metal is clay

At first glance, I thought this picture was of something I knew very well… I read in the article that it is a 1/4" macro of a Tom Thompson oil painting, photographed by Jon Sasaki. When this tiny fragment of the painting is blown up to become a new picture of 16 x 24 inches, it seems to look like a surface I am much more familiar with - the soft, shiny, dry, smooth, rough, cracked - etc etc - deeply nuanced surface of a glazed ceramic work. Jon Sasaki: macro photographic image of a quarter inch square of a Tom Thompson oil painting. 2013.  Close-up photography has offered a very different perspective on the oil painting surface, revealing how different media, and our different tools - brush, knife, finger - can be so different in process, or appear so alike, simply by offering a different scale of seeing, to appreciate what is there.

...the process in which the metal artist yields to their need to strike one piece of metal, with carefully shaped tools, for a very long time. Chasing is like drawing but usually in 3D—creating lines and relief to sculpt an image into a metal surface. My Obsessive Chasing Desire isn’t a problem. More likely, it’s a functional necessity since I have elected to learn to chase, to really learn to chase, to work at the level of artists that I admire from history, and in the present… Sample “Iris” study, drawn and chased on a sheet of flat 18 gauge copper,  3.25 x 3 inches, 2013. It was with some trepidation that I approached multi-media artist and mega-chaser Jeff de Boer , hoping for mentorship on this journey.

The Herring: Pre- and Post-Mortem. Champ-levé enamel pendants in copper, fine silver, sterling silver. I loved learning to enamel - the instant wow factor as I stepped into a world of colour - fusing glass to metal. Right now, I am working in champ-levé and cloisonné, and exploring surface effects when the enamel powders are spread directly onto flat metal. it's going to be a very colourful experience. Enamelling appears to date back to at least the thirteenth century BCE(1), with a more modern history boasting master metalsmiths, jewellers, and designers like Fabergé, Lalique, Tiffany, and Cartier. We’re likely more familiar on a daily basis with our enamelled iron pans, kitchen tools like colanders or bread bins, the traditional enamelled cast iron tub, or ubiquitous “white goods” - so-named for the white-enamelled steel panels. There are even obsolescence - and maintenance-defying - enamel-clad “Lustron” houses built in the US for returning WWII vets(2). “You’re ...