Finishing Up For the Year

I have wished my UPS driver a Happy New Year and will today hand-deliver my last-minute custom orders. Tomorrow I will be off to commune with the cacti and celebrate the holidays with my mother in Arizona.

While this year was nothing for the the history books, I have made it through. I am very grateful for all my friends, supporters, colleagues, gallerists and patrons. Without all of these supportive people, I wouldn't really have anything. Happy holidays and thank you all!!

Bhutanese Metalwork

This Wednesday, I am going to be moderating a discussion at the Rubin Museum in NYC. A documentary film about Bhutanese metalwork will be shown and I will be talking about my experiences as a contemporary metalsmith as well as my experience working with Nepali artisans. There will also be a tour of the Bhutanese exhibit after the discussion.

This particular exhibit is remarkable in that these statues are normally only seen if one actually travels to Bhutan. All of the statues and other art was borrowed from the monasteries and are considered consecrated. As for the film, I went last week to the film about Bhutanese wood work and weaving, and I can attest to the fact that it was mesmerizing to see the mastery with which the craftspeople work.

A Nice Surprise

As I was riding the subway, I opened the latest issue of American Craft and found this! A very nice surprise indeed.

The Latest

My work is on the move again. Both in the physical sense of being sent to various galleries, and in regards to artistic innovation. I have expanded on the series that I am calling "Wrought Inlay", begun this summer. I haven't really found the reason within, but I have been in mood for vast expanses of very black metal lately. Punctuated, of course, by continuing obsession with undulating curls.

Some of this new work has gone off to the show "Small Treasures", at Ironwood Gallery in Ridgefield, CT. Other pieces have gone to 3rd Ward Jewelry in Milwaukee.

I have also sent off some very special packages with other collections of work to:
Perlow Stevens Gallery in Columbia, MO
and
Max's in St. Louis Park, MN

My Hometown and Craft

Hello! I'm back!

Although I live in Brooklyn now, my hometown is Racine, Wisconsin. I grew up there and made the decision to be a metalsmith while still in high school. It was very many years later that I realized that my town has had an enormous impact on the crafts movement of the United States. There is a very lovely article in the latest issue of American Craft that mentions the collector Karen Johnson Boyd, of the Johnson Wax family (in print only). This family was responsible for the influential Crafts USA exhibition of 1969, introducing handmade objects to thousands of Americans.

Personally, I was able to benefit from the fact that Racine high schools actually offered metal art classes. I grew up two blocks from some famous Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, and I took in the offerings at the Wustum Art Museum, now expanded into the Racine Art Museum. It is hard to know, but there was clearly a spark of connection there somewhere in my young mind.