of Monique Frausto who decided to create the directory in 2008. Monique had this idea after she did a search looking for Latina bloggers and she only got a few; this made her create a place where we could find each other. Nowadays the directory has more than 1600 Latina bloggers who write about any aspect of life. The directory has Latinas from all over the world and the USA.
Come and visit the site, I am sure you will find something interesting and inspiring to read !!