Local Pittsburgh Jewelry Artists

I am a little bit of a jewelry addict, but not gold/diamond/super-expensive/my-husband-had-to-spend-3-months-of-his-salary-on-a-ring jewelry. Rather, I have, over the past year, been making my own jewelry (my etsy shop, with jewelry and Hyacinth Girl Press/Prime Directive Press chapbooks can be found here, though I have not updated or added any jewelry in quite some time), and have committed to buying jewelry not from the mall or from sellers overseas, but from the crazy-talented artists who live in the same city as I do.

I tend to get a lot of compliments on the jewelry I wear, and I always try to pimp the artist who made whatever I'm wearing, so now I'm going to do that before you even ask. Below are some of my favorite jewelry artists from the Pittsburgh area.

1. Macabre Noir - I love, love, love the mechanical heart pendants she makes. The one I have has eyes! She sculpts and paints each one individually, by hand and puts a lot of time into all of her work. The dolls she makes are also hand-sculpted and hand-painted. No two items are ever alike and they all have a beautifully delicious darkness to them. In addition to being an amazing visual artist, Macabre Noir is also a performer and puts together the Atrocity event in Pittsburgh each year with her partner in crime, Doctor Morose.



2. Melissa Ciccocioppo - Now to the brightly-colored, cute end of the spectrum. Melissa is actually my next door neighbor, which is about as local as you can get. She makes absolutely adorable clay animal pendants and lovely feather hair clips. She made me a platypus. I do love platypi. Everything she makes, too, is hand-sculpted, and therefor one of a kind.



3. Jessica Rutherford - I actually met Jessica at a yard sale where she was selling some of her older work. Jessica is a glass-maker and jewelry designer. She makes much of her glass work from recycled glass (primarily panes of glass from old windows which, surprise, are not recycled in the city of Pittsburgh). There is a beautiful simplicity to the jewelry piece I bought from her. I wish I could find a photo of a pendant like the one of hers that I have, but alas.

4. Nicole Stemple - I went to college with Nicole, and happened to see her at a craft fair a couple of years ago selling her jewelry. Apparently I was her very first customer ever at a fair - yay! Nicole is now the woman behind the etsy shop Pretty Debonair and she makes the most amazing jewelry out of vintage beads and brooches, and has just started making jewelry from fishing lures, too (none are up at her shop yet, but she has them at the fairs she goes to in the Pittsburgh area and they are fantastic). I have a necklace she made using a tiny sword brooch. It makes me feel like a musketeer.

Thirteen Designer Vaginas is here! Make it So is coming!

It's been an exciting couple of weeks!! Thirteen Designer Vaginas by Juliet Cook is officially for sale over at Hyacinth Girl Press, and Make it So comes out in just 3 days!

Cover art for Thirteen Designer Vaginas by yours truly
Cover art for Make it So by Wayne Wise

Expect a review of two from me in the next week or so!

Video from reading with Low Ghost Press and Six Gallery Press 7/8/11

I did a reading last Friday! Here is one of the poems I read. I had never read this particular poem in public before. Kevin Ross made and posted the video. He is awesome.

Thirteen Designer Vaginas - Coming Soon!!

In just 2 days Juliet Cook's chapbook Thirteen Designer Vaginas will be released by Hyacinth Girl Press! A few review copies will be available to bloggers and editors. If you would be interested in reading/reviewing Thirteen Designer Vaginas drop me an email at hyacinthgirlpress (at) gmail.com!



Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared within Action Yes, Caketrain, Columbia Poetry Review, Diagram, Diode, and many more print and online entities. She is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). Juliet’s first full-length poetry book, ‘Horrific Confection’ was published by BlazeVOX. She also has oodles of published poetry chapbooks, most recently including POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press) and Tongue Likea Stinger (Wheelhouse). To find out more about all of the above and other yummy details, please feel free to visit www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

I was quiet and still

It's been a strange few weeks around here. I went camping for a week with my husband and a number of our friends at the beginning of June, which was amazing. I was quiet and still in the forest and I saw so many amazing things, including two huge golden eagles up close. Then it was Ben's last week of kindergarten (thank god), and since then, it's been a week and a half of me living alone - Ben is at a camp in Cleveland with his grandparents and Mihnea is off on his own retreat. And me? I'm catching up with friends, readying Thirteen Designer Vaginas and Make it So for print, and, of course, being entertained by the furry convention's 6th visit to my home town of Pittsburgh.

There is something about the furries that utterly delights me. Perhaps it is 90% the fursuiters. There's a silliness they exhibit that I love, a commitment to remaining in character that I appreciate, an unabashed geekiness, and, while utterly strange and often derided by even the dorkiest elements of the geek community, on the whole they don't take themselve terribly seriously. Personally, I can't imagine being a furry/member of the furry fandom, but when they come to town I always crash their dance party one night. You haven't lived until you've seen multiple people in full fursuits dancing like crazy. Also, I'll take any excuse I can get to dress up in a ridiculous costume.

This week promises to be a whirlwind of activity, too. I have a grant I'm applying for that's due in just a few days, and on Thursday Juliet Cook's chapbook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas comes out from Hyacinth Girl Press. It is amazing, amazing, amazing, just like Juliet. I am so very excited to share this with you.

Mrs. Busy

I've been crazy-busy over the past month (I think I say that every month...) trying to get Juliet Cook's chapbook ready to print from Hyacinth Girl Press (yes! It's coming!), preparing for a big event in my life in early June, finding a new school for my son, looking for a new apartment, and, of course, putting aside a little bit of time for partying at my favorite haunted hotel, The Grand Midway.

I've also started a new blog, Health Tips from the 1870's. It's based on an antique book I picked up a month or so ago, and it's pretty hilarious. The book, that is. I try to make the blog entertaining, but I really can't compete with C.W. Gleason, MD.

I also recently received word that I am to be an artist in residence at the Petrified Forest National Park this fall. I'll be heading to Arizona for two weeks to write, write, write. I'm crazy-excited as I've only been to the desert once before and this will be my very first residency. I can't wait to hike and write and write and hike!

So I'm still around, and I hope to pick reviews back up in a serious way in about a month. If I have your book, I have not forgotten about you. I am but a woman, a poet, a wife, a mother, a girl who likes to cut a serious rug while surrounded by people dressed up like vampires.

I have never called into the void

I don't give them credit often enough - my parents are really spectacular people. As parents and disciplinarians they balance each other perfectly and have overcome a lot of hardship in their lives to be the loving, kind, supportive people that they are. Some of what they have had to overcome is very private and not for me to spew on the internet, but in my father's case there are two things I can share - he was adopted by the people who I knew as my grandparents, and he was drafted into the Vietnam War at the age of 18.

Adoption can be a beautiful thing, and in my father's case he was adopted by a family who also did a lot of foster parenting and tried to make the lives of children better. My Muni and Pop-Pop were very strict, severe people - my Pop-Pop was a carpenter and built the house my father grew up in and definitely believed in hard work. They were a strict Lutheran couple. Honestly, by the time I was old enough to have clear memories of them, they had softened a lot. My father loved them both fiercely, while at the same time feeling an odd mix of emotions about his biological mother - a woman he does not remember.

At 18 he was drafted into the Vietnam War and became an army ranger. During his time in Vietnam he came to lead a team of army rangers, a small unit that would enter into enemy territory and take out one particular target, and earned two bronze stars for his service. He also broke both of his knees and watched a lot of people he cared about die. When he returned from Vietnam he was subjected to the criticism of a country that was ready to leave Vietnam. Like most veterans of that war, he was not treated well. Since his time in Vietnam my father has done volunteer work with homeless and mentally ill veterans. He has confronted and overcome the scars that were left from service he did not volunteer for.

My father is a very strong man. In spite of these, and other obstacles in his life he is the kindest, most understanding and supportive father I could have asked for. I am definitely a daddy's girl, possibly obnoxiously so. He thinks he is super-conservative, but I would say that my father's desire is to see people be safe and loved in the world, without prejudice. He probably wouldn't put it that way, but I have known him for 27 years. He is full of love. My father and my mother enthusiastically support all my endeavors, including, yes, The TypewriterGirls. I love getting the question "what do your parents think of what you do?" because I can always answer, "They don't always get it, but they always support me and they come to every show." I am continually amazed at my father and mother's ability to be such good people and good parents in spite of everything in their lives.

They've shown me that you can work through difficult times as a couple - at one point both of them had been laid off from their jobs at the same time. It was definitely not the least stressful time of our lives, but they worked together and got through it and honestly, my brother and I were effected very little, I'm guessing because my mother is probably the most money-wise person I know.

When I was ill with a fairly severe case of Sydenahm's Chorea at the same time that my Pop-Pop was dying, my parents pulled together and made sure that I was taken care of by one of them every day. All day every day my father took care of me, took me out for car rides, and listened to what I had to say about my illness ("say" being a figurative term as I could not speak). In the evenings my mother took care of both me and of my little brother, and read Jane Eyre to me. My father and I visited my Pop-Pop in the nursing home weekly. He had Alzheimer's. We were both trapped in our bodies. It might sound kind of fucked up, but I was never closer to him than I was then. I was one of the last people he forgot.

I go to my mother for parenting advice a lot. She's honestly one of the smartest people I know. My dad says she is the smartest person we know. She's someone who is always able to look at things in her life from all sides. She calls me on my bullshit, and I don't always appreciate it at the time, but it's useful and I usually appreciate it later. She managed to be a working mother and at the same time be totally involved for both myself and my brother. She is the first person who read poetry to me. She cooked for our family every night when I was growing up. She insisted we eat together as a family. She read and read and read to me. Now I read to Ben every night.

Both of my parents are highly creative, whether my father would admit he is or not. My mother is a fiction writer and my father builds models and miniatures. They both work for a bank, but my father is a history buff who sometimes gives tours at battle sites and gives talks about the Civil War, and my mother leads writing groups at two libraries. They are more than their jobs and more than their children, and that means a lot to me as their child.

Whenever I need them one, the other, or both of my parents are there for me. I have never called into the void. My father is always ready to leap to my defense, to back me up, and he can be really, really scary when he wants to be. He knows how to command respect. He knows how to defend his family. I upset them, they annoy me, I get stressed when I have to go visit sometimes, but my parents have always loved me. They have always done their best to be the best parents they can possibly be.

I love them. I am very, very grateful.