I was surprised when they not only were chosen, but ended up as Editor's Choice!
That set was made of pewter that I then plated in copper. Here is a picture of a matching set I made into a bracelet.
30 December 2012
Beads 2008
The same friend I mentioned yesterday handed me a contest entry about the same time, for Interweave's Beads 2008. I decided to enter a set of beads I had just designed for Thanksgiving.
28 December 2012
A Change Of Use
A while back a friend of mine suggested I market my creations using my name instead of my current business name ( +Purple Dragon Gifts ) . I did not follow her advice until this week. As of today this blog is changing format from a semi-political essay and neat stuff I like blog into the publishing of myself as an artist blog.
My name is Greg Krynen and my artwork uses many mediums for expression. If part of being a professional means earning money then I have been a professional artist since about fourth grade. During that year of school I found a short piece of telephone trunk cabling on the side of the road. Upon looking at the wires I saw all of the different colored coatings and decided to start wire wrapping them into rings and such to give to my friends. Shortly thereafter I received requests from my male friends to custom make items for them so they could give them to their female friends. An entrepreneur was formed.
Since that time I have dabbled in silver work, aluminum casting, brass casting, machine tool operation, pewter casting, wood working, cement casting, welding, polymer clay, paper crafts, sewing, costuming and props, lapidary, ceramics and many other forms of artistic media expression. Heck, I have even tried my hand at visual arts through acting, film shooting, video shorts, print, and audio recordings. I will never claim to be a master but recognition has been bestowed upon me.
Regardless of the medium being worked with I often find myself creating jewelry pieces. Currently a few projects are leaning towards housewares and decor.
Some of my past work can be seen at https://picasaweb.google.com/117581393452618724394/PastArtwork and https://picasaweb.google.com/117581393452618724394/OOAKsold
My name is Greg Krynen and my artwork uses many mediums for expression. If part of being a professional means earning money then I have been a professional artist since about fourth grade. During that year of school I found a short piece of telephone trunk cabling on the side of the road. Upon looking at the wires I saw all of the different colored coatings and decided to start wire wrapping them into rings and such to give to my friends. Shortly thereafter I received requests from my male friends to custom make items for them so they could give them to their female friends. An entrepreneur was formed.
Since that time I have dabbled in silver work, aluminum casting, brass casting, machine tool operation, pewter casting, wood working, cement casting, welding, polymer clay, paper crafts, sewing, costuming and props, lapidary, ceramics and many other forms of artistic media expression. Heck, I have even tried my hand at visual arts through acting, film shooting, video shorts, print, and audio recordings. I will never claim to be a master but recognition has been bestowed upon me.
Regardless of the medium being worked with I often find myself creating jewelry pieces. Currently a few projects are leaning towards housewares and decor.
Some of my past work can be seen at https://picasaweb.google.com/117581393452618724394/PastArtwork and https://picasaweb.google.com/117581393452618724394/OOAKsold
06 June 2012
You want miracles?
You want miracles? You live during a time where once in a lifetime heavenly movements are at hand, the infirm are not only kept alive but excel at living that life, the common man is able to go to the edge of space, there is light available non-stop, connections to anyone in the world in a mere moment of time, and you get to share it all with the ones you love and those you may not even know!
And that is the tiny tip of the iceberg.
And that is the tiny tip of the iceberg.
17 March 2012
Evaluating Education
I have been following the conversations Bill Gates has had this past week on the subject of education. One entry was about how to evaluate the quality of education.
I am not a fan of our current national and state systems of evaluation. I find that Student Learning Outcomes can be altered too easily allowing for a dumbing down of our educational system. Combined with standardized testing and No Child Left Behind this combination has actually left a larger percentage of students to be left behind upon graduation than at any other time in the US educational system.
As an educator I believe in teaching students to think, not regurgitate. Regurgitation is great for knowing some blips of information but it is almost useless when it comes to the day to grind of living life and advancing our endeavors. Does it matter that I can spout off what day an event happened? No it does not. What should matter is the understanding of the importance of that happening, the critical analysis of the situation.
I use Blackboard as an educator and use many of the question types built into it, not just the multiple choice type. Using the other question types, even if I have to go in and manual grade a test provides greater benefit for my students. Their minds are so used to looking at multiple choice (other wise known as multiple guess) that they truly have issues with any other form of question. I have worked with high school and community college students and many of them have learned top play a numbers game; if they do not know the answer they remove to the obvious wrong choices and guess from the remainder.
So how do we as educators evaluate the knowledge base of our students? In the past instructors were allowed to recommend the holding back of a student that was under performing. While this basically is a good idea education needs to be more proactive, if a student is starting to fall behind we need to get tutoring in place. Tutoring, one on one (or few) education is a great tool to help students. The delivery of the teaching materials is different in this scenario than the delivery in a group situation. It allows for more questions to be asked and answered in a style that matches the particular student.
Get rid of standardized tests. The tests are a useless metric to use for evaluating student success. Each person is an individual with topics they will do well in, exceed expectations in, or even perform poorly in (at least for a time). I will use myself as an example. Through grade school I was a top performer, challenged by my teachers and my parents to excel. Upon reaching high school I faltered, partly from rebellion partly from a change in the instructional style that I trouble grasping. In particular math was a troublesome subject for me. I failed algebra the first year, received a C- the second year, a B in geometry (which made sense to me where the numbers in algebra did not), then I completed high school by taking business math as I could not go beyond basic geometry. My brain at the time had difficulty with the subject.
That did not stop me however, all of my other subjects I did well to exceptional in, including the arts. After graduation I started college, then dropped out to enter the service. After my time in the service I graduated and started into management and eventually running my own service based business. Eventually I became bored with that line of work and decided to go back to school. Thanks to my job experience and a brain that had changed I was able, with some difficulty, to complete math through calculus and statistics with a B average.
Individuals can only be standardized at a low level, beyond that each will perform best at a subject they enjoy and have sub-performance in subject matter they do not enjoy. From early childhood education through high school I believe more teacher involvement and the use of tutors will provide more meaningful outcomes than our current evaluation systems.
Parents too should get in the mix much more than they do. Few parents evaluate their children, leaving it up to the schools instead. Expand your own knowledge as a parent, just because you had problems learning as a child does not mean that is true now. The kids are learning the same subjects you learned, it really has not advanced as much as some people might think. Talk with your children, ask them questions about the workd around them, challenge them to THINK.
I am not a fan of our current national and state systems of evaluation. I find that Student Learning Outcomes can be altered too easily allowing for a dumbing down of our educational system. Combined with standardized testing and No Child Left Behind this combination has actually left a larger percentage of students to be left behind upon graduation than at any other time in the US educational system.
As an educator I believe in teaching students to think, not regurgitate. Regurgitation is great for knowing some blips of information but it is almost useless when it comes to the day to grind of living life and advancing our endeavors. Does it matter that I can spout off what day an event happened? No it does not. What should matter is the understanding of the importance of that happening, the critical analysis of the situation.
I use Blackboard as an educator and use many of the question types built into it, not just the multiple choice type. Using the other question types, even if I have to go in and manual grade a test provides greater benefit for my students. Their minds are so used to looking at multiple choice (other wise known as multiple guess) that they truly have issues with any other form of question. I have worked with high school and community college students and many of them have learned top play a numbers game; if they do not know the answer they remove to the obvious wrong choices and guess from the remainder.
So how do we as educators evaluate the knowledge base of our students? In the past instructors were allowed to recommend the holding back of a student that was under performing. While this basically is a good idea education needs to be more proactive, if a student is starting to fall behind we need to get tutoring in place. Tutoring, one on one (or few) education is a great tool to help students. The delivery of the teaching materials is different in this scenario than the delivery in a group situation. It allows for more questions to be asked and answered in a style that matches the particular student.
Get rid of standardized tests. The tests are a useless metric to use for evaluating student success. Each person is an individual with topics they will do well in, exceed expectations in, or even perform poorly in (at least for a time). I will use myself as an example. Through grade school I was a top performer, challenged by my teachers and my parents to excel. Upon reaching high school I faltered, partly from rebellion partly from a change in the instructional style that I trouble grasping. In particular math was a troublesome subject for me. I failed algebra the first year, received a C- the second year, a B in geometry (which made sense to me where the numbers in algebra did not), then I completed high school by taking business math as I could not go beyond basic geometry. My brain at the time had difficulty with the subject.
That did not stop me however, all of my other subjects I did well to exceptional in, including the arts. After graduation I started college, then dropped out to enter the service. After my time in the service I graduated and started into management and eventually running my own service based business. Eventually I became bored with that line of work and decided to go back to school. Thanks to my job experience and a brain that had changed I was able, with some difficulty, to complete math through calculus and statistics with a B average.
Individuals can only be standardized at a low level, beyond that each will perform best at a subject they enjoy and have sub-performance in subject matter they do not enjoy. From early childhood education through high school I believe more teacher involvement and the use of tutors will provide more meaningful outcomes than our current evaluation systems.
Parents too should get in the mix much more than they do. Few parents evaluate their children, leaving it up to the schools instead. Expand your own knowledge as a parent, just because you had problems learning as a child does not mean that is true now. The kids are learning the same subjects you learned, it really has not advanced as much as some people might think. Talk with your children, ask them questions about the workd around them, challenge them to THINK.
29 January 2012
Gluten Free Cookies
Just finished up a three mile walk with my dog and figured we deserved a treat. Last week while shopping at WinCo I picked up a box of Hodson Mill Gluten Free Cookie Mix. The mix smelled nice and mixed easily with the real butter, peanut butter, hen house fresh egg and vanilla. The first batch is in the oven now, tasting to follow soon.
Some kitchen notes: New Black and Decker hand mixer works very nicely, use the large end of a melon baller to get that rounded (literally in this case) teaspoon of dough, mix in the sink in case you are like me and a bit messy when mixing.
The first batch has some chocolate sprinkles on half of the batch and green sugar crystal on the other half. It was in for 15 minutes and the cookies came out a bit overdone. The second batch is going in for 13 minutes.
Okay the verdict is in, with my oven 13 minutes was perfect. The cookies are a bit crumbly but for a box mix of gluten free it is rather tasty.
Some kitchen notes: New Black and Decker hand mixer works very nicely, use the large end of a melon baller to get that rounded (literally in this case) teaspoon of dough, mix in the sink in case you are like me and a bit messy when mixing.
The first batch has some chocolate sprinkles on half of the batch and green sugar crystal on the other half. It was in for 15 minutes and the cookies came out a bit overdone. The second batch is going in for 13 minutes.
Okay the verdict is in, with my oven 13 minutes was perfect. The cookies are a bit crumbly but for a box mix of gluten free it is rather tasty.
For those persons worried about my diet, I had a bowl full of fresh shrimp stir fry over steamed rice. One item left out of the picture is a jar of Mowse's Special Ginger Stuff, which I added half the jar to the stir fry. So delicious!
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