A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #17: September '08 - Cont'd
Lanterns of Cape Cod: Continuing an Age Old Copper Tradition
Lanterns of Cape Cod workshop
Photograph courtesy of Robby Savonen
“I was up for a change, and the timing was right,” she says. “I knew I could sell because I could talk to people about their homes and their styles.”
Savonen co-owns the company with Tim Corcoran, but she runs all of the day-to-day operations, including management, production, and sales. The company maintains an on-site basement production facility where all of its lanterns are made by subcontractors who also design new products. “I actually help make things, too, when need be,” Savonen says. Her 15-year old son is even getting in on the act, learning to make parts. As luck would have it, he was able to take an art metal class at his local high school.
While Lanterns of Cape Cod has been in business for 30 years, the most recent owner maintained the company for 15 years. His son began designing and making lanterns when he was a teenager and now creates weather vanes for the company, which include everything from ships and roosters to fish.
Savonen enjoys creating showrooms with the lanterns and other home accents made by local artists, including restored church windows converted into mirrors. She sets up a stage for the outdoors with an arbor to showcase the company’s outdoor lanterns, and she creates seasonal displays to show how the indoor lanterns can enhance interior décor “so that customers can get a real feel for how they’ll look,” she says.
Savonen is always looking for new products to include in the store and add to her displays. They have added copper watering cans, wind chimes, and a bird feeder that looks much like the company’s copper onion lamp. Still, she maintains the old-style designs, most of which were created by the original owner. Everything remains natural with no patina finishes and no spray to treat the metals. Improvements are made periodically, however, for optimal functionality. It’s Cape Cod’s centuries-old craft of lantern-making via 21st century technology.
Colonial copper lantern by Lanterns of Cape Cod
Photograph courtesy of Robby Savonen
The company uses three types of glass in its lanterns, all of which are specially blown by Davis-Lynch Glass Company in Star City, West Virginia. The reamy glass has a wavy, swirled surface that deflects light, while the optic glass is striped. The seeded glass contains pinhead-sized bubbles, which has the effect of softening the light and looks much like antique colonial glass. The seeded glass is a bit more expensive than the other options, but any of the three types of glass can be chosen for most of the company’s designs to create a customized lantern.
Tourists often buy the lanterns while they’re in town or purchase from the Web site after they return home. The company receives orders from all over the U.S. and Canada. Recently, they received an order from a woman in the United Kingdom who wanted several lanterns for her new home in the Caribbean.
Located in Orleans, Massachusetts, which is on the arm of Cape Cod between Provincetown and Hyannis, Lanterns of Cape Cod is well-known locally. Customers can even visit the production facility and watch how the lanterns are made.
“I think what distinguishes us is that somebody comes in with a design, and they want to change something,” says Savonen. “Because we have our production facilities right here and our craftsmen, we can adapt to some design that they have in mind. The other thing is that we’ll go out to their home, I’ll bring the lanterns with us, and I’ll help them design a whole project.”
Resources:
Lanterns of Cape Cod, 34 Main St., Orleans, MA, (800) 606-1612
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Handmade in Tampa: The Copper Jewelry of Tina Gasperson
Recycled copper wire ringsPhotograph courtesy of Tina
Gasperson
“I’m a total neophyte, but that’s part of the fun,” she says. “My mom was a seamstress and taught me to sew and work with fabric when I was young. I began embellishing fabrics with sequins and rhinestones,” she says. She may be on the learning curve, but this Florida based artist has already experienced success with her jewelry, though she started down a much different path. She majored in fashion design at the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa, learning how to paint fashion illustrations with watercolors and chalk. She gravitated to working with silver and crafting jewelry. “But then I saw people working with copper and I really liked it. It’s a friendly substance, it responds well when you work with it and it’s really malleable. It’s also easy to harden it with a chasing hammer and steel block.”
Aside from getting copper wire at her local hardware store, Gasperson is resourceful, always on the lookout for alternative ways to obtain materials for her art.
“My husband was doing the addition to our house and I used some of the scrap wire from the electrical and it snowballed from there,” she says. One day they found coils of sheathed copper wire, and after pulling the sheath off, they discovered it already had a beautiful black patina.
Although Tina incorporates other materials into her art---aluminum, silver, precious metal clay, and 14K gold--- copper is by far her favorite.
“Even with your fingers, you can work with copper and see how it responds to being moved,” she says. “I use small movements, tiny work; a lot of times I use a magnifying glass.”
Recycled copper wire bracelet
Photograph courtesy of Tina Gasperson
One pair of earrings she created was prompted by a Frank Lloyd Wright design. But for Tina, inspiration can come from any source, and at any time.
“I was tired one night and I was looking at the comforter on my bed which has a lot of embellished embroidery and there is a section of flowers,” she recalls. “It looked up at me and said ‘twist me out of wire and I’ll look really beautiful.’ So at 10 at night I got out my stash box and started twisting the copper wire. Then I thought it would be nice to hammer that so I did, and I linked a bunch of them together and made this beautiful flower motif. I find that if I just go through life, the inspiration happens.”
She uses copper wire ranging from 28 gauge to 4 gauge and has tried various ways of bringing a patina to her copper including using a torch to create, “instant pinks and greens and browns.” She has also used the ammonia & vinegar method and a less known effort using eggs. “You hard boil an egg, while it’s still hot you crack it open and put the egg and the copper in plastic bag and let it sit,” she says. As the egg cools, it releases sulfur which then creates a golden brown color and with a little more time, a black patina.
She plans on showing her latest work at the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, where just 300 artists showcase their work to a quarter of a million visitors. She’s already been contacted by a consignment store in New Jersey to carry her work, and she’s sold to clients as far away as Hawaii and as close as the Midwest. She’s even received her first commission to create a ginkgo leaf motif necklace.
“Handmade items, like what I do bring a lot of value to people,” she says, emphasizing the sentimental value of her jewelry. “More and more people are beginning to appreciate the intrinsic value of handmade objects.”
Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
The Great Liberty Bell Dupe
Allentown's Liberty Bell replica
Photograph by Paul David
While the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, the Supreme Executive Council decided to remove the famous Liberty Bell and 10 other bells to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Hidden on a train of 700 wagons beneath a veil of hay and manure, the bells made their way 50 miles north to Northampton Towne, now called Allentown on September 24, 1777, with a guard of 200 cavalrymen. They carried the bells throughout Pennsylvania to Richland Township, Bethlehem, then Allentown, where they were hidden under the floorboards of old Zion’s Reformed Church until the following July. By 1778, the British evacuated Philadelphia and the bells were restored to their original place.
Every replica bell was presented with a plaque,
detailing the copper companies that funded the project
Copper plaque detail
Photographs by Paul David
Pastor Stevens encourages the public to ring this bell, whose dimensions, weight and tone are identical with the original Liberty Bell, to hear what the actual Liberty Bell would sound like if it wasn’t cracked.
“We have commemorative services every year on the third Sunday in September to commemorate the hiding of the bells here at our church,” says Pastor Stevens. “Everyone is invited and we have re-enactors who dress in colonial garb. In fact, I dress in the colonial costume that we think Rev. Abraham Blumer, who was the pastor here at that time, wore.”
The museum now contains permanent exhibits including Allentown’s own Liberty Bell, cast in 1769, and rung for the people to hear the reading of the Declaration of Independence, a fiber-optics map, a collections of Revolutionary War era artifacts, a Civil War Exhibit celebrating the ‘First Defenders” and the new General Harry C. Trexler Portraits of Freedom Center.
The Allentown Liberty Bell
Weighing about 2,080 pounds, the Liberty Bell replica in Allentown, PA is composed of 70% copper, 25% tin, 2% lead, 1% zinc, .25% arsenic and .20%silver with trace amounts of gold, magnesium, nickel and antimony.Resources:
The Zion United Church of Christ and Liberty Bell Shrine Museum, 622 W. Hamilton St., Allentown, PA, (610) 435-4232
Watch a video about the history of the great Liberty Bell replica told by the curator of Liberty Bell Shrine Museum.
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Watch a video about the history of the great Liberty Bell replica told by the curator of Liberty Bell Shrine Museum.
Copper in the Arts: NEWS
ISC Sculpture in Public: Part 2, Public Art - October 02, 2008
The 21st International Sculpture Conference will take place in Grand Rapids,
Michigan at the 130 acre Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
Continuing conversations started at the 2007 conference, this two and a half day event will bring together members including artists, arts administrators, curators, patrons, museum directors, educators, and students for dialogue and networking events focused on issues related to public art. The ISC, which began hosting sculpture conferences over 45 years ago, selected Grand Rapids as the location for their 2008 event due to the cities vibrant cultural community with a long history with public art.
“Sculpture in Public: Part 2, Public Art promises to be an exciting occasion”, said Johannah Hutchison, Executive Director of the ISC. “It offers a wonderful forum for members to network and exchange ideas, as well as visit a region of the US with a rich history of Public Art. Building on last year’s conference we look forward to bringing more of our membership together, particularly the students, to continue the discussions about public art today.”
The conference will be headquartered at the 130 acre Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, heralded by the Wall Street Journal as “the most important sculpture collection west of the Kroller Mueller” and whose collection ranges from Rodin and Maillol, to Moore and Hepworth, to Cragg and Goldsworthy.
“We are honored to share our collections, gardens and grounds with the ISC and its members in this capacity.” Says Curator of Sculpture and Director of Exhibitions, Joseph Antenucci Becherer, “we are a highly unique institution as equally a botanical gardens, sculpture park and museum.”
A keynote address to be given by internationally celebrated sculptor and installation artist Jaume Plensa, who also be the subject of a major exhibition at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park during the conference. This will be Plensa’s largest US exhibition to date and Park members will join conference attendees for this talk.
The ISC is the world’s leading non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement, creation, and understanding of sculpture and its unique contributions to society.
Founded in 1961 at the University of Kansas, the ISC was originally developed as a conference to present new technologies to sculptors. Incorporated in 1978 as a member-supported group, the ISC seeks to educate the public about contemporary sculpture through its progressive educational and community outreach program initiatives, conferences, symposia and tours. The ISC presents an annual Lifetime Achievement Award to an extraordinary sculptor, as well as grants the
Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards to recognize talented undergraduate and graduate students.
Other events being planned for the conference include panel discussions by leaders in the arts, social events, pre-conference workshops, a vendor’s square, and Art Slam, where attendees can share slide of their work for critique by others. Additional local organization’s participating in the events include the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art (UICA) and Grand Rapids Art Museum.
Grand Rapids was selected as the host site for this international conference because of its long history and devotion to public art, and, in particular, sculpture. The city was the first recipient of an NEA Art in Public Places grant in 1969, which enabled the acquisition of Alexander Calder’s monumental, La Grande Vitesse – widely considered the sculptor’s most important stabile. In the nearly four ensuing decades, the community has continued its commitment to public sculpture and hosts major works by Mark di Suvero, Maya Lin, Robert Morris, Dale Chihuly, and Ellsworth Kelly, among other. In addition, the Grand Rapids Art Museum has just opened a critically acclaimed new facility at the heart of the central city. The Museum and the city’s Public Art, combined with the collections and grounds of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, provide a highly unique venue for the 2008 conference.
Resources:
International Sculpture Center, The Fredrik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI, (609) 689-1051, ext. 302
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