Haikus, Squirrels, and Coyotes :o)

This is my third work in which I use the sculpted dragonfly.  I think that I am attracted to these water loving bugs out of respect for their audacious manner of flying right in your face and hovering.  They can be very intimidating, until you realize that they are practically harmless.  But, they are beautiful creatures, with their iridescent wings and colorful bodies.

Order of the Dragonfly (revisited); sterling silver, copper, ruby, and tourmaline beads.

Here, I have sculpted the body out of copper and the winds and head are sterling silver.  The stone that is set from beneath is labrodorite. It has a colorful schiller of light that is a blue green and reminds me of very still water in which you would find these creatures hovering around.  At the tip of the dragonfly’s rump, I have tubeset a faceted ruby, which is a tad more intense in color than the tourmaline beads, but it punctuates the strands.  The necklace also has tube beads and a hand forged S-hook clasp in sterling silver.  All were designed to hold the double strand together tightly, making the work comfortable to wear.  The tourmies and ruby, to me, add that colorful quality found in the natural dragonfly.

There is a ton of folklore surrounding these bugs, most warn of their mythical dangerous sting or use them as bad omens, but my favorite stories weaves these creatures into stories of fairies, pixies, and magical creatures of nature.  In reality these creatures start out as larval worms, metamorphosing into these sexy winged creatures to mate and spawn a new generation.  Ahhh, what a ride it would be to saddle up on one of these creatures.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this work.  Let me know what you think, and feel free to critique.

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I have always been fascinated with the symbolic representation of the goddess in abstract.  From as far back as drawing pictures of my mom in grade school to asking girls to model nude for me in my college dorm room, the female form has held me in reverence on many different levels.   The goddess can range from the maternal to the sexual, and never fails to fascinate me in art history.  But, with these pieces it is the form within the form that I am exploring.

I have been asked if I am some sort male feminist because of my depictions of the goddess, but I’m not exactly sure what that means.  I am not for either a matriarchal or patriarchal systems; however, I have been fascinated of the ancient Celtic tradition of renewing a marriage every few years.  Every few years a marriage’s renewal was dependent on the wife’s judgment of whether the man was worthy of keeping, but I think maybe of it were a joint decision there could be a better balance in the house.  No, for me it is a reverence for other half of humanity; that side which seems to me to live off of the opposite end of the wave length.  Like revering a fish that breathes the water, I want to know the fish, but I would not survive to fully know it.  The Yin to the yang.

The female has so much more magic associated with her body; child birth, mystical cycle of the moon, making food for the baby, innate intuitions, and an emotional existence that I will never comprehend.  But, I believe that it is the obligation of the male to try to live in synch with this other half.  Neither should be more dominate.  It’s balance, in for an out, up for a down, a vibration of harmony.

Green Goddess; sterling silver, prehnite beads, and Wyoming jade.

The female form of the goddess works as sort of a yin-yang within its form, with a vaginal negative space formed by the space that could be seen as its hair cascading behind the form’s head.  In the Green Goddess, the use of jade refers back to the ancient folklore of jade representing love and virtue, and prehnite is said to have the metaphysical property of helping one to overcome an emotional injury.  Both stones have a relevance to the goddess.  This work is about healing and strength.

I also designed this piece to have several difficult cold connections to set the stones and beads within the pendant.  The sterling goddess cut-out holds in the jade using rivets that were soldered into the bezel.  And, the beads are strung along with wire that is connected inside the tubes that surround the piece.

Goddess of the Garnets Set; sterling silver, garnets, and turquoise beads.

The Goddess with Garnets Set is hollow-formed in sterling with a hole into the form that serves as the same sort of vaginal-like mechanism within the symbol as the other.  Also the form of the whole pendant and the form of the main shape of the earrings could also represent the effeminate delta, take that as you want.

The garnet is a stone that has an ancient link to Greek mythology, “After Hades had abducted Persephone and taken her down into the underworld, Zeus, on the behalf of Demeter, commanded him to release her. Zeus sent Hermes to ensure the safety of Persephone’s passage. Hermes found Persephone seated next to Hades. Upon the sight of Hermes, Persephone was elated to be released from underworld. Hades knew he must head the command of his brother and had no choice but to let her go. Hades was eager to ensure her return. Before leaving, Hades gave, as a gift to Persephone, a pomegranate. She willingly accepted it and Hades knew that once she experienced the sweetness of the ripened seeds that she would return to him. In fact Persephone did return to Hades for three months of every year forever. Persephone’s return caused the winter to arrive for the three month for which she remained with Hades. The pomegranate (and garnet) is associated with eternity in many Greek Myths. Many have associated the gift of the pomegranate seeds with the gift of fine garnet gems. Its meaning has given symbolism to garnet as a gift of love’s attraction, a gift of quick return or as a gift of estranged love. This myth gave partial rise to the belief that garnet is a stone for loved ones who travel and a crystal that can heal the broken bonds between lovers.”  Link

These are both sterling silver works that have been patina’d to bring out colors and contrast in the forms.  There is something alive about a patina.  Many jewelers and artists believe that it is best to fix the work in some sort of state of permanence, such as a high polish.  But, I can argue that the moment that you get it “fixed” the forces of nature immediately start to undo that state; scratches, abrasion, chemistry, etc.  So, I have never tried to give that illusion with my work.  I prefer to embrace the state of flux that our materials have.  The patina adds the wild card to the mix.  My work changes colors depending on its environment and history.  I like to think of these goddesses as living entities that will grow and age pending on what the wearer contributes to the work.

From ancient men carving out their goddesses in stone thousands of years ago to Greek mythology through to today, the goddess fascinates and intrigues men.  These works carry a story, and they are sure to spark a conversation.  Whether it’s a conversation of the heart with someone you have just caught the attention of in a social setting, relaying the mythologies of the work, or keeping alive the tales within our cultural conscience, this is just another Cosmic Folklore.

I hope you enjoy.

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In my last blog I ranted a tad about inspirations and muses. Then I started searching out other blogs on the subject.

Cintric Cuff: sterling silver, citrine chrysoprase, and a star ruby.

A photographer friend of mine friend had posted a blog where she discussed how she created her beautiful works, and she mentioned that it was easier to discuss how she did it, rather than why she did it. It spun me into thinking about college and having to discuss with professors what we were doing, not why or even how.

I had to explain that my art was about exploring imagery from all sorts of media, explored symbolically and metaphorically, to convey ideas about the human condition, in print and paint, blah, blah, blah.

Then I thought even further back to my childhood. I had a pet hamster named Beef Jerky, but I called him Jerky for short. He lived in a big plastic cage, with tubes that went everywhere. He had rooms with different stuff to do in each.

Jerky had a bad habit of scrubbing his butt all over the cage. He rubbed it on his food bowl, his exercise room, his bed, his love nest where he wooed the mamas.

Then Jerky died. I woke up one morning and he didn’t move, and he hasn’t moved since.

I got a new hamster. His name was Stash, short for Pistachio. The cage was his. I gave it to him. And, stash spent weeks smelling around the cage, every tube, every room, even the love nest.

Then I figured it out. Stash was smelling Jerky’s butt rubbings.

Now, whenever someone asks me why I am doing what I do no matter what the medium, I tell them, “I am just rubbing my butt on this cage.”

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Women have inspired songs in the hearts of men since the dawn of creation.  We’ve sang of goddesses, mothers, whores, love lost and gained.  We’ve sang of their beauty, their ugliness, their love, and their scorn.  This is why the ancient myths tell us that the muses of men are female, that inspire us men to such vibrations of motivation to create.

I do realize that women create as well, and some guys who make stuff don’t like girls.  But, this was really guys talking to guys, back in the day.  But, as the ancient art of alchemy explored the elements of precious metals, all things were broken into genders.  Freud picked up on this as well.  Everything can be defined by genders.  It is ingrained into our universal consciousness.  Not so much in the Germanic languages, but in the Roman based languages everything has a gender, and the gender dictates the verb, adjective, preposition stuff.

Moon Muses; sterling silver, copper, moonstones, opal.

The sun is masculine, going back to the Egyptians, maybe even further back.  Gold is the metal of the sun.  The moon is his counterpart, she is feminine.  Silver is her metal.  The moon regulates their cycles, and girl stuff.

Ok, ok, so I see a flaw here.  So do men have more worth?  Gold is worth more than silver.  Has silver always been second in worth to gold?  I have read where at times silver was more sought after, thus carrying more value during certain eras in history.  Silver is the metal of Mercury, the Mercury dime, commerce.  If women inspire men to create, what inspires women?  Men?  I am pretty sure that I have inspired at least a couple of women to create a few voodoo dolls.

Oh, was the world more simple back in ancient times?  Men were men, and women were women.  Or, were they? Spartans, um well…  Diana, goddess of hunting.  Them Greeks had islands for everything.  Islands of one-eyed freaks, islands of singing chicks, islands of lesbos, nymphos, etc…  I’m not so sure they were all too clear on the issues either.

Screw it.  Being just an average Joe, skirt chasing, white boy, I can only speak of what I know.  Chicks make me crazy.  I dig girls.  I’ll take two of them Greek muses, a blonde and a redhead please.  Put them up there in the moon for me, and let them inspire my imagery.

I used to have a professor in grad school who would always tell us lads, “Paint with your dick!”  Of course we laughed, and joked about working in oil paints and having to clean up with mineral spirits, “Yikes!!!”  But, we all knew what he meant.

So, in summary, let me pass this message down to my metalsmithing buddies in contemporary languages, to the laymen.  “The muses are the embodiment of all hot chicks.  Be moved.  And, forge your metals with your dick.”  LOL!!!

I have carved a few other types of stones, but opal is so soft that it is a pleasure to carve.  I hope that you enjoy.  Thanks!!!

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This is a hinged, sectional neck piece with a hollow-formed center section built up from a spiral around a section of copper tube.  The center piece depicts a space ship spiraling in to the empty negative space, maybe a black hole.  And, within the spiral are patterns with an almost tribal look to them.  Also, there is a ruby that is at the source, maybe a red planet.

Lost in Space; Sterling silver, copper, Norwegian Moonstone Jasper, lab ruby

The four cabs are set in bezels on each side.  The stones are Norwegian moonstone, which is actually a type of jasper.  Besides its cool cosmic name “moonstone,” it has a Northern European country in its name, which brings to mind stories of Valhalla, gods and goddesses, and ancient stories.

I’ve done a few other pieces, lately, using this Lost in Space theme.  I like the idea of using negative space in a hollow formed piece, and I like the play on the spiraling space ship with it.  Personally, I have never been lost, as far as not knowing where I was type of lost.  I am usually of the mindset that I am right here; therefore, how can I not know where I am?  But, at times I have been in situations where I don’t know what exactly is expected of me.  Most of us have heard of being lost in love, lost in circumstance, or lost in translation.  At times in my life I have questioned my own decisions, wondering where it will lead me.  In previous works, I have used the symbol that I call the rocketfish to create metaphors about travel or sojourns.  So, it only seemed natural that I use the symbol with this idea.

I created this one with the idea of using a leather strap to tie the piece around the neck.  I think that seeing the bow of leather on the back of the neck is sexy.  But, my girlfriend and marketing expert made me question how I should finish this one off.  I tried beads and a few different styles of hand-made chains, but I kept falling back on my original idea.  If someone wants to change the way it is hung, they are perfectly welcome to do so, but the way the design works now has more of a unique look with the combination of hinged metalworks and primitive leather.  And, if someone should be opposed to leather for some reason, I have a silk cord that can be used as well.

If the concept of “Lost in Space” has a different connotation to you, please share.  Or, let me know what you think.  I hope you enjoyed.

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Traveler's Bracelet; sterling silver, .999 silver, 14k gold, copper, rubies, peridot, garnets, and kabamba jasper.

“Still is still moving to me.
And, I swim like a fish in the sea all the time.
But if that’s what it takes to be free I don’t mind.
Still is still moving to me.”
Willie Nelson

This bracelet was first inspired by the kabamba cabochons cut by George Ingraham (aka TaoGem).  Kabamba contains rare stromatalite fossils, giving it an intense green on black with rings that form waves.  To me they look like Hubble satellite images of the universe, cosmos.  George cut these cabs to match patterns, so they just begged to be set closely with hinges.

The rocket has so many interpretations to me, depending on how it is rendered or how I integrate it with the surrounding.  However it is rendered, ultimately it represents travel in one way or another.

Aren’t we all always on our way?  Moving, evolving, growing, getting, giving, we are all always on the go, even when setting perfectly still.  As a kid I used to awe over how the sky always seemed to be perfectly still as I stare out of the window of a car zooming down the highway. The moon hanging in the sky like it was painted on a backdrop.  Being still is just the illusion that we aren’t moving, but we all are moving at the speed of light.

The rocket is staged on the box clasp, which I made with a corresponding hollow section.  The background is sprinkled with 2mm garnets, rubies and peridot using tube settings.  And, the background is layered with patterns made up of 14k gold and sterling on sterling.  I’ve also treated the surface with patinas to bring out a variety of colors from the silver, creating a variety of color and textures within the whole bracelet.

There is a garnet set on the tab which you would press in to catch and release the clasp.  Closed, the clasp becomes a red star, possibly a destination with a field of patterns and glittering flashes of color from all of the other stars.  The bracelet is a contrast between the depicted cosmos within the metalwork and the green stellar patterns of the stones.

The sections of bezelled cabs and hollow forms are all connected with hinges, riveted with copper washers that I made from sheet.  At first I tried to make the hinge as tight and finely machined as possible, but that made the bracelet to stiff on the arm, so I reset the hinges with a smaller gauged pin giving a slight bit of play to each section, making it wear more freely on the arm.  The contrast of the silver with the copper washers also pulls these mechanisms out to sort of look like wheels, adding to the idea of motion and travel.

I took the bracelet out for a test drive, making sure there were no pinches or flaws in the clasp, and I wanted to get some reactions from people on it.  The glitters of gems and the earthy colors really catch peoples’ eyes.  And, it was interesting to get the interpretations of the imagery from different people.  But, ultimately, I would find myself putting together the patterns and the waves of the kabamba into free flowing images, using my imagination.

Aren’t we all caught up in our own patterns and journeys, whether we feel stuck in a rut, or free falling? We are all travelers in this strange cosmos.  Sometimes, we just need an icon to keep us aware.  Sometimes, we just need to keep an eye on the destination.  Sometimes we just need to kick back and enjoy the ride.  I hope you enjoyed this piece.  Thank you, and please feel free to comment, question, or criticize, using the comment box below.

“And it’s hard to explain how I feel.
It won’t go in words but I know that it’s real.
I can be moving or I can be still.
But, still is still moving me.”

Detail of Traveler

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I met George Ingraham through these blogs and then on Twitter.  The first thing I noticed about his work was the sets that he made and then the uniqueness of his stones.  The lapidary is the unsung hero of the jewelry world.  We tend to just select a stone and then make something taking all of the credit, as if we had just found this rock lying on the ground.  Whoever cut the facets on a ruby or diamond just falls into oblivion, just as he lapidary who cuts the cabs or the beads.  This dangerously makes way for cheap cabs from Mexico or beads from China.  Big corporations drench the US market with cheap crap findings.  However, if you take a minute to look at the quality of our lapidaries here in the US, there is a difference.

A good lapidary selects the more unusual of rough to start with, making a more unique product.  Yes, it may cost more, but it is funny how some people strive to buy the cheapest for the ingredients for their art, when they would never just buy the cheapest car on the lot, the cheapest house in the neighborhood, or the cheapest shoes on the rack.  Some things are just worth the extra it takes to get quality and uniqueness.

So, Lora and I worked with George to feature his work in the shop, a trunk show.  He mailed us a great selection of cabs, and I offered to set stones for customers in a simple frame and prong setting for meager cost.  This was just a simple setting, no frills, just a simple jump ring bail.  And, if they wanted something more unique, I would set down with them and sketch up something.  Lora liked this also because they could buy beads to string up their own creations.

simple frame and prong settings

Granted, I was busy for a couple of weeks, with each setting taking just under 30 minutes.  It boosted sales for George and I made enough to pay for my entire summer off from teaching.  And, I was asked to make a couple of very unique custom orders.

Sterling silver and Mexican crazy lace agate

This was a ring using one of George’s Mexican crazy lace agates.

copper, sterling, and crazy lace with marcasite

This is a cuff using a cut that has some very unique marcasite inclusions within the laces.

Mar's Cuff; sterling silver, kabamba, and an African star ruby.

And, this is a cuff using some of his kabamba.  Ohhhhh, the kabamba.  I had never seen this stone before.  It reminded me of pictures of space from the Hubble space telescope.  So, I added one of my own cut African ruby stars.  The cabs created a framed theatrical space between them to depict Mars holding up his red planet.  I have always loved Cézanne’s The Bather, and how he manipulated the paint along the legs of the bather to make it look as if he was stepping right off of the canvas.  So, Mars is depicted here, carrying his planet right out into our world, breaking the illusion of spaces.
Oh, and I also have a new gallery, close by, and willing to represent me.  The Blue Phrog Gallery of Montevallo, AL.  The owner is a very “keep it real” guy, and I am his first jewelry artist.  I have works in other galleries, but I don’t feel as if these really have my interest at heart.  They are all so far away, and they seem to be run by jewelers who just promote themselves and their own work.  This will be a great new venture, and I am hoping that once he sees how the arts community takes to the jewelry arts, good things will come.

Now, you guys can all go and continue to buy the cheapest stones and beads from overseas, or you can make friends with some of the best lapidaries in the world right here in our own backyard.  All of my stones will be either cut by me or someone I know.  I don’t drive the cheapest or wear the cheapest shoes on the rack :o) and, you will be able to tell by my stride.  That’s just how I roll.

www.cosmicfolklore.com

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This cuff was hand forged from wires of sterling into the basic shape that I laid out with the mount for the amethyst built up first.  Then I used the rolling mill to impress a slight texture into the sterling.  I pierced out the paisley design, and added another layer of paisleys on top.  Then I added a variety of textures using engraving techniques used in printmaking.  The tricky part was keeping the solder out of the textures while adding the tubes for the peridot.  Then I added a patina using liver of sulfur.

Knowing that cuffs have to bend slightly in putting it on and removing it, I had to check and recheck the placement of the stones to make sure none of the settings would be strained in the process.

Vesica Pisces Cuff; sterling silver with patina, end-cut amethyst, and two different types of cuts of faceted peridot.

Vesica Pisces is the name of an ancient shape. It has been used to represent many ideals throughout history; Jesus, the goddess, vagina, free masonry, part of the Tree of Life pattern, and eternity. It is the joining of two circles forming what is sometimes called a pointy oval.  This shape has been the basis for several of the symbols that I use in my work, such as the rocket and fish shapes.  To me this represents both the spiritual and the effeminate.

The central point to this design was cutting the end cut amethyst into this shape and mounting it to relate in a way with the rest of the design; amethyst being the stone for Pisces, and peridot being for Libra (balance).  The idea was to play with the symmetrical cab within a very organic and slightly asymmetrical cuff design, using the calming, dreamy, and stabilizing qualities of the stones.  The way the significant shape of the cab relates to the whimsical layers of paisley flowers, depicts this careful balance of effeminate and spiritual.

Thank you for checking out this work.  Please feel free to continue the discussion on this piece with a comment, if you want.  :o)

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I didn’t go to Tucson this year for the gem shows.  My supply of rough was winding down as well as my supply of gem material, so Lora and I made reservations at a cabin tucked away in a holler just outside of Franklin, NC.  Although Lora is originally from the tar heal state, she had never been to one of these gem shows in Franklin either.  We have visited some of the mines there, and we have a favorite gem shop there at the Franklin Gemstone Warehouse.  But, the Franklin Gem Shows were very new to us.

First, a Little Background on the Area

• Western North Carolina was where folks that wanted to live a totally oppression free life during the colonial days went to pioneer.
• It is home of the highest mountains of the Appalachians.
• The Irish and Scotts who were shipped over to the colonies to act as militia for the Brittish, scurried to the tips of these of mountains as soon as they got off the boat.
• Then my girlfriend’s, Lora Lunsford, had a relative, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who climbed down from the mountain and brought the claw hammer banjo style of these ancient reclusive people to Nashville on a silver platter.
• Tiffany and Company mined this area for rubies, emeralds, garnets, and tourmies for years.  Some of these old mines were sold to individuals and are open to the public for fee mining. Tiffany still has a few quiet mines in the area, according to rumors.  But, any mine that is found right alongside the road is not a real mine.  These are for kids.  To find the real mines you have to ask around a bit.
• Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and several other 50’s and 60’s artists, climbed these mountains at the Black Mountain College in the 40’s and 50’s and gave us a truly unique American art style.
• Now, the area has networks to keep artists and artisans in business, supplying rich tourists with goodies using a very old cottage industry type of system.

You can’t swing a dead cat in Asheville, NC without hitting someone who makes their living off of making stuff, whether it is jewelry, baskets, paintings, or pluckings on an old banjo.  It has been very tempting to move there myself and set up shop, but after we thought about it for a while, why go to where the market is so saturated?  It is kind of nice being one of very few artisan jewelers in Birmingham, Alabama.  But, boy oh boy, it is a beautiful area.  Maybe when I retire I will get me a cabin in those thar hills, where the grandkids can run barefoot till they are true tar heals.

Scurrying about these small cities surrounding Franklin, getting directions is a challenge.  We would pull into a gas station/art gallery and I would mosey in and declare that I have never been here before, could you please give me directions to an ATM machine.
“Do you know where Arbys used to be? Take a left there, and then…”
“Ummm, I’ve never been here before.”
“Do you know where the little blue building on the right is? Turn there onto…”
“Let’s assume that I am from another country, and I need to find an ATM machine, OK?”
“Take a right out of the parking lot, and…  Do you know where the third stop light is?…”
LOL, take a map, as many as you can find, because they will all be different with the winding roads going up and down mountain passes, I have not found one map that accurately depicts the area, and a compass is useless, because you can head west on a road and 2 minutes later you are going East in the same direction on the same road.

The Gem Shows
There are three different types of shows going on at these types of gem shows.  The first is the wholesale show.  You have to register to get in.  This was initially to protect real wholesale buyers from having their customers being able to buy products that they should be buying from the retailers, a bead shop for instance.  This used to be where bead shops would go through and buy inventory and offer it for a great price to the artists.  But, now the artists have tax IDs and go to the shows direct.  So, these are actually retail shows with a secret wholesale market going on under these onesy, twosy shoppers’ noses.  I heard many bead artists complain that the prices were higher than they could buy at a bead shop.  We just snickered; unless you are going to drop $1000 per vendor, you might as well have stayed home.  Not to be mean, but the wholesalers want you to support your local bead shops.  If the bead shops go out of business, so will they.  A vendor that offers their customers the same value as they are to get is a dead source.  You might as well hang a “going out of business” sign on those vendors.  I did manage to get some very good deals on rubies and emeralds, but I tagged them onto Lora’s purchases for the shop.  I spent $400, but tagged it onto Lora’s $12000 worth of orders.

The Retail Shows
I have no idea who these shows were marketed to.  But, if you are interested, I will try my best to describe.  One vendor will have something that everyone talks about.  A few years ago it was these large amethyst geode looking things covered in what looks like JB weld on the outside.  They were cheap.  One vendor had pulled up with a truckload of them, but every vendor had a table of them.  Actually, every vendor has tables of all the same things.  Whatever was a hit five years ago is still on every vendor’s booth somewhere.  Drusy cabs were in everyone’s booth. Fake pearls and turquoise, everyone had the exact same strands.  Everyone had Fordite cabs, which is just paint cabbed down. Basically, whatever was popular one year, the next everyone had some of it, which makes all of these tents exactly the same.  You can save yourself some time, visit the first tent and go home.

The Hounds
These are the backbone of the industry, the rockhounds.  They pull up in RVs, pick-up trucks, and slice slabs on the spot.  This is the real market, which you won’t find on the Franklin city commerce maps.  They gather in parking lots and camp grounds and sell the real deal that they dragged out of the backwood hollers and deserts of our country.  This is the quiet gem show.  They don’t spend big bucks on booth fees or advertisements, lapidaries just point you to the campground and back alley where these rough, tough, and grumbly old rockhounds slice you off a hunk of Wyoming jade, sell uncut fire agates by the fistful, and sell labradorite right out of the box that they loaded onto their trucks at the docks.  Great prices listed on the boxes, but if you wave cash at them, they will estimate the pounds down for you.  Just don’t come in there and start asking them to cut slabs in half because you don’t want to pay a full $70 for a great slab, and then try to give them a check or ATM card.  These are individuals, not wholesalers or corporations, and you may get a fist in your face.  The prices are direct from the sources, if you start trying to go cheapscape on an already great “factory direct” price (right out of the dirt), you will insult the source and maybe, you will be insulting the most knowledgeable person in the field on that particular stone.  This is what I was there for.  I love these guys and gals.  I just wish they weren’t so transient; so that if I run out of one of their slabs, I could just call them, but most live on the road, in tents in the wilderness, or out of hotel rooms across the country, doing shows.

Fakes are Everywhere
GIA doesn’t have a police force checking booths at these shows, so buyers beware.  There was one booth at the wholesale show, which looked to be very corporate and was said to represent mines in Mexico.  They had spent $5000 on their whole set-up, just to make $3000 on direct sales, handing out corporate brochures on the mines that they represent.  I had just loved the rainbow calsilicate that I was seeing everywhere, so I picked up a chunk from them along with the info, which featured pictures of the layers of this product being pulled from the mine walls.  It fooled me.  When I got home I googled this new stone only to find that GIA had deemed it a fraud, it is color enhanced and stabilized.  The whole scam boggles my mind, that if the gem trade has labeled this rocks a fraud, why peddle it so hard and with so much money to make people think it is the real deal.  I would gladly have bought some anyways.  It is a very popular stone, being real doesn’t matter much to the public as long as everyone is honest and forthcoming.  If they’d just come clean on the whole process, it might even go up in price.  Fordite is just paint, but people are paying upwards of $40 a pound for the stuff.

Other frauds, we saw were lab created gemstone packets being sold as real gems.  Synthetic counter top material was being sliced into slabs.  Glass moonstones, died howlite being sold as turquoise (Kingman mine and Sleeping Beauty no doubt).  Fake coral practically dripped off of the retail booths, and fake opals littered the place.  I got into an argument with one vendor who kept putting some opals in a jar in my face telling me that he had Andamooka.  When I told him that obviously he missed the memo on Andamooka, explaining that the matrix doesn’t turn black till you boil it in sulfuric acid after it is lapped; he just turned to the next potential victim and started his pitch again.

One guy who ran a booth at the civic center was this clean cut guy, who looked like an ex Chicago city postman.  He was wearing an optivisor and allowing customers to pick out a stone, and then they he would set it for them in one of his many boxes of pre-made settings.  He had these dark green stones that were labeled “moldavite.”  I heard one customer ask what it was, and he replied, “It’s a spiritual stone that the metaphysical folks just love.  I think it grows in the hills of Alabama.”

He he, I was reminded of the visit to my shop by the moldavite scammers.  I wondered how many karats, carats, or carrots that he was scammed into buying.  I picked one up to check it out in the loop, and sure enough it was Alabama moldavite, or slag from iron processing that people can find along any railroad track here.  It was used as a ballast rock when they laid the rails.  And, besides the experts tell us that real moldavite came from a cataclysmic impact by a meteorite, which is way more interesting of a story than what the postman in the optivisor was telling the crowd.  I also watched him patiently wait on the customer to pick out a stone, and then he would switch the stone with one that fit the setting that the customer wanted.  LOL, why even allow them to pick one out?

All in All
It was a lot of fun.  Just as in Tucson, it is an excellent opportunity to meet folks that can supply you with the materials that you need and want, the camaraderie with people in the field is excellent, and the gems were beautiful.  Shows are the only place for someone like me, who uses stone, to be able to look at what he is buying before breaking out the wallet.  There are no other options in my area.  But, keep in mind that you are not going to get the best deals in the world buying onesy and twosies of things, and BUYER BEWARE!!!

We also dined at some of the greatest (eclectic cuisine) restaurants that one of the little college cities had to offer and it was amazing.  The people are wonderful in this part of the world, and our cabin was just what was needed after a day of hauling rocks and Lora’s tons of beads around in the rain; no cell phone, no TV, nor internet, but a personal sauna, hot tub, and peace and quiet, with a drizzling rain just outside our cabin window.

Ultimately, I would love to one day visit one of these gem shows where the mentality is to offer quality over pricing.  I am not sure a business that looks for deals on crap over just looking for the best materials to make their works from is a benefit.  And, I am not talking about diamonds and platinum; I mean quality slabs, beads, and colored stones.  “Make it and they will come,” to quote that baseball movie.  Swamping us with junk, crap slabs that someone picked up in a buy out, is not giving us much of an assortment to look through.  The ideal gem show should have the customers, wholesale and jewelry artists alike, all asking to see the best materials that the vendor has.  Then if the vendor cannot produce some fantastic cuts in colored stones or slabs, the best Tahitian pearls, or true quality turquoise, then they should feel ashamed.  Instead, when you ask for the best, you get junk plopped down in front of you at good prices, but shameful materials to try to make things out of.  These shows might be a plethora of materials for the up and coming artists, but it is depressing for someone who might want to take the opportunity to pick up some great material that he can see before buying, and is willing to pay the price.  The shows are an awesome opportunity for quality merchandise to be gathered, but unfortunately the square, penny ante crowd has driven this show into a huge thrift store of mediocre at best to fraudulent materials.

(Run-on sentences, typos, and incorrect grammar will prevail here.  Please excuse the mess. These will all be cleared up before I send it to the publishers, once the book deal is done, LOL)

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