College Art Association Talk

I am so excited to be going to New York next week to speak at the College Art Association conference! I will take part in the session, Wish You Were Here: The Souvenir as Emblem of Regional Identity. If you are in the neighborhood, please stop by! My panel was put together by Christopher J. Moore of Concordia University and Isabel Prochner of Syracuse University. It will take place Wednesday the 13th at 10:30 am at the New York Hilton Midtown - 2nd Floor - Nassau East. I will be presenting my body of work, You Are (the) Here and its relationship to cultural geography, personal identity, and the souvenir.

Photo by Chenli Ye

Go Metals!

It was a true honor to speak at the Society of North American Goldsmiths conference in New Orleans with Cappy Counard and Jaydan Moore. I have enjoyed meeting new people at the conference and seeing a lot of great work. Perhaps the best part of all was getting to share this remarkable experience with so many UNT students, friends and alumni.

New Piece Done!

This broach is inspired by a the cover from a wastewater access point that I passed on the road every day in Vienna on my way to the museums. The main element is made of 30 gauge fine silver so it is a lot lighter than it looks. It also required much research and development to get the die forming to turn out the way I wanted it. This will be in my show with Harlan Butt at the Georgetown Art Center in August. Thanks is due to Paul Cauthen and Tammy Nguyen who were student apprentices and had some part in its making.

You Are (the) Here (2)

This summer and fall I am visiting four cities that are home to exceptional collections of decorative arts. While I play the part of tourist, visiting historic sites and buying souvenirs, I develop a relationship with each new and hereto unfamiliar city. The urban passages that are particular to my time in each city render aspects more familiar and, over the course of a week, personal landmarks develop. Not the monuments of postcards and keychains but familiar elements that become signifiers of place in a practical and meaningful way. I will then design a means by which the chosen feature might be assimilated to my body as ornament. I will photograph, sketch and create models of the element that will then be transformed, upon return to my studio, through the highly skilled fabrication techniques of silversmithing.

I will be visiting the following historical masterpieces and collections of metalsmtihing:

1. Rene Lalique and Limoges enamels (among others) at the Decorative Arts Museum, and Louvre in Paris, France
2. Benvenuto Cellini's Saliera and other treasures of the Kunsthistorisches Museumm Vienna, Austria
3. Johan Melchior Dinglinger's Royal Household of the Grand Mogul and other masterpieces at the Historical Green Vault and New Green Vault in Dresden, Germany
4. ?