We're All Ears :: May Reveal

"Sure he was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards
...and in high heels!" ~ Bob Thaves, creator of the Frank & Ernest cartoon

With a challenge like this, that is at once visual and auditory, I spend a lot of time looping the music and the video to really immerse myself in the inspiration. Luckily, this song is quite nuanced and intriguing and the video is equally as fun to watch. Each time I watched it, over and over, I found something new to focus on. One time it was her dress...another time her shoes...then his perfectly hued wardrobe...and yet another was on the walls that served as their colorful backdrop.

As I watched, I had a pad of paper with me. I sketched shapes that seemed to recur to me, wrote notes on the colors that jumped out at me most (and the ones where I liked her outfits ;-) and made a whole word cloud of the words and phrases that came to mind.

I was struck by the give and take of the dance. The measured steps. The total control. And the giving into the seduction. These dancers are different, unique, distinct when separate, but they move as one. That is what I set out to capture with my earrings.

I wanted to bring lightness, an ease, effortlessness to these earrings, but yet I also wanted them to be strong and substantial. They also needed to have an element of male/female, yin/yang, give/take. And they had to have COLOR!

Now I have to admit that I don't leave myself much time to do any of these challenges. I sat down on Wednesday evening and thought that I could pull off a rather complex technical feat, but that didn't quite happen.

I have been researching the mysterious art of plique-a-jour which literally means "glimpse of daylight." I intended to make organic, flowing wire forms that held translucent color in the cells. Plique-a-jour is much like cloisonne, but there is no backing, so the light travels through the cells (or cloison) much like stained glass. I wasn't able to do exactly what I have in mind...but my mind is still racing with ideas to make this happen for real that will continue to feed my creative hunger. I WILL master what I have in my head. These are only the beginning.

So tonight, after I got home around 8:30 after a baseball double-header an hour away (we won both games - yea!), I set to work making a total of 4 different pair (I was shooting for 6...not bad!).

 

 I formed the shapes in my favorite dark annealed steel wire and then colored some of the cells. I think the naked wire forms look pretty darn great, but the color just makes them pop, and when I figure out how to make them more translucent, I know they will be even better!

They still need to be sealed, and perhaps some resin over the colors to make them last at bit longer. They are just experiments at this point, prototypes, if you will. But I am encouraged by the way this is turning out.

 
You will notice that I don't have any ear wires.... I want to make them myself but right now it is nearly 2:00 am and I have to get some sleep! I didn't think they looked good with any of the mass-produced ones that I have, so that will wait. Plus, they were technically still drying! ;-)

I can't wait to see what marvels you created from this color-filled and musical inspiration!

 

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