A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #24: April '09 - Cont'd
UB Arts Sheds New Light on Reclaimed Copper
Uriah Bueller holds a Parasoleil panel.
Photo by Erica David
“Copper is the best material because it’s flexible and curves over any structure and is maintenance free and structurally sound if supported well,” says Bueller. “One percent of our building projects are dedicated to the arts for building code requirements, so the versatility of copper panels used in functional spaces are artistic and creative. We’re a member of USGBC (United States Green Building Council) but our process is also energy efficient with 0% waste. It makes sense to use green products because it’s the best option for the installation.”
Bueller uses over 90% recycled copper purchased from specific raw supply manufacturers in the USA. He began by designing personal installations for private companies and families. Whatever it is – a piece of furniture, sculptural fountain or architectural shade out of the appropriate materials, copper, says Bueller, won’t drip or rust. It is maintenance free, flexible yet structurally sound, and boasts a patina that looks better over time. His inspiration started with an installation for a family who required architectural shade. They had a wooden pergola but desired something more maintenance free with a pattern to compliment their architecture.
Parasoleil shades by UB Arts, made of
reclaimed copper.
Photos by Erica David
One of the more interesting applications for copper is cutting it onsite to use in fountain sculptures or shutters. Architects and designers request Parasoleil panels in many applications – from surface treatments to an actual bar. According to Bueller, underneath a bar is a flat surface that is sometimes lit for an architectural effect. If a piece of copper is installed it will be opaque and the shadows will shine through, adding a touch of interest and light to the bar.
Bueller has a studio and works with distributors who have showrooms in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Missouri but ships his work throughout the world.
Resources:
Parasoleil, 1901 Linden Dr., Boulder, CO, (303) 589-4524
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Miel-Margarita Paredes Imaginatively Reinterprets Our World
Octopus Teapot, copper, sterling silver
Photo by Stephen Funk Photography
Mainly influenced by nature and animal forms, Paredes crafts teapots made to resemble sea creatures, animal trophies that rethink the concept of hunting displays, helmets for modern humans, mechanical toys, and even animal accessories. These ideas are not derived by isolating herself in an ivory-entwined tower somewhere. This kind of creation could only be done through the intersection of modern society with the natural world.
For example, Paredes created rabbit ear braces. “The idea is that a rabbit decides to wear them if it wants particularly straight ears that day,” Paredes says. She got the idea from a friend who has a poodle and who always says the poodle likes to wear a sweater. “But, of course, you don’t really know that,” Paredes says. “It’s really more about us and what we feel happier wearing. We anthropomorphize animals and project our own feelings on them.”
Paredes' series of animal accessories also included dachshund stilts. “I feel sorry for dachshunds because they look like their trying to keep up. They are running really fast on their short, stubby legs,” Paredes says. “When I walk along the street and I see a woman with particularly gorgeous hair or wearing some fabulous coat, I covet what she has or how she looks. I’m imagining this dachshund seeing a horse run by and thinking, ‘That’s a fantastic set of legs! If only if I could have been born with those legs.’ So, I made these horse legs for that dachshund.”
Teapot welding in progress.
Photo by Miel Margarita Paredes
“That’s one thing I love about metal working, and copper in particular; it’s so malleable,” she says. “Metal is softer than you realize, but it does have that resistance to it so you really have to--not fight with it--but sort of convince it to do what you want it to do. Once you can figure that out and make it do that, you can get these amazing fluid forms that I don’t think really have the same effect in other media.”
Paredes works mainly in sheet copper, with some rod and wire, because she can enamel on copper. “Enameling works best on pure alloys,” she says. “I also really love copper for the different colors that you can get with patinas.” She manipulates sheet metal through raising, chasing, and repousse to create the effects she wants.
Because Paredes manages the studio at the Oregon College of Art and Crafts and teaches evening studio school classes, she orders sheet copper through the school from Alaskan Copper and Brass. Occasionally, she picks up recycled copper from local scrap metal sources.
Paredes' next show is in 2010 and will be an extension of her Gnaw series, doorknob- sized enameled pieces that showed rodent snouts bursting through white enameled rosettes. This new series will feature chased copper, enameled in red, with silhouettes of dogs in a whimsical departure from decorative festoons and garlands for walls.
On the horizon, Paredes plans to expand her line of delicate sterling silver jewelry made in dragonfly wing motifs that is in some stores in her area, and she is considering making more copper mechanical toys. Eventually, she wants to collaborate with a children's author and illustrate a book with her metal sculpture.
Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
Time is the Essence: American Clock & Watch Museum
Eight-day movement created from cold-rolled brass by C. & L.C. Ives of Bristol, CT from the 1830s.
Photo courtesy of Dan Dziedzic, American Clock & Watch Museum
Donald Muller is the executive director of the museum and explains how brass has played an integral part of most of the timepieces in America. Early timekeeping devices were copper and brass sundials, and the earliest clocks were made of brass and iron.
“Clock parts were molded from heated brass,” says Muller. “They would then pour the liquid into molds, then hammer, file and fit the pieces together.” This was time consuming and expensive, so much so that early clocks and watches were exclusively for the wealthy. “These were skilled metalworkers, who also worked with silver and other metals. But the clocks were the things they signed,” Muller says of the pride associated with being a clockmaker, who routinely churned out 10 to 15 clocks per year. Another added expense was importing copper from England and Wales, since there were few copper mines in the region. Clocks were a status symbol and they gave clockmakers an artistic expression.
“They intricately engraved the brass dials, since they showed,” he explains. “The brass movements were technically complicated, but no one saw them.” By the end of the 18th Century, excessive prices forced clockmakers to experiment, and between 1810 and 1840, wood clocks dominated the market. “Eli Terry harnessed water power to run machinery and he standardized equipment, creating interchangeable parts,” Muller says. This enabled him to mass produce clocks using unskilled labor. “Terry produced 4,000 cocks in three years, which is the quantum leap forward. In a sense, he put the brass movement industry almost completely out of business.”
But brass would soon reclaim its rightful position as the metal of choice. Benedict and Burnham Brass Company introduced the first rolled brass machine in 1824. “It took a while for that to catch on,” Muller says. “When they started rolling brass, clockmakers could stamp out the parts. It was very uniform, and they could produce in large quantities.” In 1838 the first inexpensive rolled brass clock hit the market which was a resounding success. With the advent of water powered and then steam powered machinery, brass once again became an inexpensive metal to use. “Brass came back with a vengeance, effectively putting the wood out of business,” Muller states. With mass production, prices dropped so that many people could now afford a wristwatch, pocket watch or clock. With the industrial revolution, America moved from an agricultural society, one governed by the rising and the setting of the sun, to a mechanized society. “Workers needed to be places at certain times and the idea of individuals keeping their own time became important,” Muller says.
The Barnes Wing at The American Clock & Watch Museum containing our collection of brass movement tallcase clocks.
In its day, Connecticut was the time keeping center of America. “We’ve discerned 280 different clock manufactures in Bristol over the years,” Muller says. “Seven major clock makers consolidated here, and 95 percent of the clocks were produced in Western Connecticut.” The Museum sees a variety of tourists and schools come through their doors. Some visit for the nostalgia, remembering fondly a grandparents clock on a mantle. Others inherit a clock, one of the few important items to be passed from generation to generation, and people want to understand its history. The museum offers both permanent and rotating exhibits to provide a chronology of the American way of life. And that way is changing yet again. “The demand for wristwatches is diminishing,” Muller says. “The younger generation looks at their cell phone to tell time digitally, but can’t read a clock dial,” he says. Yet through the years, time has been kept, in a large part by brass. That contribution to our society means we always know exactly where we are.
Resources:
The American Clock & Watch Museum, 100 Maple Street, Bristol, CT, (860) 583-6070
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution on View at Met - April 01, 2009
Pierre I Biard, Fame
Photograh Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Approximately 125 of the finest statuettes, portrait busts, and monuments reveal the French genius for bronze from the late Renaissance through the times of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. Jean Goujon, Germain Pilon, Barthélemy Prieur, Pierre I. Biard, Michel Anguier, François Girardon, Antoine Coysevox, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, and Jean-Antoine Houdon are among the masters featured in the exhibition who lent their prodigious talents to the medium.
Evolving from a decade-long collaborative study by curators and other scholars, Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution is the first exhibition in a museum to display this rich array of achievements spanning the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment. It features works from spectacular collections, including, most generously, the Musée du Louvre; the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle; the museums of Dresden; and many provincial museums of France. Many of the works in the exhibition have rarely been seen in the United States.
The exhibition is divided into periods in which French accomplishments in modeling, casting, and chasing bronze sculpture, from monuments to statuettes, were most prominent. Mannerist style, inaugurated in the reign of François I, was carried to triumphant heights under Henry II. The reign of Henri IV witnessed the formation of a robust Baroque style that crystallized during the rule of Louis XIV, the Sun King, whose rule is gloriously reflected in a series of masterpieces. In the 18th century, a new and highly attractive rationalism developed during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Many bronzes made for the French crown were melted down during political upheavals, but canonical works of the Renaissance and later periods survive intact, or in fascinating fragments.
The vast expertise and range of experimentation in composition, workmanship, and detail that sculptors brought to their metal masterworks are on display. Highlights of the exhibition include Germain Pilon's relief, the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, Pierre I. Biard's Fame, Jean Goujon's Tomb Effigy of André Blondel de Rocquencourt, and Jean-Antoine Houdon's Diana, all from the Musée du Louvre; Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne's Louis XV Standing on a Shield Borne by Soldiers, François Dumont's Prometheus, and Guillaume Coustou's Julius Caeser from the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle; and François Lespingola's The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpent from the Museum Abegg-Stiftung, Switzerland. Additionally, equestrian statues that were the glory of Louis XIV's reign are on view.
The geniuses of the age of Louis XV are celebrated in The French Parnassus (Musée National de Versailles), a monumental work that depicts a vertiginous gathering of writers, poets, and artists, topped by Apollo, the Graces, and Pegasus. The French Parnassus — which was begun by Louis Garnier and completed by Augustin Pajou — is specially installed in the Metropolitan's Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court for the duration of the exhibition.
Prior to its showing at the Metropolitan, Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution was on view at the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Afterwards, it will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from June 30, 2009, through September 27, 2009.
Resources:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., New York, NY
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