Kinetic Loops

Hi, everyone!  Before I show you my new earrings, bear with me for a moment.  Life has been kind of chaotic at Casa Meridy lately.  My daughter Rhia, her husband Ken, and their two children, Kaity (10) and KJ (almost 4), are moving out this week after living with Rog and me for almost five years!

As you can imagine, our house is full of boxes and piles of things to give away and pack...and our hearts are full of memories and love and mixed feelings.  The move has been a long time coming--and much needed--but even so, we've had such a wonderful time living together that it's a little bittersweet too...maybe even more than a little, to be honest.  😔

I haven't made a lot of jewelry lately, but my latest pair of earrings are a lot of fun:  Kinetic Loops!  As you can see, they're chainmaille (of the very easy sort), made of bright and shiny aluminum rings.  The aluminum is extremely lightweight, which makes the earrings easy on your ears.  They're 2-1/2 inches long and  move around like little kinetic sculptures in your ears as you move.

Here they are hanging:

Below they're laying flat--quite a difference from the movement you can see in the photo above.

The largest rings in these playful earrings are 3/4", made of 14 gauge bright aluminum wire; the smallest are 1/8" and 18 gauge.  These could be made with just about any metal, but I'd think they would get pretty heavy!

They're wonderfully versatile, since they go with anything, a dressed-up look or your most casual jeans. 

Thanks for reading, as always!

Our kids and grandkids are starting their move today as I write this.  They're only moving a couple of miles away, so we'll still see them a lot (and I'm a primary chauffeur for school pickups and after-school mom stand-in).  But I still need to make sure I have enough Kleenex for these next few weeks.  💗

I'll be back in two weeks with something new--it's my birthday week! 

xoxo
Meridy

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We're All Ears :: December Reveal

If you haven't watched the video inspiration for December, please watch it now.

Breaking Wave from PLEBIAN DESIGN on Vimeo.

This video is just mesmerizing to me. I can watch it over and over again. If I worked at this company I would never get anything done!

The kinetic movement is so very intriguing. So that is what I was trying to capture with my earrings. But of course earrings are the perfect kinetic structures with their dangles and moving parts. And the very neutral color palette forced me to think more about the way the pieces interacted and less on the balance of the colors and how they work together.

The first thing that caught my eye in this video are the round wooden balls that are suspended. I remembered that I had this strand of stone beads (no idea what kind) that I picked up at the Bead & Button show someplace. They have the perfect coloration and mottling like the balls in the sculpture. I knew that I wanted to keep it simple and suspend them on some hammered steel paddles. I made the ear wires too, but they are in the wrong gauge wire, too thick for my ears. So I will have to swap them out. But they reminded me of a Galileo's pendulum. Simple and unadorned, the movement is what speaks for them.

 Do you recall that point in the video when the balls are suspended in the air and you can spot a labyrinth or a flower shape if you are in the exact right viewing spot? That is what I was trying to achieve with these. I call them "moveō" which is Latin for 'I move.' These took a lot of engineering (and a lot of swearing) to get them to hang just right. They look great dangling, but don't drop them! I suspect that these would be the kind of earrings that would be eternally tangled in your jewelry box that you never wear them.But I do like the way they have this suspended look and the motion.

I am a big fan of watching shows where they show you the inner workings of the factory. I love to see how the conveyor belts move and see all the parts work together to get the job done. In the video, I found it just as fascinating to watch the inner workings of the mechanism that moved all the pieces as I did watching those balls morph in mid-air. All those miles of cable, all those little spools and smooth running gears. Fascinating! I tried to recreate that by making an assemblage of cogs and gears. That chain is my absolutely all time favorite. I have been seeking spools of this for years. I find it in little bits at craft stores and I always buy all they have. Wish I could find a larger supply! I love the dark and the light of it. These earrings called 'Working Parts' have a decidedly industrial feel but with an Art Deco flair. 
 
What is it about this video that fascinated you?

That's it for me. I hope that you enjoyed this month's inspiration and could find the time to play along. The InLinkz code will be open for one week in case you want to come back and add your link. I will see you on Friday, Jaunary 2nd for our next We're All Ears inspiration.

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We're All Ears :: December Inspiration

'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." ~Edgar Allen Poe
 
Last month was a whole lot of fun to see how you translated an animated short into an array of beautiful earrings. I hope you don't mind that I am inclined to bring in another little short film to inspire you!

I stumbled on this amazing art installation and just knew that it had to be our inspiration. This type of art is called anamorphic, a form of perspective. Anamorphic art uses a "distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. The word "anamorphosis" is derived from the Greek prefix ana-, meaning back or again, and the word morphe, meaning shape or form" (source:Wikipedia). Each anamorphic image is special and distinct and has it's own way to be looked at. You need to look and be surprised by the distortion of your expectations.

Breaking Wave is an anamorphic kinetic sculpture created for Biogen-Idec's new headquarters in Cambridge, MA. The sculpture was created by Plebian Design and Hypersonic.

Breaking Wave tells the story of the search for patterns, and the surprising results that come by changing our point of view. 804 suspended spheres move in a wave-like formation. When the wave crests and breaks, the balls hover momentarily in a cloud.

From almost anywhere in the room, this cloud is purely chaotic, but step into one of two hidden spots, and this apparent chaos shows a hidden pattern.

From the first, a labyrinth hints at the search for knowledge, and from the second, a Fibonacci spiral inspired flower reminds us of the natural order and patterns found in nature.

Above the sculpture lies the mechanism that drives its motion. A motor drives a large rotating stainless steel cam. Thirty-six rollers follow the contour of the cam, which traces out the overall waveform. Each roller slides on a linear track, pulling a cable that spins one of the 36 output shafts. Distributed along each shaft are different sized drums from which the wooden sphere (coated in zinc and steel, and then rusted chemically) are hung. As the shafts rotate, the drums pull the balls up and down – larger drums pull balls higher. In this way, the size of the 804 drums mechanically programs the images hidden in the cloud of balls. The piece was built with many hands, and several miles of wire rope (source: Hypersonic).

Breaking Wave from PLEBIAN DESIGN on Vimeo.

Watch the short video if you can (make it full screen by clicking the little X shape in the bottom right corner for maximum impact!). I love seeing the undulating waves that these little wooden spheres create. And even more fascinating to me is watching the gears and cogs of the mechanism that makes the sculpture come to life.

Earrings are, by their very nature, little kinetic sculptures. They move and dangle and can be different when viewed from alternate angles. More than any other jewelry, earrings are easy to play with motion and patterns and illusion. Keeping color to a minimum, will help you emphasize the structure and the movement.
I hope you will explore this with your earrings this month!

What inspires you about this the motion in this sculpture?

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Friday, December 19th.

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