A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Chemistry on Copper: The Works of Cheryl Safren
Copper artist Cheryl Safren at work
Photograph courtesy of Cheryl Safren
“I didn’t know what the reactions would be. We kept scientific data, including length of submersion, and documented it daily." They used vinegar, lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide and salt solutions, she recalls. "It was so primitive," Safren says, certainly compared to her current work. Her son quickly lost interest, “But I could not stop," she says. "I’ve always loved the color of copper because my mother had naturally copper-colored hair. It’s such a beautiful color."
Safren became hooked on the diverse and richly colored chemical reactions with copper. She contacted a cousin who was a chemical engineer, "for safety reasons," she admitted, "because some of the things I use are not good for you." Without a studio she took her experiments outside.
"My earliest efforts of applying chemistry on metal were in my back yard on a bed of sand,” she says. “I was using temperatures of 3,000 degrees. Wood burns and concrete explodes, so working inside my house was not a good idea."
Sand Cove, chemistry and plastic on copper
Photograph courtesy of Cheryl Safren
Eventually she converted the garage into a studio where things like wind, snow and rain were appeased. Though she won't divulge the specific types and combinations of chemicals she uses, due to her years of experimenting, she will apply heat to her copper sheet on occasion with the chemicals to produce certain effects.
"I use many chemicals and heat,” says Safren. “Some chemicals are applied cold, then heated, some never receive heat. Chemical reactions vary, some are instantaneous, some take weeks and years. The natural oxidations process also changes depending on the humidity."
She purchases copper sheet from B & B Sheet Metals in Long Island City. From there she begins to apply different chemical reactions on her test strips---small copper foil she uses as guinea pigs. "For every work I create I use many test strips,” says Safren. “I had 82 test strips for a triptych I recently did." And each test is numbered, defining its chemical makeup so she doesn't have to re-invent the wheel. Older test strips are brought to Two Brothers Scrap Metal in Farmingdale, New York and sold. “My public works are sealed with Incralac so there is no chromatic degradation or oxidation," she says. Then there are her "living paintings," copper works which are not sealed and where the environment plays a part in the evolution of the piece.
“I do things to promote changes and encourage texture and growth so things come out in many colors and layers,” she says. “You don’t know exactly how they will evolve."
She stresses that she does not etch copper, the chemicals reside on top of the sheet creating diversity of color and texture.
"When you look at my work it changes depending on the light, the time of day, the angle from where you're standing,” says Safren. “The dynamic interaction is compelling."
Currently she’s experimenting with crystal formations which fan out like ferns across the copper sheet to create dynamic images with an almost prehistoric feel. "There are thousands of crystal formations which form in a myriad number of formations,” she says. Her work at times seems other-worldly, funky odd shapes and colors that seem to resemble amoebas under glass, or science fiction book covers.
Much of her work is not purchased within the arts community.
"I'm not a chemist, though the main buyers of my work are science people. I’m called an applied chemist, but this isn’t my education," she says with a laugh.
Commissions include Florida State University, Psychology Building in Tallahassee, FL, the City of Aurora, Colorado, and the University of Montana, Skaggs Science Building in Missoula, among others. Running October 26th through December 2, will be "The Alchemy of Art" at Adelphi University in New York. Her two foot by three foot copper works sell between $2,000 to $3,000, while her three foot by four foot pieces fetch $3,000 to $5,000. She would love to work on larger copper canvases, but, after all, it's still a one-car garage.
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Pomegranate Metals: A Family Legacy
Pomegranate Metals helped cast the famous MGM Grand Lion in Las Vegas, NV
Photograph by Derek Jensen
Pomegranate and Noorda Sheet Metal have been in business in Nevada for 14 years, and each company specializes in different products. While Noorda Sheet Metal concentrates on architectural metal work, Pomegranate Metals focuses on decorative pieces, such as fireplaces and furniture. Noorda’s work can be seen all along the Vegas strip from domes and church steeples to the replica of the Statue of Liberty and the lion sculpture in front of the MGM Grand Hotel. The company has also produced a great deal of decorative metal work and ceiling panels inside several of the casinos, such as the Monte Carlo.
Pomegranate works in copper, brass, bronze, zinc and stainless steel. The company has become known for its own welding techniques, particularly with copper, that make it possible for them to build countertops with integral sinks and backsplashes. “You can stamp designs right into the countertop, right into the zinc, right into the backsplash, and make one big piece,” says Noorda. “Big bathtubs, fireplaces, mantelpieces, and hearths out of copper have become popular.”
Pomegranate has also become known for the staining of hot rolled steel. “Very little of our stuff is painted,” he says. “Mostly, the metal is colored with heat and chemicals.” This unique staining process allows the company to create furniture that looks like wood. “People are surprised to find out that it’s metal,” he says. “They go up and knock on it.” The stain brings out a “grain” that is unique to each piece of metal, and the finish is “purple-reddish-brownish to black” in color. Of course, the company has its own patina finishes for copper as well.
Noorda and Pomegranate have about 40 steady employees, but the number varies. Since they contract work, they sometimes have to hire additional personnel to complete specific jobs, and this can take their numbers up to 150 employees.
Because they require such large quantities of metal – 30,000 to 400,000 pounds at a time – they must obtain their materials from a variety of sources. Metal prices fluctuate drastically, so they have to check the numbers frequently in order to get the best value.
While most artists and manufacturers are limited in scope, due to lack of space and equipment, Noorda Sheet Metal’s facility provides Pomegranate with a particular advantage over its competition. “What we have is the advantage of a big production shop,” Noorda says. “We have 220-ton press brakes. For a company to set up that kind of equipment to build furniture would be ridiculous. You’d never recoup your costs from a million dollar press brake. Since we have industrial work, we have that kind of equipment, which means we can press out shapes that an artist can’t do and, certainly, a manufacturer of production furniture couldn’t do.”
The scale of its production shop allows Pomegranate to produce large custom pieces, such as 40-foot conference tables or shelves as tall as 22 feet. “You can’t really do that in wood unless they’re built in place,” says Noorda. “These are actually built and shipped. They can be bolted together once they’re there.”
Pomegranate focuses primarily on one-of-a-kind custom-made pieces for designers and architects. “A few times, we’ve done the furniture shows,” says Noorda, “and actually, we’ve sold more than we could produce. We need to increase our production capabilities before we do more of those.”
Instead, the company is well-known in the industry for its ability to turn a concept into a reality. Pomegranate’s philosophy is “if you can draw it, we can build it.” The company likes a challenge.
“We love everything metal,” says Noorda, “and we love to turn anything into metal. If an architect, designer, or owner comes to us and wants something that’s never been built before, we love to take it from somebody’s imagination to paper to processes to the final finished product.”
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Copper in the Arts: EVENTS
- Palm Beach Jewelry, Art, and Antique Show
Feb 15, '13 - Feb 18, '13 - Native Expressions: Dave McGary’s Bronze Realism
Mar 7, '13 - Jun 30, '13 - Evolving Character Head Demonstration with John Coleman
Mar 9, '13 - Mar 9, '13 - More Upcoming Events...
Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
Uncovering the History of Coppertown USA
The Coppertown Mining Museum in Calumet, Michigan
Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service
Stuart Baird, the museum’s manager for more than three years, says that the museum is “as far North of Michigan as you can go”, but well worth the trip.
“The Coppertown USA Museum began in the mid seventies with the goal of preserving a collection of mining equipment and copper samples that have been around for many years,” he says. “When the mines closed, they scrapped most of the equipment, but we managed to get much of the equipment and copper samples from the Assaying office – where they test the core samples to see how much copper is in there. Over the years, we’ve received a lot of donations of mining equipment and samples of specimen copper that we have on display in our museum.”
Coppertown exhibit
Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service
“We had an open house on August 12, and we’re going to have a miner’s reunion in conjunction with the Calumet Heritage Days,” he explains.
Some of the exhibits at the museum include a two-man drill, the replacement for hand drilling in the 1870’s which was so heavy that it took two men to carry it, and a foundry of casting metal products that denote casting in a sand mold where the foundry men used a pre-existing pattern that was placed in a flask box. Another display is the hospital where an Electric-Therapeutic Treatment Machine (called a Waites-Bartlet machine) was used to help patients with a hand-cranked generator. At that time, it was touted that anything from warts to cancer could be cured or relieved with a certain amount of treatments. The machine also produced X-rays.
Other exhibits include the Sheffield Pump Car, manufactured by the Sheffield Car Company of Three Rivers, Michigan, in 1880. The Pump Car was constructed so four men could lift the car off the track and away from oncoming trains. The Loading Ore Car display shows tramcars that were loaded by hand, using chutes and loading platforms that were put into operation in 1915. This display shows a scraper that was used at that time, before air driven engines and later electric, pulled the scraper that was designed for local mining conditions.
Open June through mid-October (because of the large amounts of snow in that area), Coppertown USA continues to bring the fascinating history of America’s copper mining towns to life.
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Calder’s Brass Jewelry on View - August 01, 2008
Harps and Heart, sculpted from brass wire
Photograph by Maria Robledo, ©2007 Calder Foundation, New York/Artist’s Rights Society
The personal nature of his jewelry, and the inspiration it drew from sources ranging from the primitive to the modern, provide insight into Calder’s life and art. On view through November 2, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present Calder Jewelry, the first museum exhibition to examine the jewelry on its own and in depth, as sculpture on a smaller scale. The exhibition, in the Perelman Building, consists of some 100 necklaces, bracelets, pins, earrings, and tiaras.
“Alexander Calder was among the great sculptors of the modern age, and Calder Jewelry offers a rare and delightful occasion to experience-on our city streets and here in the galleries-the artist’s infinitely creative imagination at work on both a monumental and diminutive human scale, notably in these astonishing ornaments for the body,” says Elisabeth Agro, the Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts.
The metalwork from numerous ancient cultures significantly influenced Calder brass creations. He was attracted to the directness of ancient processes and loved the simplicity of their forms.
Calder necklace, sculpted out of brass wire, ceramic, and string.
Photograph by Maria Robledo, ©2007 Calder Foundation, New York/Artist’s Rights Society
“Making jewelry was very personal for him, and each piece exists as a unique work,” adds Calder Foundation Chairman and Director Alexander S. C. Rower, the artist’s grandson. “Some of his gifts for his crowd (of friends) are included here: a brass wire ring enclosing a tri-colored fragment of porcelain for Joan Miró, a gold “P” initial brooch for his wife, Pilar, and a silver brooch of her name for their daughter, Dolores; for Jeanne and Luis Bunuel, a gigantic flower brooch (with shards of colored glass and mirror for petals).”
For Calder’s jewelry, the wearer becomes significant both as context and structural support, and the exhibition will be punctuated by enlarged images of people wearing the jewelry, including Calder’s wife, Louisa James. Other well-known women adorned by Calder, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Peggy Guggenheim, also suggest the jewelry’s popularity over the years.
Following its showing in Philadelphia, Calder Jewelry will travel to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, from December 8, 2008 to March 1, 2009, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from March 31 to June 22, 2009.
