My Style?


I was working on my enamel earrings the other day in class.  It was a dramatic day for me as all the pieces had literally and finally come together.  The earrings were appearing before my eyes as I layered purple discs on green and stuck wire through he holes to make "earrings".  A woman in my class was also making copper enameled earrings.  What interested me was that at some point, Alice, our teacher said, something like, "Well, Joy's style is bold color and sharp geometric shapes. And your shape, Fran, is more organic and free form."  I loved Fran's work but it was very different from mine.  She hand cut her discs and used pale, pastel enamel colors.  And she didn't layer her discs because they were all the same size.  The idea of making them interchangeable was foreign to her.  

It was odd to hear somebody characterize me, my work, that way.  Up until now I had just been cutting, sawing, stamping out copper shapes and enameling them with the brightest colors I could get my hands on.  Sometime back I told Alice that I was frustrated over the fact that I didn't seem to make much.  She told me the story of another student who worked on pieces of this and that for a year and then one day it all came together.  Two weeks later, the same happened to me.  Colorful and bold.  Ya think??! 

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