Have you graduated?

Yes, graduation season is upon us.  Whether it is high school, college, preschool or anything, it seems like everyone around me is graduating.  My daughters are almost there...not that I am ready for it!

But my question today is, have YOU graduated?  To me graduation means an end to one learning environment and maybe a move to another.  I think I should rephrase that question though.  The real question is...should we ever really graduate? 

Life is learning.  It is expanding our minds and taking in knowledge.  As an artist we need to keep that information stream flowing.  Whether we are taking classes, reading books, teaching others, even just looking at the world around us, we should always be learning.  Our path ends when we think we know all we need to know.  The world around us is full of new things and experiences that we get to enjoy everyday. 

So enough philosophical stuff....on to some pictures!

I love to learn, and am always reading and watching tutorials.  But living in the Bahamas kind of puts a crimp in my style...lol!  So I am now the queen of online classes.  One of my favorite sources is Craftcast where you can watch live classes or even prerecorded ones.  An amazing metal clay artist, Wanaree Tanner (a recent Saul Bell award winner!) taught a wonderful class that I enjoyed taking.  Here are my attempts at following instructions...lol

This is the first copper torc bracelet I made.  It is COPPRclay set with Smokey Quartz bullet cabs.  It was so much fun, it opened me up to so many new ideas of what you can do with copper clay and copper tubing!

This is my most recent bracelet.  It is ArtClay Copper and Silver set with garnet bullet cabs.  Holy crap was this fun!  It really fed into my anal retentive side...I love spending time putting all the pieces together.  I plan on making many more of these and see lots of ideas and paths to go down with it!

So topic to discuss is, how do you keep your creative juices flowing?  How do you keep learning and growing?