Skip to main content

Silversmithing!

When I have been talking to visitors at my Open Studios exhibition they have been surprised to learn that I studied Silversmithing & Jewellery for my degree (over 20 years ago!). I thought I might share with you one of the projects I did back then and hopefully you can see how it has influenced my work today.



A trip to a dress rehearsal at the Royal Opera House and an instruction not to look at the paper whilst we drew the dancers (with the aim of showing movement) led to this sketch above.



Back in the workshop, I developed my sketches into wire models (I still love using wire!) and then started to forge metal pieces to convey the curve and movement of the dancers.


The image above is my first attempt of a metal candlestick inspired by the dancers. I developed this further and spent many hours forging metal in the workshop in order to produce the final silver candlestick shown below. I had a very muscular right arm due to all the hammering, forging, soldering and polishing!


I still love this piece and it's sweeping lines are very typical of some of the shapes that I use in my work today.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wendy Dolan talk on Art, Architecture and Stitch

I had a lovely evening at Chiltern Embroidery and Textile Group in Tylers Green earlier in the week, it was good to be back there after giving my own talk back in March. I took my Mum and a friend to see a talk given by Wendy Dolan on 'Art, Architecture and Stitch' which was right up my street! Wendy is a textile artist who uses fabrics and threads to create textured designs with some wonderful results. I have met Wendy several times before as she is from Sussex (where I grew up) and we also have some mutual friends.   Wendy's talk covered how she develops her work from sketchbooks through to her final designs and she showed us photographs that had inspired her from a variety of places such as Barcelona and Venice. My work is also very sketchbook led so I could easily identify with her thought process. I am also drawn to textures but Wendy's work differs from mine in that she starts with plain coloured fabrics, stitch and thread -
Post a Comment
Read more

How to start a sketchbook project - Part 1

Since I've started a new sketchbook recently I thought I could do a diary of sorts to explain how I have put the various sections together. I chose the theme of 'Layering' as I was looking through some old A-Level Art & Design question papers and this topic appealed to me. If you want to create your own sketchbook obviously you could choose any theme you like, just make sure that it's something that interests you and you will find plenty of inspiration. I favour an A3 size sketchbook but there are no hard and fast rules on this, and it's best to go for a scale that you feel comfortable with. I started out with a title page and a 'mind map' of written ideas of anything that I felt could relate to the theme of 'layering', a brainstorm of sorts. This is a good way to get over the dreaded 'first page fear' when you just can't bring yourself to start your pristine book and any mark you make is overly scrutinis
1 comment
Read more

'Marine Life' Sketchbook,

Having taken part in several Open Studio events, I have come to realise how much people do like to look at a sketchbook. I find creating the books a hugely enjoyable process and I'm still referring back to and using some of the imagery from the ones I did some 25 years ago! In this post I thought I would give you a quick flick through my 'Marine Life' book which is a more recent creation and helped to inspire my 'Shoal' and 'Sea Garden' ranges. Once I've chosen a theme I generally do a mind map and look at all the different areas I could explore within that theme. Over the next 5-10 pages I play around with different images, textures, media and scale to explore the possibilities. I also like to focus on a few artists or designers that inspire me too and may relate to my theme. I might do a few pages combining their style with mine and my theme and see what happens. I recently wrote an article for 'Workshop on the Web'
Post a Comment
Read more