I know this is my jewelry website, but you should know that I’m also a painter, and I teach painting and drawing as well.  I’ve just started teaching a new series of live webcam classes at www.powhow.com  Here’s a link to my profile:

http://www.powhow.com/classes/moxymetals

Look it up if you or someone you know is interested in learning painting an drawing via computer.  And of course, as always, you can follow the link to Craftsy.com where I teach an online jewelry class.  Thanks for all the comments, and sorry to have abandoned my website for so long!  

- Max

So it had been since October when I finally got back in the studio the past few weeks and built something for myself!  What a crazy season of commissions I had this winter – not that I’m complaining.  Still, it was nice to get in and play.  A student in my lost wax casting class was attempting to carve a lion’s head, but was having some trouble with depth and proportions when working from an image.  I started to rough out a basic roaring face on a spare piece of ring wax – but it turned out my object wanted to be a bear!  So after the class I went ahead and finished it, and decided to experiment with some cast in place stones.  I set one CZ in the bear’s open mouth, and a topaz in each eye.  The CZ and one topaz survived the casting (though both were discolored), but one didn’t – so I pulled both eyes and set new stones.  This is the result – a very dramatic, but super fun ring.  I named it after my favorite bear lover, Timothy Treadwell, star of the Werner Herzog film Grizzly Man.  If you haven’t seen it, look it up! I hope you like the ring – check out the gallery below for more shots.

As a student at the Tyler School of Art, we discussed the ancient (and awesome!) technique of granulation, but I never got to try it.  I decided to try a bit with my sterling silver.  I wasn’t sure if it would fuse the way that gold is supposed to, so I added some extra easy solder, which I think made a mess of things.  Still, I’m pretty happy with the results – these little earrings with copper tube set 2mm topaz bits.  I wear them often, and like that they can dress up or down.  Here’s a shot with my finger in it so you can see the scale – teeny tiny!

This oxidized fine silver ring took me a marathon 12 hours, between carving, casting and finishing.  Inspired by a vintage design, I recreated this piece with 5 tube settings including birth stones of the couple commissioning it (topaz and sapphire).  The oxides on the hand carved band are supposed to reference wear and age.  I think the stones look quite nice against the grey.  I enjoyed the challenge of this ring very much, and was quite pleased with the results.  I hope it fits!  I just sent it off today…more shots below…

I finally finished the sterling rings I started a few months back to commemorate the life of my childhood horse, Beemer.  Here are the two finalized rings that weren’t finished at the last photo session.  I’ve added resin, tiny topaz cabs and horse hair, but of course.  I made the cab in the round ring much more prominent, and the horse hair in the triangle more noticeable.  I think it suits each ring.  I look forward to delivering these to their rightful owners, just in time for the holidays!

Check out more views below:

I made this sweet gypsy-like ring during a recent intro to silversmithing class.  It’s just a quick rough sample made of a lab-dyed “turquoise” and architectural decorative bronze.  I think it looks pretty nifty though!  Too bad I didn’t size it before I built it…it’s much too small for me…but others seem to be able to wear it just fine…here are some more snapshots -

Sadly, I lost my childhood horse this August.  He was 32, and suffered a debilitating neurological incident which I believe to have been a stroke.  Before we had to put him to sleep I kept some of his mane as a keepsake and good luck charm – this horse has been everything to me, after all.  After burying him with his herd mate in our Pennsylvania pasture, I decided I needed something more commemorative than a simple hole in the earth.  I decided to build 3 memorial rings, within which to suspend his mane, inspired in part by a friend’s work in college.  I will keep one of the rings, and the other two will go to Beemer’s caretakers (my family) in PA.  They’re sterling silver, resin and horse hair, though they are in different stages of completion in these photos.  Expect more later when all rings are sized and complete.

So we inherited a new vacuum at my home studio (www.3rdward.com) and I had to test it out.  I made this simple knotted half round wire ring out of pink wax.  It cast so well that I wish I had spent more time fixing up the surface and getting rid of some imperfections.  In silicon bronze this rustic larger ring works great on my forefinger or thumb, it makes me feel like a real badass, not dainty at all!  Check it:

I can’t for the life of me remember what stone I put on the bottom of these dainty 4 stone drops.  I made them for my wire wrapping class when I got bored while everyone else was working…then I lost one and had to make another only to find it on laundry day!  Now I have three.  These quick and easy drops are a great example of wire wrapping at its best, I’ve worn them several times and already got compliments – I’ll post wearing shots too, so you can see their full size- about 2.5″ long, with a 1 cm stone at the bottom.  These also include all sterling wire, and labradorite rondelles.  Here’s one more shot: 

Check out this sample ring cast from my organic sculpture class!  The linear detail on this bronze ring was left from the backbone of a cuttlefish, which I used as the mould for this cast.  Too bad about the gap, because no vacuum or centrifuge is used it can be difficult to cast thin objects like this using this method.  Anywho, I liked this simple band anyway.   Here are a few more shots: