A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #35: March '10 - Cont'd
Sandy Jackson Fine Art: Reflecting Life Through Copper
Sandy jackson in her studio
Photograph courtesy of Sandy Jackson
Often she doesn’t know what the final outcome will be until the final lacquer coats the piece and the colors come to life. But don’t let that fool you into thinking she broods silently during her long hours in the studio, meditating on the expressions of sad moments or deep sea adventures; she can usually be found leaping around the room, dancing to disco!
“I think I’m going to come across very strange with my disco dancing,” she divulges. It is an important part of her process to set the mood in the studio—so much so that when she shared space with another artist, her work suffered for lack of dancing around the room. “It’s a happy process. I want someone to look at my work and have a nice, relaxed feeling when they look at my patina paintings.”
Part of that relaxed feeling comes from her themes of water, inspired by her real-life scuba hobby. Her patina painting called “Thermokline” is about the phenomenon of diving into the ocean and seeing the warmed water from the surface meeting the cooler currents underneath. And “Night Dive” is also inspired by the underwater creatures that are hit by glints of residual light, creating a feel of a magical place she visits during her scuba experiences.
She loves to use copper in her art because she says it has a life of its own. “If you draw a line on canvas, that’s it: just a line. If you do a line in copper, it creates its own natural reaction,” says Jackson. “Human hands can’t create it, it just happens by the nature of the metal.”
Night Dive, on copper, by Sandy Jackson
Photograph courtesy of Sandy Jackson
Although her first paying gig as an artist was designing Mardi Gras costumes, Jackson has continued to grow and experiment with her very sophisticated taste and an eye for reintegrating recycled materials. Her first bout with copper was inspired by her artist partner and ex-husband, Jack Johnson.
Sandy Jackson is a force to be reckoned with, as someone who knows herself well and isn’t afraid to experiment to see what she might invent next. She likes to believe that she has invented her own individual processes for the treatment of her fine art because she has never received formal training. She just loves to keep everyone, including herself, guessing, much like the intricate patinas she creates.
Resources:
Sandy Jackson Fine Art, 444 17th St. Unit 704, Denver, CO, (720) 284-1922
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Artterro: Handcrafted Copper Kits for Kids
Arterro Bubble Wand Kit, using copper wire
Photograph courtesy of Jennifer Conn
That’s what Forrest Espinoza felt obligated to do in 2006 when she created Artterro, a company that sells eco-friendly arts and crafts kits. The idea struck when she was trying to find affordable, quality arts kits for her son, and realized everything was assembled overseas, and made of plastic.
“I was excited to teach him about art, but couldn’t find quality craft kits that were easy to make and affordable,” says Espinoza. “I looked everywhere and discovered that there was a real need for this.”
So she set to work with a mission to create beautiful, sustainably-made art kits for families and crafters of all ages. She started her company at the kitchen table, assembling eco-friendly kits under the name Artterro, meaning “art of the earth.” She then partnered with Jennifer Conn, a graphic designer and fellow mom who “prettied up” the packaging. Together, they created themed kits like Creativity, Wool Felt Wearables, and Wire & Bead, using all-natural materials such as colorful, 100 percent post-consumer waste handmade paper from India and Thailand; wooden bangles, glass beads and pendants; artist-quality acrylic paint; and high-quality jewelry and copper wire.
“Instead of giving kids pipe cleaners [like many other kits out there], we gave them copper wire,” says Espinoza. “It gives people a chance to learn to work with copper, because not a lot of people have experience working with it.”
Fun with Arterro kits
Photograph courtesy of Jennifer Conn
“What’s cool is that is you can have a 4-year-old working with our kits or a 74-year-old and they all can turn the materials into something beautiful,” says Espinoza. “If kids are younger than 6, we encourage parents to sit down with their children with these kits. This generation needs to experience making things with their own hands. I want kids to have a great experience. I’d like to think that we sell an art experience, not just art.”
Although the assembly and shipping of Artterro kits has outgrown Espinoza’s kitchen in Wisconsin, it’s still done in the U.S. by Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin – a rarity in the toy industry, where 85 percent of companies, according to Espinoza, use labor outside the U.S. As a result of the partners’ diligence and design, Artterro was recognized as Best New Kid’s Product by the International Art Materials Trade Association in 2008 and 2009.
Resources:
Artterro, 532 Troy Dr., Madison, WI, (608)213-0221
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Pete McCaskill: Inspired by Copper
Ocean's Alive, wood and copper
Photograph courtesy of Pete McCaskill
A new job making decorative architectural castings lured him to Texas in 1986. His job was to take the plans and ideas of the architects and designers and develop ways to bring their ideas to life. While rewarding and influential as jobs go, it was a fortuitous meeting with sculptor Charlie Boren, at a wood sculpture study group in 2001 that changed his life’s direction as dramatically as the curves of his present day creations in wood and copper.
“Today, I’m using copper as a larger portion of the composition I create,” says McCaskill. “At first it was wood that dominated my work, but now I’ve spun that around and copper is the largest component of the piece. Copper is so easy to work with. It’s malleable. You can bend it, shape it and form it so readily. It’s also a very natural material. The use of copper dates back to the early days when man first started using metal for tools. So it’s a very primitive material occurring naturally. It has a very earthy quality to it that flows in with the harmony with my work with wood and stone—it’s just a very harmonious material.”
Embrace, wood and copper
Photograph courtesy of Pete McCaskill
McCaskill feels that copper has expanded his creative horizons.
“The workability of copper is my primary interest in it, but the second thing is the colors that are possible with copper,” says McCaskill. “With patinas, you can get all of the various blues, greens, reds, and turquoise, even black. The colors are very vivid and varied. What I like most about the patina is the way it develops with the copper. If it’s a close match to the colors in the wood, I like the cross-play between the colors in the patina and the wood, how it complements the grain in the wood.”
Resources:
Pete McCaskill, 3905 Easy St., Alvarado, TX, (817) 291-7585
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Herb Alpert Bronze Exhibit at Ace Gallery - March 01, 2010
Herb Alpert, Black Totems, 2005-2009, bronze
Photograph courtesy of Ace Gallery, Beverly Hills
Totems have pan-cultural associations throughout diverse cultures around the world, used throughout history to document genealogies, ancestors and societies. Herb Alpert, in his Black Totem series, has focused on this language of sculpture for the past 20 years and addresses this geneaology in his Black Totem sculptures.
Alpert’s process for creating these sculptures is manually intensive. He works with wet clay first, molding it into vertical forms ranging from 8 to 36 inches tall. From these, he selects the ones he will make into larger sculptures that will range from 12 to 20 feet in height. These larger works are also hand formed with the wet clay. When completed, molds are made and then the sculptures are cast in bronze and patinated black.
Alpert’s inspiration stems from the unique totems of the Pacific Northwest’s Haida, Tlingit, and Kwakiutl tribes whose totem poles were made of single pieces of cedar, some up to forty feet in height. For the Haida tribe, these ancestral totems are, and have been for hundreds of years, the essence of family and tribal identity and sometimes were used to mark entranceways to their lodgings.
Alpert’s attraction to this sculptural form is understandable as it contains an enormous history. The black patina of his totems is evocative of ancient primal forms and the contemporary material belies an ancient prehistory. The pan-cultural consciousness invested into these dark sculptural forms also relate back in time to Egyptian obelisks as much as they evoke the Modernist sculpture of Constantin Brancusi - specifically Brancusi’s Endless Column (1937), Alberto Giacometti’s extended figures and early Louise Bourgeois sculpture.
In conjunction with the exhibition a new photographically illustrated book Herb Alpert: Black Totems, with an essay by Hunter Drohojowska, will be published by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, to be distributed by D.A.P.
Resources:
Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, 9430 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA, 90212, (310) 858-9090
