Skip to main content

chasing

Chasing--repeatedly hitting shaped metal tools with a hammer--allows me to draw on metal, with the advantage that the final metal picture can be a flat canvas or formed into full life-like relief. New work is always underway--the best place to view this is currently on my instagram profile.

I recently made 496 bronze flowers for a Plum Tree Screen in a contemporary Chinese tea-room, designed and built by Cory Barkman. You can see pictures on Cory's Facebook page, and in my blog posts.

Cory Barkman's Contemporary Chinese Tea-room, commission for a private home, Saskatoon, Canada.

We have 31 x 21 x 2 inch version of this sculpture available for purchase, featuring 44 unique chased bronze flowers, mounted on hand-carved stained walnut, and powder-coated aluminium. Mounting and installation materials will be based on the location. Please contact me for more details.

Repousséd and chased bonze flowers - ready to be pierced out from the background metal.
 
All About Iris is a wall-mounted sculpture, with three panels in aluminium, brass, and copper. I made a short 'making of video' describing the design process, and the ideas that inspired the piece:
 
  
 My 17-piece installation of chased and repousséd equine studies, In Dreams, was shown by the Alberta Craft Council in their Well in Hand exhibition (Edmonton, Canada). The on-line exhibition is available here (from image 74 onwards).
 

Please contact me to enquire about developing your story into a highly detailed work of metal art.

Work in progress: Run, made by chasing and repoussé. Portrait study made from flat brass sheet metal, 0.8mm thick.

Chasing’ is the use of tools to create lines or texture marks on the surface of metal, it can be just like drawing. But the artwork can also be made into a three dimensional form by hitting and stretching the metal surface from behind—‘repoussé’—to sculpt relief, or volume, into the metal surface. The Statue of Liberty is probably the most famous repousséd object in the world (...zero chance of me making anything that big in my studio!).

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

narrative jewellery: tales from the toolbox book launch

For every piece of jewellery I make there is a story. It can be simple, just a note on the “why?” that led to the forms and textures, or the feeling that I want to remember. Sometimes the single idea that could become a piece, conceived way before the act of making, can become so over-whelming that I need to write a whole new reality for the jewellery to exist within. That’s how it was for “Pull”, the first piece of jewellery in a body of work that became the ReFind Collection *. It caused me to look at materials in my home, especially the things that were routinely thrown away, very differently. It was like waking up to realize I just hadn’t been paying the right kind of attention to all the “stuff” in other areas of my life; realizing that maybe jewellery could be linked to something as obscure as industrial-scale food-processing and packaging—if I allowed my mind to receive the information, differently. I am very honoured that my necklace has been included in Mark Fenn’s new

my brand: I am a nerd

His & Hers Nerd Pendants. Sterling silver. 2011. There is no point in denying it: I am a nerd. I designed these pendants for the "Branded" exhibition at the fabulous Influx Gallery in Calgary this summer. I like to bring my background in science and natural history into my art work, and in this case, I also brought some political advocacy. In an era in which some cultures still deny females equal access to education, I used the loaded motif of the apple to create a context to present the writing to the viewer. Here's the full artist statement: His and her “ nerd ” pendants confidently declare affiliation with a tribe that delights in knowledge, education and technology. Nerdism nourishes the world around us, and we are proud of that contribution. His “ nerd ” pendant is about strength in identity. Styled after a traditional branding iron, the pendant is a rugged and substantial piece of silver, designed to perpetuate this important meme beyond one life

Beaux Arts sculptural metal exhibition now open at Il Centro Art Gallery, Vancouver.

The Beaux Arts exhibition, curated by Angela Clarke at Il Centro Art Gallery, Vancouver, was developed with the Vancouver Metal Arts Association . The work of nineteen artists is included, and I am very honoured to be one of them. Huge thanks and kudos to the volunteer members of VMAA who have managed to organize and install a professional show under the current incredibly difficult conditions. To quote from Il Centro’s web-site : As the first exhibition in our Charles Marega 150 celebrations series Il Museo at Il Centro presents Beaux Arts: An Exhibition with the Vancouver Metal Arts Association. This exhibition features the sculptural metal art form both large and small. Entitled Beaux Arts in honour of the artist style of which Charles Marega was an interpreter, this juried show integrates traditional metal work with non-traditional styles and elements, true to the Beaux Arts form. Throughout the exhibition space there is a continuous juxtaposition of traditional and non- traditiona