Hello everyone

I just want to introduce myself for now.  I live in Fort Worth, TX and I'm in some sense a new artist, though I used to make jewelry years ago.  It is funny that I stopped to go to college and it has turned out that the college thing was a bust.  It is sad to me that I meet people almost everyday in the same position - we all say 'Oh yeah - you have a useless Ph.D. too!  Hi!'.  I recently read an article that said that you are more likely to make it in Hollywood than to get a professorship in today's market.  Of course, they didn't tell us any of that when I was in school.  SO, anyway, after wasting around 10 years of my life and seeing the direction that higher education is headed (I can go on and on about that so I'll save that for another blog) I decided to chuck the whole thing and go back to my art.  I have linked this page in with my etsy account and my facebook account and will back post some pictures in the coming days.

I love to make custom art most of all but I do make general pieces for inventory.  One thing you will notice if you see my work (or my house for that matter) is I have a thing for trees.  I consider my religious beliefs to be very heavily influenced by the Druids so that makes a lot of sense.  I also use animal parts pretty extensively in my art.  This has caused some debates on my facebook page, particularly among people who know I'm a vegan so I thought in this first post I would explain that to all of you.  I consider any work with an animal part to be a spiritual activity and strive to make each of my pieces using bones or fur or claws a tribute to the animal the part came from.  My animal parts come from three sources :

1) Naturally deceased animals - I live in a big city - animals get hit by cars and die for other reasons.  I recently collected a grackle that I'm pretty sure got killed by a hailstone in a storm.  I have dermestid beetles - my beetles can turn some nasty bits of roadkill into beautiful bones that I can use in jewelry.  Don't worry, part of the cleaning process is putting them in peroxide and no bugs or diseases can survive that.  I have also found a few sellers on ebay that collect bones when they go for walks in the woods and then sell them on ebay (admit it - you would never have thought to do that).  It is pretty easy to tell the difference between a bone that is cleaned by nature and one that is cleaned by a person so I'm confident when they tell me they found the bones they sell me.

2) Antique animals - I consider any claw, tooth, or skin of an animal that was killed prior to 1947, and will not be replaced by a new piece in someone's collection. to be fair game (no pun intended).  Again, in my mind working with an animal's remains is spiritual and if I were an animal I'd prefer to be used to make a piece of jewelry that would make someone happy rather than sit in a box forever.  Unfortunately once an animal is dead I can't bring it back, so at least I can bring back parts of it.

3) By-catch - Most of the fur I use are scraps of scraps.  Mostly I buy from another artist on etsy who reuses old fur coats and then gives me the scraps of what she was working on.  I also work with a Cherokee man who sends me the scraps of pieces he makes.  I also know a taxidermist who sends me skulls and bones (they don't use a good amount of the actual animal in the taxidermy process) of animals that he processes.  He's told me over and over again, it is me or the trash.  Again, I find it to be more respectful to use all of an animal than to throw them away.  Lastly, I know a couple of hunters who hunt for meat (trust me they might as well be interviewing for a job for all the questions I ask them).  I have recently started processing a skull or two for them.  You will probably get another blog post from me about why hunted meat is more humane than farmed meat, though I don't eat any of it.  Honestly, after processing a couple of skulls I don't know how a taxidermist could eat meat - I was eating toast the rest of the day both times!

So that's my ethics and my work.  Other than that I'm quite the animal lover - I love cats of all kinds (two of my spirit guides are big cats) and I'm pretty fond of rats and reptiles . . . and arachnids  . . . really pretty much anything that isn't a human (or a dog - quite honestly I just don't like the way dogs smell - sorry to all you dog lovers - I'd stop someone from hurting a dog and I'd care for one that was in need but they just aren't my favorite).