A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #20: December '08 - Cont'd
Breathing New Life into Reclaimed Metal
Artist Jill Nooney in her outdoor studio of
reclaimed metal objects
Photograph by Paul David
She doesn’t mass-produce anything. This means that every piece is its own challenge, and Nooney doesn’t usually plan her work. She looks at the metal pieces she has collected and begins to see associations and combinations, which inform the way her sculptures come together.
“Sometimes my husband and I will take apart two large pieces of farm equipment to get one of the major beams because if I have two of them, I can make an archway,” she says. “We’ve taken apart pieces of equipment, and what I’m after is a small gear that’s probably four inches long.”
Jill Nooney's whimsical sculptures composed of seemingly-common found objects take on a new life and look of their own
Photograph by Paul David
Jill doesn’t create custom work for clients because she never knows what she can make until she sees the metal pieces that are available to her. “It’s not very fun to do things custom because you’re always worried about pleasing [clients], and when I do it for myself, I only have myself to please. So, I feel much freer,” Nooney explains.
She sells most of her pieces to New England residents, but she has shipped pieces to clients farther afield. She shipped a sculpture made from a heavy tractor wheel that was mounted on a piece of granite to someone in Iowa, who purchased it for his wife’s 50th birthday. (The shipping cost was higher than the cost of the sculpture.)
Even though Nooney has a vast quantity of metal scraps at the moment, she always needs new pieces in order to stimulate her creativity.
“You can get so used to seeing it that you don’t see it,” she says of the pieces she collects.
It has become increasingly difficult to find metal scraps, however. The salvage yards that she frequented in the past are no longer allowing people to search on their properties. Apparently, safety and theft have been problems. So, she is actively looking for more sources and follows up on every possible lead.
Nooney’s process involves fabricating the metal, usually by welding. She powder-coats and paints some of the metal, but she leaves the majority of the pieces in their rusted state, sealing them with an oil to preserve the velvety patina. Sometimes, she bolts the metal together, or she may simply slip a smaller pipe into a larger pipe. “I try and create them so I can disassemble them because I bring them to shows.” She tries not to make the pieces so heavy that they can’t be easily taken home. Nooney and her husband, Bob Munger, do this work on their own, which sometimes includes delivering the sculpture to a buyer’s location where they reassemble it on site.
Jill Nooney's reclaimed elephants
Photograph by Paul David
Her sculptures vary in size from 5 inches to 15 feet, but the average height is about 7 feet. “I like to do things that are vertical because they go so well in a garden,” she adds. Nooney thinks specifically about how snow might fall on a piece, how a plant might come up around it or weave through it, and how to prevent the wind from blowing it over. She also thinks a lot about silhouettes and shadows since the work will be seen from all sides.
People often try to guess where the pieces in her sculptures originated, but usually, only the mechanically inclined can identify them. For example, at least two of her pieces are abstract figures with “hair” made from the steel filaments used in street cleaning equipment. She admits to a special fondness for farm machinery, however. “I do love the notion of machines that have worked the soil that return to the garden,” she says. “And rust is earth color. It’s very synergistic.”
Resources:
Jill Nooney, Bedrock Gardens, 45 High Rd., Lee, NH, (603) 659-2993
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Copper Ken: The Musings of an Alchemist
Artist Ken Griswa with his copper blue heron
Photograph courtesy of Ken Griswa
Outdoor, interior and custom work defines his unique, playful approach to crafting unique copper pieces for private clients and public spaces.
As with anyone with an artistic bent, a foundation during childhood set the stage for Griswa’s creative life.
“My mother was a master gardener,” he says. “A large part of her gardens were art pieces; plant pots, unique pottery, things that hung on the wall.”
The idea of sculpture and adornment permeated her gardens. Griswa’s mother and father were avid art collectors, looking to place original, one-of-a-kind work in their home. With that kind of environment, it’s no wonder that he gravitated toward creating his own work.
“I fell into copper by spiritual intervention,” he muses. “I was educated as a geographer and cartographer and was trained in pen and ink.” It was during school that a central moment began to define his work. “What got me going was a book written in the early 1900s,” he recalls. “It was about 20 pages and it showed how to make a tea tray from a single sheet of copper.”
Griswa putting the finishing touches on his work
Photograph courtesy of Ken Griswa
“It’s like I start to divine weird stories and visions,” he says. “Those things end up in the pieces and when I deliver it the client is blown away.” Though it sounds almost ethereal, there is a solid practical side to Griswa’s work. “Most of my stuff has a hidden functionality,” he says. “One piece was a giant fountain that was meant to conceal but not constrict a heat vent for a gas fireplace that protruded into a foyer.”
The building code prohibited any altering of the vent. So he created a fountain from a single sheet of copper, which bows around the vent giving a practical and aesthetic value.
“So when you’re in the foyer you don’t see this big aluminum vent that says ‘hot’ on it,” he jokes. “My specialty is custom and that’s how I fell into working with copper.”
Being in the confines of the San Francisco Bay area, where space is at a premium, he was asked by clients to hide the visual vulgarities of everyday life.
“’I want to conceal the view of that parking lot’, they would say, or they desired to hide vents or wall speakers where sound could still pass through, but still adorn, the straight lines, boxes and rectangles that we’ve created---and copper fit the bill.,” he says. “Look how it comes; sheet, rod, plate, wire, foil.
It’s the diversity and malleability of copper that drives him to experiment with it.
“I’m known for my firing patinas, where I take a 4 x 10 sheet, fire it to 1,100 degrees then drag a wet cloth across it,” he confides. “It’s this alchemy moment as the steam rises. The patinas created by the fire, these oranges, Tuscan browns and crimson reds are unbelievable.”
Since copper doesn’t re-anneal itself, it can look like leather, stone, or even turquoise. Though he avoids commercial accelerators, he discovered Miracle Grow as a product that creates not only a patina, but also acts as an armor for exterior applications. “That’s the thing I fell in love with about copper, the alchemy aspects of it, especially in its relationship and reaction to natural things,” he says. Griswa has created custom kitchen backsplashes, fences, coverings for fireplaces and most anything else a client wishes. But it’s his work with kids that’s earned him the nickname, ‘Copper Ken.’
Some of his public work has been with the City of Benicia in Northern California for example, where he taught 4th graders how to make a tea tray from copper sheet, or a flower from copper wire. He loves to introduce them to the malleability of the metal. Though people give him old copper to use; pipes, wire, gutters, old backsplashes for instance, he buys his new copper sheet from Metal Service Center in Windsor, CA. “That’s one of the coolest things about copper,” he adds, “it has a payback value, it’s recyclable. Copper can live in a full circle of life, it can reconverted into another usable form.” He hopes his work speaks to those willing to listen to copper’s own personality. “If what I’ve done inspires someone else, that’s cool,” he says.
Resources:
Ken Griswa, Griswak Copper Studio, Oakland, CA, (510) 220-5743
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Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
Notes from The National Music Museum
Three keyed bugles from the collection of the National Music Museum, University of South Dakota, Vermillion
Photograph courtesy of Sarah Richardson
“We only have 4% of the more than 14,500 instruments in the actual museum online,” says Dr. Larson, noting that his father, a collector, had 2500 instruments. “When it came time to decide what to do with these instruments we brought them to the University of South Dakota and put them into the former Carnegie Library Building with other items. Over a period of time the other objects were moved elsewhere, so it was formalized as a National Music Museum.”
According to Dr. Larson, one of the major collections acquired was the Witten Rawlins collection of early Italian string instruments, which really put the museum on the map. However, their brass, copper and other alloy instruments are phenomenal, especially the three-keyed bugles (NMM#2376, 446 and 860).
“Those three-keyed bugles contain brass, copper and a mix of the two,” Larson explains. “The keys, on the side of the brass tube, were created before valves were invented as an attempt to play all scale notes on a brass instrument. You couldn’t go up a scale or play all the notes on a bugle, therefore, most of the intervals have wider jumps. Of course, now we do that with valves. You’d open those brass keys on saxophones or woodwind instruments to provide the musician with many notes.”
Many items are on display, continuing the legacy of these artfully crafted instruments. The upright serpent tops an instrument that looks like a bassoon with a bell stuck at the end of it, and made to appear like a dragon’s head – with copper or brass embellishments. It’s also known as a Russian Bassoon and was made by Sautermeister and Muller, Lyon France, (circa 1828). The piece was gifted to the museum in 1981 by Frederic and Elisabeth Burt, from Michigan.
“Those were primarily made for military bands, hence the dragon’s head or something ferocious,” says Larson. “We have thousands of brass instruments---cornets, trombones, sousaphones, tenor trombones, and others too numerous to mention. Sometimes they’re made out of brass or other alloys, and many are created from copper. In fact, the early ones were primarily copper because it’s an easy metal to work.”
Also included in the collection are magnificent horns, bells and other instruments by Michael Nagel, a master inducted into the brass makers’ guild. [link: http://www.usd.edu/smm/Brass/Trombones/3592Nagel/NagelTrombone.html
His exquisite instruments gleam with gold and brass, with elaborately decorated Slide Stays and Bell Bows, garnished with delicate floral and foliate designs. Even the brass slides have engraving and impressed rings used alternatively with embossed gold.
“We have 14,500 instruments from the 16th century to the present, virtually representing every country in the world,” continues Larson. “Of those, approximately 1200 are on public view at one time. We also have audio visual guides, and when visitors arrive they see the outside and inside of the instrument.”
Resources:
National Music Museum, The University of South Dakota, 414 East Clark St., Vermillion, SD, (605) 677-5306
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Ritual Beauty: Art of the Ancient Americas - January 16, 2009
Owl effigy made of copper, shell and stone, Moche Culture, Peru, 100 A.D. to 300 A.D.
Photograph courtesy of The University of
Arizona Museum of Art
On view through February 8, Ritual Beauty: Art of the Ancient Americas aims to provide a better understanding of the aesthetic, social, political, and religious life of the pre-Columbian world in which these exceptional objects were created. With this exhibition, viewers can study, appreciate, and enjoy the artistic achievements of these rich cultures through their material past.
“As general, worldwide awareness shifts from the inward view to a greater, global understanding of our interconnectedness and commonality, appreciation for other cultures and the art they produce has expanded," notes Curator Joanne Stuhr. "Such awareness has fostered a passion for the art of Latin America, both present and past. Clearly, this includes the ancient arts of the Americas, prior to contact with Europeans in the early 1500s."
In his essay for the catalog published to accompany the exhibition, anthropologist Peter T. Furst notes that “what we call ‘pre-Columbian art,’ was to its creators— master sculptors, painters, weavers, and architects— not ‘art’ in the western sense but a function of religion, shamanism, ritual, ceremony, protection against personal or collective calamity, and the maintenance of the vital relationship between the living, the deceased, and the ancestors, real and mythological, all the way back to the beginning of time. Although clearly each society had its aesthetics and its sense of what was beautiful and perfect, to make art as decoration or [as] a mark of wealth and status would have been incomprehensible.”
“The I. Michael Kasser Collection is remarkable,” says Charles A. Guerin, Executive Director of The University of Arizona Museum of Art, because “the objects... allow us a glimpse into a unique period in the history of the Americas. They celebrate the enormous creativity of unknown artists who could never have imagined their creative efforts displayed in such an environment. The exhibition and the collection itself serve as an inspiration to all collectors, at every level, to persevere in their collecting and to pursue excellence in that endeavor.”
Resources:
The University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ, (520) 621-7567
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