Day 1 - Excited and Terrified!

Hello and Welcome to my Jewelry Blog.

My name is Karvari Ellingson. I am currently a student at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee - majoring in Jewelry and Sculpture. I'm originally from a small town in Wisconsin called Tomah, but I spent the majority of my adult life in Asheville, North Carolina. If you listen closely you can still detect a mild southern accent and affectation in my speech.

I started school in North Carolina with the intention of becoming a stone carver - sculptor. After transferring to UWM and taking an intro class in jewelry making, I fell in love and decided to add it as a second major. I still envision working with stone, and possibly at some point adding glass, neither of which I have the slightest idea of how to work with. Hopefully, at some point in the course of this blog project, I will be able to report some experimenting with one or both.

I have not quite landed on a specific theme for my overall body of work yet. I keep dabbling in different areas of interest, and my work flows through the various inspirations. This admittedly does not look good on the resume. I am hoping, that as I hone my technical skills this semester, I can also narrow my focus - at least long enough to knock out some killer work.

I think the reason I have not already found a focus is because I feel like my two major passions may not be the most well received. Or, even more honestly, that I would be seriously embarrassed to present.
First, I am a sex positive, bdsm player, and I think I may have the most inspiration along those lines. I am of course worried that because of the "not-so-family-friendly" nature of this interest, that either I am going to censor myself, or someone else is. (I did just spend my formative years in the bible belt, where -and I am sooo not kidding - there were no figure drawing classes because school sponsored nudity was simply out of the question)
My second main interest is body modification. I am a piercer, and an amature tattoo artist. I am also interested in the more extreme forms of modification like stretching, training, and amputation, though mostly in theory rather than practice for those.

Of course, if I chicken out and decide to do something safer, I do really like comic book, super hero gadgets. I am such a techno geek. It would make me really happy to create something Batman would be jealous of.
Also a big fan of costuming and performing so there's always room to play along those lines as well.

I am looking forward to seeing how this blog helps me pull ideas together and document my overall progress. Feel free to comment on my ideas, photos, rants, or ask questions, or make requests.