The Amazing work of Heather Smith Jones

I've just been hit by a thunderbolt.   It's name was Heather Smith Jones.    She is a fellow pinhole artist.   You can see her work at www.heathersmithjones.com.   She is my new hero.   I thought I spent a lot of time punching holes...  wow!  This women (who's been at this far longer than I have) puts me to shame!

Samples of her fabulous work:

Small pinhole formation, two

Leaf and its pattern

I don't know that I'll ever do anything to match her work.   I certainly don't want to copy it. I want to make my own version of pinhole art, but she has certainly set the bar very high!

Making it BIG

My first commission of a large scale lampshade.   Learned a few things.  Like, these big things are BIG.   This shade was 14" in diameter by 15" high.   My NYC Skyline lampshade is a mere 6" diameter by 8" high.    When I look at the picture of the original BIG shade next to the NYC one I have to laugh.... it's like Papa and Baby!

Now that I had this frame home... I had to get brutal with it and strip off that frightening (plastic) ribbon that was bound around it.   I needed to get a sense of the scale and what was underneath.   This made for a perfect shot of it 'caging' the NYC Skyline shade.   It made me realize, this wasn't just 2x's bigger....   this was more along the lines of 4 times bigger than anything I'd tried before!

But I persevered...    And punched and punched and punched holes and more holes into a strip of paper that was almost as long as I was tall!   The final results were a lovely, sophisticated shade with my "Snowfall" pattern.  At home I could only see it on a chair, but the texture looked lovely in the natural light from the window.

When I brought it to my client and they were kind enough to let me photograph it lit up in their place.   Hurrah!  The big guy is done and home!

He's traveled around New York - Manhattan to Brooklyn and back again, but I think the makeover was well worth it all!