All Things Metal Clay
An Expert Guide to Making & Selling Jewelry

(c) Elaine D. Luther 2006-2008 All Rights Reserved

For Thanksgiving, the blog carnival group is talking gratitude.

I’m grateful to be healthy, that my family is healthy. I’m grateful for the internet, and the opportunity to make money in my pajamas, for Precious Metal Clay, and artist-made glass beads, for space to work, computer-controlled kilns, fresh ripe peaches, and that gadget that cores and slices a pineapple all at once.

I’m grateful for friends who come over for dinner, and when I apologize that I haven’t cleared the books and paper off the dining room table, and say “I should do that before people come over”; they say, “We’re not people.”

I’m grateful to Charles Lewton-Brain and Tim McCreight for their generous sharing and documenting of metals techniques, including Charles’s low cost publications and free articles online.

And I’m really, really grateful that we’re all alive. Between my family and my husband’s family, we had an 15 month time period where 8 people died, including my father-in-law and my older brother.

In 2005, my daughter Sophia died.

I’m grateful that all that death has made me a more compassionate person. And a braver artist.

The shrine above is for my brother, Joe Luther. It was in the El Dia de los Meurtos show at the Indianapolis Art Center in 2006. On the right side is a picture of him as a little boy, on the other side, as an adult. The image on the back is a picture of a quilt that my mom and I made out of his clothes, to give to his children and widow, my dear niece, nephews and sister in law. Neither of us had ever made a quilt before.

Here are the links to the other folks in the carnival:

Kirsten Skiles

Lora Hart

Marco Fleseri

Angela B. Crispin

Tamra Gentry

Chris Parry

Lorrene Davis

Tonya Davidson

P.S. I’ve also made a shrine for my daughter, two, actually. Both were also in the Indianapolis Art Center show, in different years. One was made with PMC, sterling, copper, cloth and photo. You can see it in Tammy Powley’s book Picture Yourself Creating Metal Clay Jewelry, in the Gallery Section.