Cynthia's in Jewelry - Cynthia Himmelsbach

In returning to our regularly scheduled programming, this morning's find is Cynthia Himmelsbach of California.

As a side, one of the interesting things that I have noted in this journey to find Cynthias is that it is often very hard to figure out where the artist is from. This particular one doesn't have an address listed, let along town. The only clue is the statement on sales tax being charged in the state of California.

This particular Cynthia has used her childhood interest in beads as a stepping stone to her work in jewellery. She also took advantage of her 30 year career as a flight attendant to "bring home interesting findings, beads and rare objects from all over the world". She cited her job flexibility as a contributor to her ability to pursue her jewellery studies in "beading, wire-wrapping and metalsmithing".

I do like her work, it is organic in nature and ethnically inspired.


"Sea Wheel Ring"

Enjoy and until next Tuesday, go browse the web.

News Round-up

We will returned to our regularly scheduled programming next week, but there were just too many fun titbits in the news this morning for me to ignore this opportunity to share...

Everyone is going green, including the Indian military which is set to weaponize the world's hottest chili as a form of non-toxic tear gas... I'd say that's rather cool, except the pepper measures in at more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, so that's hot, hot, hot and then some.

Now this headline got my attention: You have to go through Murder to get to Purgatory, and it lead to this web which has the entire quiz on oddly named places. I've always liked oddly named places.

Spice adds life too apparently, not that some things aren't the spice of life, but cinnamon is really good for you, which means that I now have a perfectly good scientific excuse to have my cinnamon-sugared toast in the morning.

Lastly on the fun side was a little article on an Argentinian vegetarian spider, who knew?

Cynthia's in Jewelry - Cynthia Nash

Cynthia Nash is a jewellery designer from Nashville, Tennessee who uses Swarovski crystals in her designs.

The collection that caught my eye was "My Aunt Grace" where she states "She loved amethyst, and I loved her. It is simply wonderful, just like "my Aunt Grace."" My great Aunt Grace loved her amethyst as well. I remember as a child staring into her jewel box and admiring the amethyst rings and earrings. She had collected a couple of stunner's, which now would be antique, as they certainly would have been vintage already.



My Aunt recently passed away one day shy of her 92nd birthday on the 10th of March. She was the dynamic spinster aunt, who travelled around the world and worked across Canada. She was a women's liberationist before anyone really knew what the word meant. Married at 16, soon with 2 children, and separated from an incredibly abusive husband in her very early 20's; she made a decision to live and left her small rural Nova Scotia home for Halifax where she started in domestic services and then moved on to nurse's training and worked in the mental hospital. From there she worked in the 'old ladies' home', went to Windsor, NS for another job, so that she could be closer to her own family. When her mother died there was no great need to stay in the area, so she left for the west. Working with the First Nations youth in the Yukon, then Manitoba, then a girl's school in Ontario, and finally ending up at a very exclusive girl's school in Vancouver. After retirement, she returned to Windsor, Nova Scotia.

I adored her. The only glitch in our relationship occurred in the late 80's, when it was disclosed that her son was one of Canada's more notable poets and a long-time writer in residence at UNB. Those were difficult years and I mourned her passing long before it happened. We made up in recent years and had some nice visits. I will always be grateful for her influence and her assertion that not every woman is maternal material. I will always be grateful for the advice to follow your heart and your dreams. Life is richer because she lived.

Stumbling upon Cynthia Nash's collection for "My Aunt Grace" is rather serendipitous.

Until next Tuesday...

Cynthia's in Jewelry - Cynthia Bloom

Today's hunt turned up Cynthia Bloom Collectible Jewelry.

Cynthia Bloom of Austin, Texas, started her work in jewellery in 2001 when she reconstructed a vintage glass bead necklace and started to sell her pieces at the restaurant where she worked. She now has a good distribution of retail stores across the US through her wholesale efforts.

She focuses on using vintage, antique and rare Austrian, Czechoslovakian and Italian glass and crystals. There is a nice section on bead history on her web.




It is the vintage/antique glass that makes these pieces interesting and give, what could look like the more ordinary contemporary beading, a splashy and unique flare.

So until next Tuesday, go browse the web.

Cynthia's in Jewelry - Cynthia Gale

A brilliant thought hit me on the weekend: blog about other Cynthia's that make and/or design jewelry. Not a hard thing to find really, looks like there are a lot of us. It will be a rather fun adventure meandering around the web seeing what other Cynthia's do.

The first hit this morning yielded "Cynthia Gale", a Manhattan-based jewelry designer, who has designed a line of sterling silver work for the New-York Historical Society.




To quote the press release: "
Manhattan-based sterling silver jewelry designer, Cynthia Gale, is creating a buzz with her new Signature Collection, The City That Never Sleeps. The result of a collaboration with the New-York Historical Society, the jewelry is an aesthetic tribute to the New-York Historical Society’s Irving Browning collection, which consists of 1,885 gelatin silver photographic prints and ephemera relating to his career as a photographer and cinematographer."

Here is Cynthia Gale's site: Geo Art


So until next Tuesday, go browse the web.

Free Speech in Canada?

A couple of things crossed my computer screen this morning as I was scanning the news...

I'll start with a disclaimer, I am not of Israeli descent, nor of Palestinian... I am Canadian, and perhaps the reason why reading these news blurbs is so troubling today is that Canadian Pride and Patriotism is at a pretty substantial high right now with a record number of Gold medals at the just closed Vancouver Olympics. On a personal level I have stayed away from the politics of the Israeli/Palestinian debate. I always figured their political issues were theirs and didn't involve me regardless of how fair or unfair I feel certain political actions are or how many friends or colleagues I may have of either descent.

I'm a bit of an history buff too, and I see a similar strain of events having occurred in a particular European country in the 1930's... only this time it's different, it's current history and it's in the democracy of Canada.

First I would like to draw your attention to the arts news: Artists Unite to Protest Israeli Apartheid. I have no issue with artists standing up for what they believe in or feel. In fact art is one of the first areas that often shows, through literature, film, visual art forms, and music, sea-changes that are occurring in our national and international social milieu.

...but that isn't really the headline or story that got me, this is... Parliament to Vote on Tory Motion Against Free Speech By Corvin Russell, March 1, 2010. At first glance I was thinking that this was occurring in some back-water, non-progressive, democratic-in-name only nation that wasn't in this hemisphere. Opps, wrong! It's Canada, my home nation, my pride and joy, a bastion of free speech and democracy even if we have been legislating gun ownership since the 30's and been actively trying to disarm sane Canadian citizens for the past 25 years.

So here's my problem... being a self-absorbed Canadian and not really having given Israel or Palestine a passing glance for their conflicts... We have provincial and federal Parliamentarians bringing bills forward that will restrict the hard fought and hard won rights (through the battles of World War 2) to maintain democratic free speech in Canada, where we can as Canadians support any religion, ideology, political theory without fear of repercussion provided that we aren't being nasty and violent while we are protesting or supporting the ideology.

Seems to me that the some twisted up German psychopath went to work at first disarming the country's law-abiding citizens, picking out the troublemakers and having them quietly disposed of, stifling free speech by passing legislation in whatever their Parliamentary system was, segregating the population, and hosting some Olympic games in the late 30's. We called them Nazi's when we fought them in WW2 and lost 46,998 of the 2.5million Canadians that were enlisted in the effort.

I fear that we have started down a slippery slope that has nothing to do with skiing, sledding or skating.

When it happens in Canada, what are we going to call them?

I also wonder if I am still allowed to ask that question?
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