A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #9: January '08 - Cont'd
Still Life on Copper: The Process of Discovery
Artist Janet Cunniffe-Chieffo in her studio
Photograph by Paul David
“People are attached to the jewel-like images, the luminosity,” says Cunniffe-Chieffo, of Denville, NJ. “Painting on copper allows me to capture a strong light and shadow effect. The work seems to glow.”
With solo exhibitions, group shows and even teaching under her belt, this New Jersey resident is keeping busy. Cunniffe-Chieffo has been painting for 16 years, but it was in the last few that there has been an explosion of her work. Although she also produces figure work, portraits and landscapes on linen, there is something about the diminutive work she creates on copper that captures her imagination. She currently uses copper canvases as small as 3"x 3" and up to 12"x12", but is exploring the idea of using larger copper canvases in the future.
Though painting on copper isn't unique, it's also not as mainstream as one might think. For one thing, copper isn't the easiest canvas to work on.
“The surface can be irritating,” she explains. “It's such a smooth surface that every brushstroke is apparent. However, that can also be advantageous.”
Some pieces, she notes, work better with visual brushstrokes, adding to the depth and complexity of the painting. She obtains her clean copper sheets from a supplier in New York, sticking with 18 gauge in spite of the price spikes in recent years.
Kiwi still life paintings on copper canvases
Photograph by Paul David
Another advantage is that copper is still considered a unique medium. Galleries are not inundated with copper works like these---at least not yet. Additionally, collectors often want to pass a painting down to other generations or make a donation to a school.
“Copper is unique in that little restoration work is ever needed, unlike canvas or wood materials,” she notes. “Plus, the look is as beautiful and luminous as when it was first created.”
Cunniffe-Chieffo adds that the only downsides to using copper canvases are the cost and weight. A larger canvas requires a sturdier frame, adding to the weight and expense of a piece. But, this is a small price to pay when looking at these luminous still life works.
“I like the old master technique,” she says of her process with copper sheet. “I lightly sand the copper with steel wool, and then paint a few layers of either a white or clear primer.”
Detail of Kiwi painting
Photograph submitted by Janet Cunniffe-Chieffo
Though she's comfortable with her current crop of still-life paintings, she plans to expand to landscapes and possibly even figure work on copper, to compliment her other body of work on canvas and linen. In the meantime, she continues to balance her artistic endeavors and spending time with her 16-month old daughter.
“She's a little artist in the making,” says Cunniffe-Chieffo, who believes that becoming a mother has made her a more focused painter. “The process is always one of discovery.”
Resources:
View more of Janet's work and read about her upcoming shows at her Web site, www.jcfineart.com
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A short video of Janet demonstrating her basic preparation and techniques of painting on copper.
How a Historic Cupola Became Copper Art
New Bedford Copper Cupola Brooch by artist
Chelsea Bird
Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum
One of the museum’s six buildings is the Bourne Building, constructed in 1916 as a gift by Emily Bourne in memory of her father, whaling merchant Jonathan Bourne, Jr. Boston architect Henry Vaughan designed the building, which includes a small tower capped by a bell-shaped, copper cupola. With the museum located in the middle of historic downtown atop Johnny Cake Hill, the original cupola rose high above the landscape for nearly 100 years.
With decades of exposure to New England’s unforgiving weather, however, the copper cupola weakened and needed to be replaced. So in 2006, the original 16-ounce sheet copper was removed—all 500 square feet—and a new cupola was installed. The new one was faithful to its predecessor’s shape and size, but it was made using a more durable 20-ounce copper.
At this point, the museum had an enormous amount of weathered copper on its hands—copper with a history and a rich green patina. The museum director decided that rather than simply recycling the metal in a traditional way, they would use it to create art. So the director contacted the art department at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and the process of turning a century-old cupola into copper art began.
New Bedford Copper Cupola Necklace by artist
Chelsea Bird
Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museu
According to Bird, the artists were given ample freedom to create their own designs, but there were a few guidelines. They needed to create one design for a one-of-a-kind piece and another design for a piece to be sold, one that could be replicated ten times.
Bird designed a unique line of handmade jewelry using the delicate, weathered copper, creating a matching necklace, brooch and a set of earrings. Pleased with her design, the museum store began carrying the pieces to raise funds for the museum. She explained that using the historic copper from the Whaling Museum as her medium had an enormous influence on her design. For inspiration, she had studied the museum’s artifacts, slowly browsing through their collection and sketching.
Two things in particular stood out: The first was the museum’s extraordinary collection of scrimshaw, an art practiced by New England sailors on whaling ships. The second was the display of model sailing ships, especially their complex rigging. Inspired by images of intricately incised ivory and the patterns of masts and ropes, she decided to incorporate the historic themes into her work. To create the image of rigging featured on her jewelry, Bird used a technique she described as scrimshaw in reverse. She essentially turned the process around, “scratching off the lighter patina and bringing out the copper below,” she explained.
She had also noticed that the oval was popular in scrimshaw jewelry, and that New Bedford’s antique shops carried many brooches set horizontally. These factors influenced her oval design and the horizontal setting of her brooch and necklace.
And of course, the gently domed shape was a reminder of the cupola itself.
Because of the nature of the material, however, achieving the domed shape wasn’t easy. In fact, preserving the patina “was our biggest concern,” says Bird, explaining that the artists couldn’t bend the material very much without endangering the thin green membrane. Fortunately, she was able to bend the copper very carefully using hydraulic press forming. Another challenge was the need to seal the copper patina, which was finally done with the right application of spray lacquer.
“It was definitely a good problem-solving experience to work with the material to preserve its unique qualities,” adds Bird.
The jewelry she created truly reflects the history of the material’s physical changes as well as the history of its surroundings. In the end, there really is a connection between the New Bedford Whaling Museum and a line of copper jewelry. It all makes perfect sense—once you know the story.
Resources:
The New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachuesetts
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Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
The Art of Early Copper Tools
Copper ingot from Zakros, Crete
Photo by Archaeological Museum of Herakleion
In Egypt, copper may have been the first metal used. The 12% copper content were extracted in the ores, and large selections of tools were formed including wood and stone. But, thanks to tempering, copper chisels and saws were used to work freshly quarried limestone from the 4th dynasty onwards.
Copper was also found in the tomb of the queen of Pharaoh Snefru, from the Second Dynasty in Egypt. However, it wasn’t until the third dynasty that copper tools were used to build stone pyramids. Copper was mined by the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula, making it the first real industry of the ancient world. Early Egyptian graves contained copper saws, needles, scissors, pincers, axes, harpoons, arrow tips, and knives. Malachite, Azurite, and Turquoise, still worn by today’s savvy women, also had its inception in the Sinai. Inscriptions to “the Goddess Hathor, the Lady of the Turquoise” are still found in the Sinai. In Gerza, located on the Nile River south of Cairo, Gerzeans developed a civilization based on the metallurgy of copper. In approximately 3500 B.C., they learned basic copper metallurgy from Mesopotamian immigrants.
In America, during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, copper was still an important metal for various tools. Henry Chapman Mercer, of Doylestown, PA, collected many such artifacts of Americana and exhibited them in his castle-like concrete museum, owned by the Bucks County Historical Society.
“Aside from a copper sickle blade we don’t have many true Bronze Age tools here, since our collections, for the most part, represent 18th and early 19th century European and American implements,” explains Cory Amsler, Vice President for Collections and Interpretation. “However, copper and its alloys were absolutely vital to numerous tools and implements used in early America.”
Among its collections, the Mercer Museum boasts many such copper-based artifacts - teakettles, cooking vessels, balance scales, bed-warmers, bloodletting devices, fireplace tools, speaking horns, harness bells, surveyor’s compasses, measuring instruments, ladles and skimmers, whiskey stills, soldering irons and more.
“Because of its resistance to corrosion and its non-sparking properties, copper and its alloys were also used in shipbuilding, and for tools used around gunpowder or other explosive materials,” notes Amsler.
Amsler added that even before Europeans brought smelting technology to North America, some settlers used copper for an assortment of tools and decorative items. Native cultures around the Great Lakes and in the American southwest, for example, were able to extract copper for ore, which they hammered and worked in raw form to create useful and beautiful artifacts.
Resources:
The Mercer Museum, 84 S. Pine St., Doylestown, PA, (215) 345-0210
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Cast Images: American Bronze Sculpture Highlights New York Works - January 15, 2008
Dancer and Gazelles, 1916. Paul Manship, 1885-1966
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Francis Lathrop Fund, 1959.
Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson.
Photograph ©1989 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Curated by Thayer Tolles, associate curator in the Metropolitan’s Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, the exhibition features 50 small-scale bronze sculptures from the Metropolitan’s permanent collection. Artists represented in the exhibition, many of whom worked in New York, include Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Bessie Potter Vonnoh and Paul Manship.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art is delighted to continue its longstanding association with the New York State Museum through the presentation of the Cast Images exhibition,” said Emily Kernan Rafferty, president of the Metropolitan Museum. “We are pleased to have this opportunity to share highlights from our comprehensive collection of American bronze sculptures with residents of upstate New York.”
The centuries-old tradition of casting bronze into sculptural form reached the United States by 1850, reaching its apex in the early decades of the 20th century. Small bronze statuettes, busts, and medallions enjoyed great popularity as fine collectible objects for domestic decoration. Bronze was heralded as a democratic, readily accessible American medium because bronze sculptures were easily produced in the United States, in contrast to marble sculptures that were primarily carved in Europe. A short video explaining the bronze-casting process is featured in the exhibition installation.
Cast Images traces the historical development of the small American bronze from aesthetic and thematic standpoints. The exhibition is centered on four distinct themes: American life, history and heroes, myth and allegory and the American West. Included are such familiar sculptures as The Bronco Buster by Remington, a native of Canton, New York, and Victory, a gilded allegorical figure by Saint-Gaudens, drawn from his Sherman Monument in New York City.
Artists responded to a call for subjects that were rendered with realistic detail and addressed aspects of the American experience. John Quincy Adams Ward was inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of September 1862 to model his Freedman, a sensitive representation of a former slave released from the shackles of servitude. Likewise, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle drew her inspiration for Girl Skating from Lower East Side working-class immigrants. The joyful girl in the sculpture experiences the popular pastime of roller skating on just one skate.
A free lecture by exhibition curator Thayer Tolles about American bronze sculpture and Cast Images will be held on Saturday, February 2 at 2 p.m. No registration is necessary.
The exhibition is the 18th installment of the Bank of America Great Art Exhibition and Education Program, which brings art from New York State’s leading art museums to the State Museum. This is also the fifth exhibition in the Great Art Series drawn from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections—a collaboration that began in the early 1990s.
Resources:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., New York, NY, (212) 535-7710
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