Compass necklace

Making this piece was like solving a puzzle game where the words given to me were: movement, compass, circle and way.

Can you see how I connected the dots?

PS By the way, for this piece I have used the map of Philly

ACC Award of excellence 2009

Last week at the American Craft Council show
in San Francisco I was awarded with
the Award of Excellence 2009.

This is is for me such an honor that I still don't find the right words to describe my gratitude and satisfaction.
And now I must thank all the dear friends that strongly advised me to do the show and support me when I really needed it!!

SALLY

Right now I'm working with the colorful pages of the RISKO book.
The princess earrings are the the first of my very new line SALLY, inspirited by Risko drawings and his use the solids colors to which I wanted to add a certain 70's flavor.

By the way character in the page I used for these earrings is princess Diana.

Seeting up my facebook fan page

I've finally took a leap in the FACEBOOK world BUT (well with me nothing is as simple as it looks!!) I did a little mistake...because maybe not everybody knows that behind Frucci deSIGn there is a dyslexic person, who once more has proven that no matter how hard she tries she'll never learn how to spell DeSiGn!
So what happen was that I set up the FAN PAGE with a huge misspelled title, now I have moved it to a new FAN page...where the title was check by non-dyslexic fresh eyes!

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

The SNAG crowd migrated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a special night where we had the pleasure to attend the Jewelry in Motion 2009 (show curated by Gail Brown) in combination with the wonderful Cezanne and beyond exhibition.
The first was a delightful catwalk performance of worn pieces of jewelry by 34 artists.

It was rare opportunity to see the pieces displayed on the body, some of the pieces were worn by the artists and all the models performance was absolutely fantastic!
For the complete list of artists and their links see here.

The second is an exhibition that features Cézanne work, displayed alongside works by several artists for whom Cézanne has been a central inspiration and whose work reflects, both visually and poetically, Cézanne’s extraordinary legacy.

I must say, I really enjoyed the evening and the Jewelry in Motion show, but some of the criticisms I've heard was that the show did not have enough metal work per se, instead fiber was the main protagonist of the evening. I personally love the cross contamination of fields, but I can see the point of these voices. Any comment on this topic is more than welcome!

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

the complete list of exhibiting artists

Harriette Estel Berman,
Christine Bossler,
Raissa Bump,
Sunyounbg Cheong,
Jennifer Crupi,
Steven Ford/David Forlano/Maryanne Petrus,
Rebekah Frank,
Gayle Friedman,
Aliyah Gold,
Jill Gower,
Eun Yeong Jeong,
Satomi Kawai,
Lonna Keller,
Jocelyn Kolb,
Monika Krol/ Danielle Rizzolo,
Sharon Massey,
Karen Misher,
Jillan Moore,
Masako Onodera,
Emiko Oye,
Michelle Pajak-Reynolds,
Jimin Park,
Anya Pinchuk,
Stephen Saracino,
Brittany Sondberg ,
Rebecca Strzelec,
Anthony Tammaro,
Billie Jean Theide,
James Thurman,
Erin Williams
and Renee Zettle-Streling.

May 21st: First day of REVOLUTION

Doug Bucci officially opened the conference introducing the theme of the conference: REVOLUTION.
As also reported on his blog “Revolution can be defined in many ways: a sudden change; a movement against a current situation; the actions of individuals or groups of individuals "revolutionaries." On SNAG's 40th anniversary, this conference will provide the critical context to consider the future of our profession, provide us the opportunity to reflect upon our history, and ultimately celebrate the independent thinkers and decisive movements that ensure change, growth and evolution in our discipline”.

I know I should probably write an objective summary of the conference and leave my personal opinion for the final comments...but I won’t! I can't help saying something on this first!
I think the conference gave a lot of attention to the past revolutionary but missed the opportunity of discussing the future!
Let me explain a bit more what I mean, I personally am a fond of history and I truly believe that knowing the past is the key to a complete understanding and appreciation of present and future, BUT the conference was all about the history (exception made for few brilliant talks). I would have loved to see all the talks exploring more the future aspect of jewelry, of craft and of the artist profession. I would have loved listening to how the big minds who took the stage are foreseeing the future.
I feel we have missed a good opportunity to discuss revolutions going on now. Some examples?

• 3D modeling and CAD/CAM
• new metals
• alternative materials
• interdisciplinary

I’ll discuss these themes a bit more in details later, now let’s get back to the first day of REVOLUTION!

Stanley Lechtzin was first awarded with SNAG Lifetime Achievement Award and he was also the first speaker with a talk titled “Seizing the Opportunity”.

He presented a collection of original old video/audio of revolutionary artists and teacher of the past. My take home message from him is all in title of his talk, recognize and seize the opportunities when they come up!

Second speaker of the day was Dr. Sandra Alfoldy, her presentation was titled “Imagining Ourselves: Looking into the Future of Craft”.

I didn’t really hear any future direction of the craft in her talk, but for a more in depth description/analysis of her talk I have to link to Gabriel Craig’s blog post.
Gabriel is definitively very passionate about this topic and you can follow the on-going discussion on crafthaus started by him.

The spot lights in the afternoon were for Leo Caballero, the co-founder of Klimt02 and his talk titled “Global Networking in a Global Community”.

Leo’s talked about the creation of K02 as an answer to the need of a reference space for contemporary jewellery artists and galleries. His presentation was divided into 5 sections:

• Why not? Or how K02 was born
• Creation, art selection, quality
• Principles and objectives
• The net, new technologies and K02
• What about the future

At the end a video was played with a sequence of artists’ images/videos alternated by inspiring quotes.
Leo suggestion for the future was: “interaction is the key for the future”.

The afternoon section was concluded by the Juried Student Presentation, that you can see in the presentation below

SNAG conference: The Professional Development Seminars

The first afternoon was dedicated to the pre conference Professional Development Seminars.
Marla Johnson Norris from Aristotle marketing company gave two talks.
The first one was about improving website performance and design and a second one focused on social network.
As a self-taught internet enthusiast, I really enjoy both her presentations, which I found were very informative.
In particular in the first one she explained with practical examples what to do to draw more traffic to artists’ website. Some were new information for me, as for example she pointed out this very useful website to find the best keyword phrases for your website. Some other things she talked about weren’t new to me, but they were pretty much obscure!
An example? Title tags!
I knew they were somehow important, but why? No clue..until tonight!
What I also liked about her presentation was that she used as examples websites from people in the audience to make those concepts really pertinent and actual.
I’ll be posting more details about her presentation in the following weeks...so stay tune!
In the mean time check out her profile page, it is filled with tons of good info!

The second part of the seminar focused on The Evolving Role of the Gallery in a Virtual World of Commerce. Five galleries owners (Karen Lorene of Facére, Patti Bleicher of Gallery Loupe, Whitney Couch of ObjectFetish, Sienna Patti of Sienna Gallery, Beth Ann Gerstein of Society of Arts and Crafts and Ruth Synderman of Works Gallery) talked about how their role in these days of difficult economy is changing and what they are doing to “brew” new jewelry collectors. And I like what Karen Lorene said about this last point “every single person that buys a piece of jewelry is a collector, he/she may not know it yet” and her suggestion was to work in order to make those “unconscious” collectors aware.
The other hot topic of the first evening brought up by the PDS organizers (Andy Cooperman, Harriete Estel Berman and Don Friedlich and Ken Bova) was of course the relationship between the galleries and internet.
The virtual world can be an excellent marketing tool for galleries and all five galleries are very active in this sense, but on the other hand it is also a source of completion. And at this point of the discussion Etsy of course was mentioned, because it represents a very good alternative for artists who wants to sell their art without paying the 50% commission to the galleries. Since I'm an Etsy seller, who is also looking into galleries representation I was really interested in hearing what was their opinion about this. Both Sienna Patti and Whitney Couch respond came as a surprise (good surprise) to me, they affirmed that they would represent artists who are also selling their art on Etsy (provided of course they are a good fit for their galleries). They also said that they don’t see Etsy as the bad guy but rather as good and stimulating competition.
My last remark of this meeting is that after attending the conference I’m even more convinced that I want to find gallery representation.

And last but not least, at 7 pm the famous pin swap took place!

I was a little intimidated at first, but after braking the ice swapping my first pin with Eliana Arenas the only regret of the night was that 30 pins are way too few, next year I’ll have a big supply!
(more photos of my pins plunder are coming soon!)

First day balance: very positive!

SNAG Conference: Day 1

Here we are...the conference has started!
This is the first glimpse of it, the registration desk looking pretty busy

By the way, being my very first attending a SNAG conference, and I’ll try to post a new comer prospective of this experience.

Getting ready for the SNAG conference

For the first time in my life I’ll be attending a conference which has nothing to do with science:
the SNAG's 38th Conference "REVOLUTION" in Philadelphia.

This is very exciting but it is also scaring since I’m not really sure what to expect...I guess I feel like the night before a blind date!

For the moment I can just tell why I signed up
Networking: I want to finally meet some of the people that I regularly meet on line (especially on Crafthuas) and more.
Education: I’d like to learn as much as I can, since this is for me a relatively new field.
Sharing: I would like to exchange experiences and hear from other artists about their work and life.
Curiosity: I heard many different things about the conference and I really wanted to see it for myself.
Fun: I wanted to treat myself with a four days of nothing else than jewelry, is there anything more fun?!

There are already a couple of things that put me in the conference mood, I have booked my portfolio review and I have designed new pins (work in progress below) for the PIN SWAP, apparently one of the funniest activity of the first day of conference.

The adventure will start on Wednesday May20th with the Professional Development Seminar organized by Andy Cooperman, Harriete Estel Berman and Don Friedlich.
Main focus of this first day will be four lectures and discussion designed to offer information to establishing and maintaining a career in the arts with a special emphasis on the fast growing virtual world.
Speaking of which, I’ve been asked to blog about my first SNAG time, along with Emiko Oye and Gabriel Craig.
I’ll also try to twitter as much as I can while I’m there, so if you like to get quick updates on this event follow me on twitter.

March in the Press

Last March I was honored to be featured in VOGUE ITALIA

Needless to say, seeing my name on the article is beyond the imagination of a girl who grew up reading about fashion on the pages of Vogue!

What is also very important to me is that the ECO-FRIENDLY JEWELRY is getting the attention that deserves.

And here is a closer look to COUPY cufflinks , made of recycled paper coming pages of a chemistry equipment catalog.

CUT/ FOLD/STITCH:

Paper/ Metal

Finally the day of the exhibition has arrived!
I have been invited to participate to this show at the Aaron Faber gallery in New York.
These are my 12 pieces:

The show explores the relationship between two studio jewelry materials - metal and paper - and the techniques artists share in manipulating these materials to create contemporary jewelry.


There are 95 works in the exhibition, created by 23 studio jewelry artists, most from Europe and the United Kingdom, as well as Israel, the United States and Canada.

The exhibition continues through April 19, and is a highlight of the SOFA NYC 2009 exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory, this year taking place April 16 through April 19.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Ingrid Adriaenssens
Noa Goren-Amir
Ursula Bonderer
Shimara Carlow
Jocelyn Chateauvert
Roland Dubuc
Francesca Vitali
Simone Haag
Gerlinde Huth
Pawel Kaczynski
Anna S. King
Esther Knobel
Natalia Krasnodebska
Soledad Kussrow
Chihiro Makio
Ayesha Mayadas
Biba Schutz
Catriona Stevenson
Dorothee Striffler
Silvia Uhlenbruch
Myung Urso
Els Vansteelandt
Arek Wolski



If you happen to be in the Big Apple between today and April 19th, don't miss the chance to visit the show:

Aaron Faber Gallery
666 5th Av/W 53rd St
New York, NY 10103

CAST YOUR VOTE

About three years ago I design the logo for Frucci Design.
The idea came combining some of the things I like:
Drawing, Multifunctionality, Photoshop/Illustrator, Matisse, My Hair Style (here I must spend few more words, I have had the same hair style since a was a little girl, surely I did change it especially during my 20s, I once was suicide blond, but I always go back to my black bob).
One day I started drawing a very simply self-portrait and I decided to do it using Illustrator (this is my way to learn new tricks with this kind of software), and I don’t even know why I started fitting letters into what it was suppose to be my hair…and all of the sudden they really made sense and FRUCCI DESIGN’s logo was born. And to this day, I find very interesting to see people reactions to it, some only sees the name placed in a funky way other only the shape of the bob but no letters.

During these three years Frucci Design has grown and I now feel it’s time for me to start using a maker’s mark on my metal work and most importantly my real name initials FV. The other day I found myself once again opening a new Illustrator file. After few sketches I decided to adapt the old logo (which is not really suitable for a tiny mark) to my name initial.

Now I have to decide and I need your help! Which of these six options do you prefer?

To cast your vote please write your favorite design number in the comment section. Keep in mind that the final design will be made in to a tiny stamp probably 1/16" x 1/16" (1.5mm x 1.5mm).

Sarurday morning bench mess

I really enjoy keeping track of my creative process, so here it is my Saturday morning working table snap shot

At the moment I'm working on several projects.
I have just finished four new Petali Bracelets.
And I have also cured almost 150 paper elements, some will be used to make more Rosarios and other are going to be in a very new necklace.

I generally like to work at one project at the time, but lately i started feeling time is flying so fast that i have to do more things at once, which doesn't necessary means I'm producing more, but I feel more productive!

Vi presento Clizia

the new eco-earrings collection

I have been looking for a new origami design for some time now and today I’m finally launching my last addition to the Girasoli family: Clizia.

As for the rest of the “family” Clizia earrings are based on eco-design. Colorful magazine pages are cut in little square, folded and beads are stitched on.

And if you are wondering about the name Clizia, here is the story:

In Roman mythology Clizia was in love with Apollo (god of light and the sun), who abandoned her for Leucothea. Clizia was so angered that she told Leucothoe's father about the affair and the rival was buried alive. Apollo in anger at Clizia left her sat naked, with neither food nor drink, for nine days on a rock staring at the sun, Apollo, and mourning his departure. After nine days, the suffering turned Clizia yellow and brown, and she was transformed into a sunflower (Girasole) which turns its head always to look longingly at Apollo's chariot of the sun.

Work in progress

I'm working on some new pieces for an exhibition at the Aaron Faber Gallery next March (more details about the exhibition will come later)

Here is a snap shot of what's going on on my desk this morning:

I have just finished to embroider SCRIBBLE PETALI

Sunday afternoon desk mess

This is a snap shot of my desk last Sunday afternoon

I'm trying to study new possible shapes for my origami paper jewelry line.

More origami paper jewelry

My treasury made the front page

It has been a while since I tried to get a treasury list on Etsy. But last Friday, I was online for quite sometime I got lucky! I just had to wait for 5 minutes and I managed to grab a list.

The theme was Arm Ornament, and it made the Front Page of Esty!
Which is very rewarding for two main reason:
first, I love to be able to show off the great talent artists on Esty and second (a more narcissistic reason maybe) I like that my "list making" tastes are Front page worth ;-)

And if you're curious to see what my arm ornament, check them here

Last bit of Xmsas

This morning setting Xsmas ornaments aside

last red ball hanging on my dinning room wall

Happy 2009!