RING No. 341

Today I gave a presentation about my work for the other grads and Kathleen. We prepare and execute these presentations each semester so that when we have completed our MFA, we are prepared to give professional, timely, and efficiently edited artist lectures/talks. I find them very beneficial and I am so fortunate to be a part of a program that prepares me for "the real world". I still have a lot of work to do on creating the "perfect presentation", but as a professor once said (referring to an artist statement, but the same can be true of a presentation) "It is something that is always a work in progress...things will change in your work, and you learn to edit out items so that only the pertinent information remains". I am sure I butchered that quote, but it was a while ago that I heard it and I am sure you get the point.

After the presentation, we came back to the studio to discuss our readings, then I did a few things around the studio and went to the GSS meeting. They served a yummy lunch and I actually got to speak to the senate on behalf of the committee I helped to start. It was a very interesting and thought provoking meeting today with topics and items of business that had me steady jotting down notes. After the meeting, I went back to the studio and then home. I have a research paper due on Friday and still have a good bit of work to do. I worked for a while and then came back to the studio to make my ring and help my students with their casting.

Ring No. 341, "Serres on Love", is simple (because of time constraints) but represents something very important that stuck in my head from the reading I did for Art History Class (Land & Environmental Art) that was discussed on Monday. The excerpts that I am quoting below comes from Natural Contract by Michel Serres. Serres(French) was a philosopher and author. The writing is all about how we should have a "Natural Contract" so as to preserve the earth instead of destroying it. Throughout the semester we read many different things most all of which had to do with Ecology. I found it to be very eye-opening and refreshing.

Ring No. 341 is formed into one of the simplest shapes there is, a heart. It is meant to illustrate how easy (even as hard as it may seem to love certain people) it is to show and give love to everyone and everything (after all, Its free to Love!).....

"Without love, there are no ties or alliances. Here, finally, are the two double laws. Love one another, this is our first law. For two thousand years, this is the only one that has been able to help us avoid, at least for a few moments, hell on earth. This contractual obligation is divided into a local law asking us to love our neighbors and a global law requiring us to love at least humanity, if we do not believe in a God. It is impossible to separate the two precepts, under penalty of hatred. Loving only one's neighbors or one's own kind leads to the team, the sect, to gangsterism and racism; loving men as a group, while exploiting one's neighbors and kin, is the typical hypocrisy of preachy moralists. This first law remains silent about mountains and lakes for it speaks to men about men as if there were no world. Here then is the second law, which asks us to love the world. This contractual obligation is divided into the old local law that attaches us to the ground where our ancestors lie, and a new global law that no legislator, as far as I know, has written, which requires of us the universal love of the physical Earth. It is impossible to separate the two precepts, under penalty of hatred. Loving the whole Earth while laying waste the neighboring landscape, this is the typical hypocrisy of moralists who restrict the law to men and to language, which men alone use and master; loving only one's own land leads to inexpiable wars caused by the passions of belonging."

"There is nothing real but love, and no other law." - Michel Serres

I challenge you to Love! :)

Thank you for reading! Goodnight!

Materials: Sterling Silver
Dimensions: 1.25 x 1.5 x .03125 inch