The stock market is crashing and the air around here is thin. Both take my breath away. To get my mind off those situations, I thought I would do what I love to do best. It too takes my breath away. A glorious new jewelry design does that to me, but in a good way.
Design into night
It was night. I spent the day mucking around with my freshwater pearls and gemstones. My jewelry design inspirations come largely from the stones themselves. The dark ones held special attraction for me during those mucking-around moments.
The design process goes something like this: lay out a design on the bench, look, ponder, and walk away. Return to the bench, rearrange the design, look, ponder, walk away, and repeat. This process goes on from daytime into the night. All this while the market plummets, I gasp for breath, write nothing for Y!CN, and show no accomplishment for my hours at work.
But a madness came over me at midnight. Here in the Rockies, we are colder and closer to the cosmos, being at higher altitudes than most anywhere else. We see the night sky darker than most anywhere else. And we see the stars and all that glitters up there at night with more brilliance than elsewhere.
Enter the madness of midnight
My necklace design was inspired by these nighttime delights. I named the piece “Midnight Madness” for the time of its fabrication and the wild euphoria I felt as the design came to completion.
“Midnight Madness” was made from freshwater pearls including nacre pearls, large baroque pearls, and small so-called “potato” pearls, all in the darkest gray or black shades in my collection. Gemstones in the design included black quartz druzy, jet, matte onyx cubes, polished onyx rounds and moonstone crystals. The sparkle of sterling silver and pewter spacers punctuated the creation. All of these elements align within an ordered yet randomly dynamic arrangement of brushed silver cirles and ellipses resembling planetary orbits.
Newfound energy of night
Like the midnight sky, the necklace included the many and varied textures we see in the darkness. I cannot claim to have seen the planets or their orbits, but I know they are out there in the cosmos. This special time of day–night–brings out a “resonance” with some people. I was at one with the night in the moments “Midnight Madness” emerged from the bench.
We allow the contrast with daytime to “let it all hang out” at night without the moderation of day. This allows us to see stuff we can’t normally see and experience the alternative delights of the night. It shows in our artwork as more intense, wilder, darker design elements, but with a special sparkle inspired by far away fires and explosions of cosmic energy.
Still breathless
I remain breathless at high altitude as I watch my investments melt away in the light of today. But the exhilaration of “Midnight Madness” recalls the source of a new, creative, cosmic energy I found in the night.