snag slide library - mark rooker

I came across an interesting find today. I was going through some of the content from the SNAG archive. SNAG is the Society of North American Goldsmiths. It is the professional organization of academic and professional metalsmiths in the country and an organization which I am a member of. I became a member of the organization when I was getting ready to start graduate school. 

When I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, one of my jobs was working in the SNAG slide library. Our school housed the collection for SNAG and we would receive collections of slides from artists and then we would have duplicate sets made, and then we would label the dups and create sets of slides that would be loaned out to individuals who requested specific slide sets. We would mail and receive slides from people who requested these slides, and we would catalogue and keep the library organized. I can't exactly remember the specifics of my appointment, but I think this was part of my assistantship duties. Again, I can't remember exactly, but I think there were of a few of us grads that worked in the library. If Ian happens to read this maybe he will remember.

Anyway, we had a small room in the Art Annex building that the Metals Department was located in and I remember it being a great resource for me when I was starting to teach. Of course this would be a time in which you would prepare carousels of slides to show to current and historical work to students in class. Since we housed the library, I had free reign to show the latest work that was coming into the library. Anytime I started a new assignment in class I could pull slides to show students to serve as inspiration or to demonstrate how a technique was used. It's crazy to think that this was one of the only ways to see contemporary metalwork at the time. 

Apparently in 2004, SNAG donated a slide archive to The Metal Museum. It contained the portfolios of over 330 metalsmiths of national and international significance. The Metal Museum then partnered with the American Craft Council Library to make the collection available online. The complete 16,000-slide archive was digitized for long-term preservation through grants from the John and Robyn Horn Foundation and an ArtsFirst grant from the First Tennessee Bank Foundation and the collection is now hosted online at the Center for Craft.

Well it was fun looking through the collection today. The work you see above is by Mark Rooker. Mark was a graduate student in the U of I program a few years before me, so this work was highly influential to me. I used to look at these slides a lot when i was working and if my memory serves me correctly, Billie had framed postcards of the teapot rocket and maybe one of Mark's brooches in the hallway as you walked toward the BFA studio. Again, Ian or Eric might remember this better than me. These images set the bar for the caliber of work that I needed to be making in the program and it probably helped that my best friend, Ian, had been taught by Mark when Ian was getting his undergraduate Industrial Design degree before being in the same cohort with me in graduate school. I remember Ian talking about these pieces so they made an impact on me.

It's funny to use these images as a representation of how much our world has changed. First, slides are a thing of the past. The quality of these images is horrible, but they were the best we had at the time. The images don't come close to the quality of the actual pieces. You only had a limited number of shots to get a good image and once you did, having dups made was expensive. You had to be selective and intentional. Teaching and how I expose students to work has changed so much as well. Students can access videos of people making actual work and speak directly to the person making the work and this can all happen in real time. 

All of that said, there is something romantic and nostalgic about the thought of sending a physical catalog of your work to represent what you've been doing for the last year or two. There is also something romantic about a physical postcard along with a handwritten note that you send to people that represents something you are proud of. Now everything is relegated to the same level of minutia because we just scroll past image after image and it all gets lost in our overcrowded minds or the pace of life. 

It was magic to pick up a full sheet of slides and realize that it represented that person's work and effort for the last year or so; even the sheet of slides were precious to me. I remember being so careful with the sheet of slides. Even the room that we kept the collection in was clean and particular; almost sterile. There was a reverence to that room (which was kept locked) and the contents of the room was something to be protected. A sense of purpose is an idea that I am left with after thinking about this. The work having purpose, the act of choosing what image best represents the work.

Maybe I need to think about making some postcards again...

gratitude reminder

About my gratitude post yesterday... last night I was walking the dog and we walked out the door to this deer that was eating in the clearing behind my shop building. The grass is lush in the area of the woods; that we cleared all of the mountain laurel out of and exposed a spring and cut a drainage path back down to the main creek that runs across our property. The deer like to graze there in the mornings and evenings. It's a beautiful shaded area. To think this was completely overgrown when we bought the place and now it's an area that you don't have to crawl on your knees to get through. 

It's easy to not realize ALL of the things that one has to be grateful for as we strive for MORE or BETTER or I WANT. If we don't stop; to look around and to watch, we fail to see the things that are right in front of us. If life is moving too fast it begins to prevent us from being capable of seeing. The deer made me stop and realize that I have all I have ever wanted right there in that singular moment and reminded me that I need to show gratitude for those things which have been given and how I have been provided for.

 

amphora and failure

Last week while I was at Staystack, I decided to cast a couple amphora designs that I had wrapped with raised William Morris like wallpaper designs. I thought this would be cool to come back and engrave over the top of or it reminded me of looking through my microscope and seeing these enlarged scrolls as I have been practicing engraving. 

It's interesting how an entire idea can go sideways when you start making something using an artistic approach to making rather than an linear engineering approach. Everything that could go wrong during the process went wrong. First I wasn't married to the forms and didn't really fully commit to these when I was modeling them. They were interesting, but not THAT interesting or maybe a better word would be "surprising". There has to be something surprising to keep my interest going and these kind of fizzled out. 

Then I went to invest them and they were a nightmare. I had to have core pins and I had to fill the interior first and then pour investment around them. My vents collapsed from the weight of the investment inside and then I had to redo them; it was a mess! Then I made my vents too short as I just wanted to be done. Then I finally got them invested and when I poured them I used a couple of metal ingots that I thought were bronze, but it was a brass alloy instead. The tops of the pieces didn't turn out due to the short vents and the alloy caused cracking everywhere due to the thick and thin areas. The pieces looked more like urns than I wanted. It was a complete wash. 

Sometimes this is exactly what is needed to make a piece though. Sometimes I need something to push me into an area of uncertainty to get me to respond to the moment. That's what being alive is about; responding in the moment to adversity. How will I handle it, how will I respond, will I have faith that I'll come out on the other side better than I went in, or will I become a better person as a result of the situation? Everything I make has the same potential IF I don't throw it in the trash bin or give up. 

Well yesterday I took one of the pieces to the plasma cutter and started piercing the low areas of the relief in the top section. I also played with engraving some of the areas and I enjoyed this. I liked it yesterday, but today I hate it. This is part of the process and some objects make it through and some don't. However, I learn from all of it.  If I'm not failing then I wonder if I've gotten too comfortable in the process and I am missing out of something.

So it the object sits on the bench today. I may have to let this sit for a bit but it gives me time to think and reflect and then hopefully respond.

 

land rover frame 2nd coat

I forgot to post pics of the completed Land Rover frame after I put a second coat of paint on it. There are a few dull areas, but overall it's good to go.

 

bronze wheel mold opening

 

pouring bronze wheel

 

gratitude: bronze wheel casting

The theme for the week is gratitude. Last week I made a resin bonded sand mold from the pattern I made earlier in the week. I was thinking about how fortunate I was to spend time with Chuck Kraus while I was in Milwaukee. He was so generous with his time and knowledge at a time when I was just trying to figure out how to teach. He welcomed me into the Sculpture community and made certain that I had exposure to all sorts of things that he had been doing for years in his personal work. He was exceptional at sharing everything he knew. 

As I look back on the time I spent with him, it's like I had an entire second graduate school experience while I was working at UWM with Chuck. It's interesting to look back through life and realize that there are hundreds of people that move in and out of one's life, but there are other people that come into your life and make such a strong and indelible mark that it seems like a supernatural experience. As I've grown older I realize that God seems to orchestrate these encounters, events and especially relationships. 

I am deeply grateful for the time I spent with Chuck when I lived in Milwaukee. He most likely doesn't know the impact that he has made on me and on my teaching and the extent to which a value him and the things he taught me. But it's moments like this, when I am ramming a mold, or pouring metal that he comes to mind and I think of how I wouldn't know ANY of this if it weren't for him. Thank you, Chuck.