2012 Wildacres Trip

Another week up in Little Switzerland has come and gone.  I returned on Saturday, tired (as usual), but happy for having had another great week at Wildacres.  This year I took an enameling class with Pat Nelson.  I wasn't sure what to expect from this class called 2D and 3D enameling, and we ended up learning a vast array of different enameling techniques.

We started off using stencils to make designs, and later moved to using Riso Screens and Thermal Fax machines (something I had never heard of).  

 Things got MESSY!  We experimented with foils, drawing with graphite, using watercolor enamels and ceramic pencils.  We played with decals and even learned how to make our own with black and white laser copiers.  We also learned how to make our own stencils using silkscreening techniques.  Phew!  It's a good thing I take good notes because I can't remember half of what Pat taught us and I've only been home 2 days.

Karen and Alan (this was Karen's first year, and she'll definitely be back).

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Then came Auction Night!  First we have a silent auction followed by the live auction where the "special" items donated by all the teachers are auctioned off.  Charlene won a gorgeous necklace made by our one of our most favorite teachers of all time, Julia Woodman.  : )

 
Here is Susan on the left, who taught me all my basic metalsmithing skills at Spruill, Charlene, Me and Cyndi, with Tom Beard, another teacher at Spruill sitting in front.  Good times!




 Susan and Cyndi, who decided we all needed to be fed one night while sitting out on the patio and brought out different types of cheese, crackers and dips.  Amazingly yummy.

Here are a few of the experiments we did in class, and here is Katherine and Pat up above.

Practicing "the pose" before dinner one evening (shoulder out, head forward and slightly down). 

Mary Ann Scherr (second on left) taught a class that used etching materials and also worked with the student's own body to form the metal to their personal shape.  They turned out some amazing pieces.  Here are some examples.

Some more examples from our enameling class:

Harold O'Connor was also at Wildacres this year and here are a few items his students produced.

We also had a Lapidary class taught by Helen Driggs, an Engraving class by Les Bryant and Andrea Kennington and a stone setting class by Hiriko Yamada. Everyone produced extraordinary pieces and I wish I could include them ALL here.

I will end by saying I missed a few special people this year who have been up at at Wildacres with me now for 5 years - Julia, Kathy and Maggie especially!  I hope they find a way to make it back up next summer.  Of course, we all missed Jean Stark who decided 2011 would be her last, and John Cogswell's absence was also felt.  And where were Leslie, Gail and Robert (we missed his home-made honey!)  I hope they all know that there were a lot of people who asked about them.

Quack, Quack, I was taking a bath...

 

We woke up on Easter Sunday to 16 baby ducks swimming in our pool with their mother.  She had been nesting under a bush in the back yard for about 3 to 4 weeks, so even though we knew the big day was coming soon, we were still surprised.  And so many of them!  This was the third year in a row that she has come to nest in our yard.  She arrives with her partner a couple of weeks prior to settling down and they can be found swimming in the pool in the early mornings.   They usually wake us up with their loud quacking and splashing about.

The mother ran out of the yard with about 6 little ones as soon as we could get them out of the pool, leaving us to fend for the others who seemed a little panicked that their mother had left them.  We were able to coax the rest of them out of the pool on a blue swim mat.  They headed to the fence, but couldn't get through, so I had to scoop them up with my hands and put them through the opening.  Mommy Duck was out there waiting for them, quacking away.  Off they waddled, single file, into the big pond in the woods.  It was an exciting Easter morning to say the least.

I've been working on forging recently.  I made these earrings from a solid piece of 8 gauge square wire (round wire would be fine, too).  After forging the ends, I ran them through the rolling mill, bringing them down thinner and thinner until they were thin enough to develop into ear wires, which I finished off with an Artifex wheel.  The entire piece was then cut in half and the earring was then made by forging a triangular design and finishing off with filing or a coarse wheel.  I shined them up by putting them in the tumbler.  Each earring is all one piece with no soldering at all.   (This technique was recently taught in one of John Cogswell's classes here in Atlanta, and he is such a master I would guess he makes the entire earring with a hammer and a file.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the class, so did what worked best for me.)

Wildacres, 2011

Another summer at Wildacres came and went without my remembering to blog about it here.  So I'm going back and gathering the photos and thoughts I have from another memorable adventure to share with you.  That's Donnie in the video above.  Donnie helps us with all the equipment that we need during our stay and is always there to lend a helping hand...but watch out when he's got that whip in his hand!

This year was a special time at Wildacres because it was Jean Stark's last summer teaching there.  Jean had been there every summer for 25 years!  Everyone who loved her as a teacher looked forward to this time every year, so there were quite a few tears shed this week.  Jean took a liking to Donnie's whip, trying to convince us that she was going to come down hard on us if we didn't behave.

Jean taught a class in enameling this summer and we all learned how to create lovely little pears.  She brought along lots and lots of examples:

Leslie and Karen were very proud of their creations:

Gail (sniffling a bit) and Robert have been in Jeans class without fail every summer.  I hope they come back in 2012.  

This is one of Jean's enameled pieces that I find stunningly beautiful.   Maybe someday I'll be this good (hopeful thinking).

And here's me with another one of my favorite teachers, Julia Woodman!  She's always kind, encouraging and has a magical bag of forging techniques.  I'm presently back in her class at Spruill and feel like I've returned home again.

My friends, teachers and classmates:

Would you like to see my pear?  It's amazing that it took an entire week to complete two pears (I haven't set the other one into a bezel yet), but enameling can be a very long process.  

Okay - goodbye for another year, Wildacres.  I hope to be back in 2012.    

Etching with Carol Webb

In the beginning of November, Carol Webb arrived in Atlanta to give us an excellent, information packed three-day workshop on etching.  Here are a couple of Carol's finished pieces (copper and silver laminate) in case you aren't familiar with her work:

We started off by transferring our black and white designs onto blue PnP paper, which we then transferred onto copper (with heat from a warming tray).  Our first assignment was to completely etch through the metal.   

Here's Carol doing a little annealing:

We then layed our plates face down in a batch of etching solution and checked them every ten minutes or so until the design had etched all the way through.  You can see in the photo below where the etchant is cutting right through the metal.  

Here are examples of student experiments showing how the black sections of the design will stay copper while the white will be removed.  I can't tell you how many times we mixed this up.

We also did some heavy duty etching in this spray etcher.  It was amazing how deep the etchings were in a fraction of the time.  This technique is perfect for using etched brass plates to transfer onto sterling silver through a rolling mill.

The major reason I took this class was to learn how to make and etch copper and silver laminate (bi-metal).  To accomplish this, we started with sterling or fine silver sheet (20 to 12 ga), along with a sheet of copper (26 to 24 ga) and heated it until a eutectic bond was formed, which can take some time.  Often it takes more than one attempt with the torch.  We then rolled the bi-metal down to the gauge we needed for our project.  At this point, we simply followed the previous exercises in etching to get the results desired.  Carol also showed us how to use different patinas to cause a striking contrast between the silver and the copper (see first picture above).


We somehow managed to do all of this in three days!  It was an amazing amount of information to to cover in such a short time, but Carol was organized and kept us all on task throughout the entire class.   She gave excellent instructions and handouts to help us along, plus provided us with pages and pages of designs to use in our projects.  I learned so much my head was spinning...and that's the way I like it.  

Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez Workshop

The Georgia Goldsmith's Group had a workshop recently with Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez.  Juan Carlos is an Associate Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and I first came across his work at Wildacres in North Carolina last summer.  All of the students in his class carried on and on about what a wonderful learning experience they were having, and I have to admit I was a wee bit jealous.  So when I heard GGG was bringing Juan-Carlos to Atlanta, I signed up immediately.

Juan Carlos

Our class was all about textures and embellishments.  We started off texturing round steel blocks (in any pattern we desired), which we can now use to add texture to our metal.  We also textured hammers and made numerous stamps out of steel and nails.  The picture below is one of the steel blocks I textured with separating disks ground into the metal.  The photo underneath shows how the texture looks after hammering a piece of silver onto the block.

We also spent a good amount of time etching.  We used PnP, paint pens, sharpies, contact paper, stamps, universal etching ground, bees wax...just about anything that would resist the etching solution.

Kathy and Debby

Barbara, Cyndi and Anna

Juan Carlos demonstrated how to obtain many of the techniques used in this piece below, i.e., texturing, scoring and folding, rolling mill techniques, forging.  He demonstrated flush setting tiny stones (and he made it look so easy), depletion guilding and cleaning with a DRY brass brush (great tip!).

I think we all agreed it was a wonderfully inspiring week.  We'll take everything we learned back home with us and, hopefully, some of what we absorbed will come out in what we now create.

The Making of a Cuff Bracelet (Repousse/Chasing)

Before I began my cuff bracelet in silver, I did a demo in copper.  Even though it took hours making the demo cuff, I learned so much and it was well worth the time and effort in order to save me from making the same mistakes in silver.  Gia is a wonderful teacher and was able to walk me through every step of this process.  

After chasing the design on the front of the piece, this is how the design appeared after the first attempt at repousse (the pushing out of the metal from the back side.)

Here we have more definition.  I've done the necessary chasing on the front and more repousse from the back, and it's just about done!

I decided to use a half round wire that will form the outside edge of the cuff.  I then textured the background before cutting off the extra silver around the edge, and filing for a smooth edge.

It's now time to form the cuff on a mandrel, very, very carefully.  I was nervous that I would cause a crease in the metal, so first used a wooden mandrel and then finished with a steel mandrel.

It's finished!  I'm really happy with the results!  Thank you, Gia!