Quick and Dirty!

I will be leading a Radical Enameling workshop sponsored by the Center for Enamel Arts July 5-7 at the Crucible in Oakland, California. Join me as we make torch-fired kilns from trash cans and whip up some vessels with copper foil and wire. These processes promise fast and furious fun for those willing to embrace serendipity.

Lets chat!

I will be one of many voices available for portfolio reviews at the upcoming SNAG conference in New Orleans and am really looking forward to seeing new work by creative individuals.

Wednesday, May 24th
3:00p – 6:00p
8th Floor, Endymion, Mid City, and Proteus

The Portfolio Review is for emerging artists, students or anyone in need of critical feedback. Gallery representatives, curators, artists, professors, entrepreneurs, and other professionals in the field will be available by appointment to review portfolios and provide professional advice and guidance.  The goal of the Portfolio Review is to create an opportunity to meet and hear from seasoned artists and professionals that can help in the development and advancement of artistic careers.

More information and signup can be found here.

 

Versailles in Iowa

The Clay Fiber Paper Glass Metal Wood (all media) show at the Octagon Center for the Arts is in its 49th year and I am pleased that one of my pieces is participating. The title itself is a bit of a time capsule, back to half a century ago when craft media was rarely mixed and the postwar studio movement was just starting to organize within media-specific groups. 

It was an honor to have had a piece chosen and then it was a whole other thing to figure out how to ship the Versailles Gate Ring! I ended up making a display fixture that would also hold it during shipping. And chastising myself (not for the first time) for designing work without considering gravity or display challenges.

New Piece Done!

This broach is inspired by a the cover from a wastewater access point that I passed on the road every day in Vienna on my way to the museums. The main element is made of 30 gauge fine silver so it is a lot lighter than it looks. It also required much research and development to get the die forming to turn out the way I wanted it. This will be in my show with Harlan Butt at the Georgetown Art Center in August. Thanks is due to Paul Cauthen and Tammy Nguyen who were student apprentices and had some part in its making.

Maker Moxie

I am very pleased to report that I have had a piece accepted into the Maker Moxie Exhibition which celebrates the impact of the craft school experience. My time as a resident and student at Arrowmont School of Art and Craft was formative and indispensable to the professional life I now enjoy. I was proud to submit a piece for the consideration of the three jurors and even more pleased to find that it was selected for both the catalog and physical exhibition at Peters Valley School of Craft. Images of the exhibition and pieces for sale are here.

The piece I submitted is called "Model Universe" and it is based on a technique I explored in a liquid enamel workshop with Elizabeth Turrell while a resident at Arrowmont. It was then executed at Banff in Canada during a one week residency. The forms are stitched together copper foil and derived from alchemical symbols for the sun and planets in our solar system, rotated on their vertical axis to create a volume. The study of alchemy and practice of enameling just make sense together for me.

More information about the event is here.

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 26 from 5-7pm.

On view March 26 - May 15, 2016 in the Sally D. Francisco Gallery, Peters Valley School of Craft, Layton NJ

Advance/Retreat

As the summer drew to a close I was fortunate to spend a week at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts at a retreat of generally mid-career metalsmiths and jewelers. It was a unique opportunity to participate in a community of makers away from daily responsibilities. It was a chance to reflect on process, concept and direction or just revel in the bliss of uninterrupted work time. It was like being in graduate school again, but with a greater appreciation for the gift of time.

The artists of the 2015 Advance/Retreat were Haley Bates, Jeff Bowie, Motoko Furuhashi, Jill Gower, Yevgeniya Kaganovich, Anya Kivarkis, Ana Lopez, Natalie Macellaio, Becky McDonah, Jennie Milner, Mary Pearse, Phil Renato, Lauren Selden, Stephanie Voegle and Cappy Wolf.

Works created during the retreat will be featured in an exhibition during the University of Milwaukee “Zoom” symposium May 25-29, 2016.

 

 

Celebrating Women in Art Education

From July 1-31 I will be represented by four works in the Meadows Gallery in the Art Center of Corpus Christi. The exhibition, "Celebrating Women in Art Education," includes works by female university faculty from eleven Texas institutions. I am flattered to have been chose to represent UNT alongside ceramist Valerie Banes.

Wittgenstein Vitrine Review

This summer's Metalsmith Magazine includes my review of "Modern Opulence in Vienna: The Wittgenstein Vittrine" which was acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art. It is a breathtaking piece of silverwork by the Weiner Werkstatte (Vienna Workshops) and it was an absolute pleasure to share some information about it with the world. 

 

Content/s is on its way to Taiwan

My silver kylix, Content/s, is currently on its way to the other side of the world for the Taiwan International Metal Craft Competition at the Gold Museum in New Taipei City. It is heading there for the final screening and awards process. Sometimes I really wish I got to travel with my pieces!

Crafting Connections

I am excited to be heading for the Eastern Carolina University Material Topics Symposium today! I was invited to be a speaker and am really looking forward to the experience. Many esteemed peers are expected to be in attendance and among them plenty of friends to catch up with. I will be speaking on the subject of jewelry and its relation to Place, both historically and contemporarily with a few of my own pieces thrown in.

Metal-Phors

I was awarded a solo exhibition at the Sheetz Gallery of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts at Penn State, Altoona. The exhibition is free and open to the public and will run January 15 - March 15. A reception will be held 3-5 p.m. January 15 in the Titelman Study of the Center. 

The pieces in the exhibition utilize disparate forms of metalworking in order to create metaphors for intra- and inter-personal relationships. The exhibition consists of a mixture of small sculptural pedestal pieces, wearable objects and framed drawings executed in vitreous enamels. These pieces address a variety of relationships including those of the contemporary constructed body to industry, the alchemy of interpersonal relationships and those of the individual to one’s core beliefs. They represent a collection of metaphors in metal. 

 

You Are (the) Here: London

This was the final city to be visited for this stage of the You Are (the) Here project. Although I had been to London on two previous occasions, I reasoned that a significant enough period of time had elapsed for me to be able to see the city afresh. However, there was still a familiarity due to similarities of language and culture that rendered much of London less remarkable than the previous three cities by comparison. This is not to say that I did not thoroughly enjoy myself or see a great many new and magnificent objects of metalsmithing and other decorative arts. But after having lived in New York City a few times, London could not help but feel the most familiar of the four locations in this project. And I cannot be insensible to the fact that such a familiarity might have brought a certain amount of blindness to my surroundings. When one is surrounded by the strange and novel, I believe one notices more. However something of the pattern established by the first three cities probably also guided my observations, as you will notice that I found another bollard that I like.  As for museums, I spent more than ten hours at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has stolen the title of “My Favorite Museum” from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Crown Jewels, Design Museum, and British Museum were also delightful but could not hold a candle to the V&A. The following objects are likely to become the representations of London for this project, with the cylindrical, ceramic chimneys being the main representational object. I like the subtle reference to the British ceramic industry and found the variety of shapes delightful. As for the wall images, I was responding to the variety of sizes and textures in their composition and their testimony to the layers of history that abound in the city.