When Worn

Jewelry really belongs on the body. Even in isolation the implied body is part of how we read it - in anticipation of its intended location. Kelly Temple at the University of Central Oklahoma has curated a show that addresses this aspect of jewelry: “When Worn highlights the act of adornment. When placed on the body, jewelry transforms not only the appearance of its wearer, but it inserts itself between the adorned and audience as a signal and an invitation between two beings.”

When Worn includes work by Haydee Alonso, Lynn Batchelder, Teresa Faris, Betsy Lewis, Lydia Martin, Samira Saheli, Alejandra Salinas, Jolynn Santiago, Leslie Shershow, Helen Shirk, Lori Talcott, Kelly Ann Temple, Claire Webb, Petra Winnwalker and myself.

The reception will be this Thursday at the Melton Gallery from 5:30 to 7:30. The show is free and open to the public until March 26, 2020.

An image of one of my pieces on their dean.photographer Sydney Stephenson, model- Steven Hansen

An image of one of my pieces on their dean.

photographer Sydney Stephenson, model- Steven Hansen

When Worn_Poster.jpg

Best of 2019

Two of my bollard necklaces will be touring with the Ohio Designer Craftsman’s Best of 2019 exhibition this summer. London Bollard and Viennese Hydrant and Bollards will be in the exhibition that is opening this Sunday May 5th at the Ohio Craft Museum and then moving to the Springfield Museum of Art on September 20th.

London Bollard

London Bollard

Viennese Hydrant and Bollards

Viennese Hydrant and Bollards

College Art Association Talk

I am so excited to be going to New York next week to speak at the College Art Association conference! I will take part in the session, Wish You Were Here: The Souvenir as Emblem of Regional Identity. If you are in the neighborhood, please stop by! My panel was put together by Christopher J. Moore of Concordia University and Isabel Prochner of Syracuse University. It will take place Wednesday the 13th at 10:30 am at the New York Hilton Midtown - 2nd Floor - Nassau East. I will be presenting my body of work, You Are (the) Here and its relationship to cultural geography, personal identity, and the souvenir.

Photo by Chenli Ye

Photo by Chenli Ye



Not-So-Lone Star Studios: A Gathering of Texas Makers

Natalie Macellaio and Kathleen Janvier have put together a beautiful exhibition of works by Texas Metalsmiths. I count myself quite lucky to be among them and am looking forward to the reception on Friday, September 14th from 6-8. Hope to see you there!

NotSoLoneStar Image-1.jpg
NotSoLoneStar Back.jpg

Industrial Arts: Exhibition and Public Talk

I will be exhibiting a wide variety of work at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Terminal 136 Gallery from August 31st through September 16th with a public "lunch and lecture" at the Southwest School of Art on Saturday September 16th at 12:30.

For more information about the exhibition please contact Laura Crist 210.458.4391

For more information about the talk please contact Jillian Sortore 210.200.8254

IndustrialArts.jpg
lopez card_Page_2.jpg

Go Metals!

It was a true honor to speak at the Society of North American Goldsmiths conference in New Orleans with Cappy Counard and Jaydan Moore. I have enjoyed meeting new people at the conference and seeing a lot of great work. Perhaps the best part of all was getting to share this remarkable experience with so many UNT students, friends and alumni.

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.

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.

 

 

All You Need is Telstar: a collaborative international necklace

INTRODUCTION

A temporary, transatlantic, creative partnership between Poppy Porter and myself sprang up for the purpose of generating a piece of wearable art for the Crafthaus Co-Operation:Garnish project.  The project is a traveling, juried exhibition that called for makers with very different working sensibilities to pair and cooperate on a piece. Poppy is an Abstract Artist/Jeweler based in the United Kingdom who I approached from a list of interested parties.

Our response to the theme of Co-Operation:Garnish is based on the structure of two specific songs and how they played their part in communications history. We have taken the rhythm and bassline to be the foundation and the melody and vocals to be the “garnish”.  One artist works with the foundation the other works with the garnish.   The two songs were written either to be transmitted by or in praise of the first communications satellites, thus starting a communications revolution that makes our co-operation and collaboration possible.

Poppy and I have very different styles of working. Poppy is synesthetic, and has a visual response to music and sound that resembles a colorful, abstract animation.  She takes her inspiration for her jewelry and painting from the drawings generated while listening to music.  Poppy uses a variety of techniques and materials to make jewelry, usually creating or finding a form that will be painted using automotive custom painting techniques.

THE COLLABORATION

We were strangers at the beginning of the process and to date have never met or spoken in real time.  In fact, as Poppy made her half first, it is possible that she will never see the finished piece in person! The entire project was conducted and made possible in the time available via social media and email.  The constraints of time and distance focused the making process considerably.

This transatlantic communication sparked the idea for the piece.  We decided they wanted to work with music to use Poppy's synesthesia.  I suggested we use “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles which was commissioned by the BBC for the first live global television transmission
 in June 1967 and Poppy suggested “Telstar” by The Tornadoes, a 1962 instrumental piece about Telstar, the first communications satellite.

After email dialogs and starting a Facebook group to document the process and ease communication of ideas they decided to make a necklace.  This would be comprised of 12 ovals, each oval will be around 4x6cm, half of the ovals would be inspired by "Telstar".  The other half of the ovals would be inspired by "All You Need is Love."

They decided to look at the structure of the music and use that to reflect the theme of “Garnish”.  Poppy (a bassist among other things) began by laying down the groove.  Creating the foundation of the piece by responding to the rhythmic structure and basslines of both songs.  It was agreed that I would then look at the melody and vocals to “garnish” the foundation.

Poppy listened, looked and drew several abstracts for each song.  The main color of the basslines for both songs was purple with distinct white shapes superimposed over the top, cubes for “Telstar” and star shapes for “All You Need Is Love.  There would be twelve purple ovals, six with white cubes and six with white stars to represent each song.  There was also a very sci-fi sound effect at the beginning and end of “Telstar” clearly meant to represent the satellite itself. This was a very dominant shape and Poppy decided to include it as a central motif with the ovals coming out from it as if they were the transmissions. She airbrushed these abstract shapes on to pierced out aluminum composite panel using automotive custom painting techniques for vibrant colors, adding a little stardust for sparkle at the end.  Each piece was designed to be elements that I could arrange in any way I wanted once I was working on the necklace.

As teleportation is a thing of the future there was an anxious wait for the UK and US postal services. I received the elements and respond to Poppy's groove with my own interpretations of the melody and vocals to "garnish" the foundation. Although I had made a variety of abstract sketches based on the impressions of both pieces of music, my elements were also considerably changed as a result of Poppy’s painted imagery. Not wanting my elements to obscure too much of the white painted forms jumping off of the painted ovals, I strove to position my complimentary elements around the baseline-inspired pieces, creating a harmony. I was further inspired by Poppy’s sparkle finish to include fine light-catching textures on her dimensional garnishments.

The success of the piece comes from the conscientious merging of the disparate strengths of each contributor. The merging of Poppy’s colorful approach with my dimensional methods has resulted in a fun and wearable necklace. It is a fitting expression of international communication, representing the cordial and encouraging working relationship that developed between two strangers.

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. 

 

CraftTexas Juror's Award

I am pleased to announce that "Attic Turbine" (shoulder broach) won a juror's award at CraftTexas this year. CraftTexas is a biennial, juried exhibition at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.

CraftTexas 2014 was juried by Carol Sauvion, the visionary behind the PBS TV series, Craft in America, and HCCC Texas Masters, Piero Fenci, Ceramics Department Head, Stephen F. Austin State University, and Clint Willour, Curator of the Galveston Arts Center. The jurors were tasked with selecting the finest works from a pool of 176 applicants and 477 pieces.

The exhibition is up through December 24th. If you find yourself in Houston, I hope you will have a chance to go by and see it.