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I post a lot of process and work-in-progress photos on social media. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr – the guts of what I do is there. The experiments, the tedious bits, the successes, the flubs and mistakes, it’s there. It has it’s pros and cons, granted – sometimes showing unfinshed work to someone not involved in the process leaves me more psychologically vulnerable than I have the reserves for, and I end up hating everyone by the end of the day.

Okay, so, most people are truly, geninely, well-meaning, so I don’t literally hate them. I’m just having an emo-misunderstood-artist moment. That angsty artist side gets stupid-frustrated with being  unable to telekentically zap over the feeling of  “I can already see it finished, I just have to MAKE it now, I don’t need more ideas!” At that moment, part of me wonders if it’s worth it at all to take the time to explain (every other week) that I start a piece with a specific end result in mind and every choice made from start to finish is with that ideal in mind. Not just the ideal appearance, but other factors like weight, wearability, price, comfort, and if it’s something I’d be proud having my name attached to. And that’s… well, those are a lot of factors to keep in mind when creating a design, and no that suggestion won’t meet this critera, because it won’t work for {insert reasons here}.  :flails and makes unintelligible nosies offline:

That’s all in addition to how more ideas get scrapped than ever make it to the bench because they don’t meet some critera or another. But even when a design makes the bench, there are usually still tiny design choices to be made, and those, those are the ones that I don’t usually post about. There was one today that stood out hard core for me, and it was all because of a photo that I didn’t post.

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It’s not that I didn’t post it because I didn’t want to share it. I am all about sharing the cool and thought-provoking (to me, at least) moments. Nah, I didn’t post this photo today because I didn’t have the social-media-short words to explain how and why everything I do as a designer can be distilled down into that one photo. Everything I do was just right there in that photo to me, and I had no idea how to explain it and I knew that if I tried, I’d end up all angsty artist, and that’d be even more frustrating because it’s a moment I repeat over and over a hundred times each piece and I still can’t describe it so someone else willl understand easily because I barely understand it and take it for granted.

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It’s an important thing, this taken for granted and barely understood moment, because it’s one where I make a choice between two (or more) directions in a piece, often tiny ones. Normally, it’s no big deal being able to explain it or takaing it for granted, but… today, I made a choice that stood out to me, because… well, because I didn’t take it for granted and the understanding arrived.

I’ve been working on a larger necklace, one with a lot of my own, hand-wrought chain involved. I’d designed and made the center medallion out of silver clay, picked out all but the last pearls, and had made a new-to-me style of chain for the chain going around the neck on an idea that it might work better. That new chain style came out WAY better than I had hoped for, and so I made the choice to switch from a standard single loop in loop chain, the original plan, to this new style. While that is an important choice in our story, it’s not The Choice for our heroine and the mysterious necklace.

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While I had picked the largest chain for this piece, that still left me with the three long chain pieces hanging from the bottom of the piece, a bit like a bolo or fringe, but not quite either of them. Initially, they were going to consist of the smaller versions of the initial single chain, one of the smallest I make. No big deal, but a lot of work. However, once I put the new style of chain on the medallion, and tested the smaller standard single chain as the fringe, it just… didn’t feel quite right.

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It didn’t feel quite right to me, I should say. I ran it past Steve and he said it looked fine. I posted photos and people loved it. By all accounts, I could have forged ahead (hur hur) and the finished piece would have been just fine. Beautiful, even.

But some part of my brain, the part that knows and is well-and-thoroughly addicted to the feeling when a piece is done well, done right, done to the best of my abilities within the limits given, that part of my brain was throwing a conniption fit. Despite everything being well made, despite it being good enough, it just didn’t feel right and I could not get comfortable enough to keep working on it as is.

So I undid one strand of the fringe chain and made a very tiny version of the main chain. That new, more-work-involved, gorgeous chain, just a whole lot smaller. One link at a time, I reshaped, balled, shaped again, and wove together a miniature version of the larger, already challenging chain. All because I had this gut feeling I couldn’t shake that it was the right chai to use, even though I’d never made it or seen in before. It’d look the best, it’d feel right, and I couldn’t shake that feeling. Yes, it could go poorly (and I’ve had that happen before), my reasonable brain said, and it’s going to take SO much time; the chain links could be too big or the wrong shape or not hang well. But, that gut instinct said, at worst I’d be out a handful of tiny silver links and a few hours. At best, if what I could see in my mind worked out, it’d be worth it. It’d tie everything together, it’d finish the piece. Those tiny details would make the difference between pretty, but not finished and Complete. Right. Finished. It’d have that feeling when it all works together in harmony and nothing feels off, the way good art sucks you in and you are so busy noticing the whole you don’t notice that there are no flaws. If I was right, I could get closer to that.

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So I made the chain and hung one short strand of it next to the single chain I was initially going to use, and held them up next to each other. I looked at them side by side and knew. Gut instinct was right again.

So, evn though it was MORE work, and hard work at that, today I made the choice to go with the harder chain, the delicate echo of the main chain. It was more work and I could have gotten away with not, but dammit, repetition is a foundation of good design and coherence is important… and it just felt right.

I’ll be making this tiny chain for weeks yet, in between 2016 Snowflake orders and other designs. It’ll be a long slog of eye-straining links, but it will be worth it. That little detail, it’s the difference between something feeling not quite right and that feeling when something fits so perfectly together that you don’t even notice the details at first, just the breathtaking whole.

Sometimes that gut instinct belief in the importance of details and perfect fit is hard to convey on social media. I suspect mostly because unless you know the final feeling and initial idea, it’s hard to know if what’s in that in-progress shot comes even close. How could anyone else?

This is that photo. —>

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So I post those pictures, and hope that people enjoy seeing the process and maybe get to know me a bit better through them too. I appreciate the love and support behind the suggestions of what to do next, but I still hold out hope that eventually, they’ll understand what drives me – this idea in front of my mind’s eye that I’m chasing – and understand, just maybe, a bit of what it’s like being an artist, too.

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