A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #42: October '10 - Cont'd
Suzanne Donazetti: Free Falling for Copper
Suzanne Donazetti at work on a commission.
Photograph courtesy of Freefall Designs
Her creative upbringing included her dad who worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, a creative mother, and a sister who went to art school. “I always dabbled in art,” she says, “painting, doing fiber art and making jewelry using copper, but I was never trained.” When she lived in New Mexico she “made the leap” as a fulltime artist. “I just fell in love with copper,” she says, “it’s so soft looking, wonderful and malleable to work with.” Today she uses her living room as art central, in spite of most of her pieces being about 100 feet long. Her work can be seen in gallerys in New Mexico, Florida, Michigan, and South Carolina, among others.
She started using chemical patinas to color copper sheets, but unless you anodize your copper or use another technical process the colors become too muted. “That’s very limiting,” she admits and she couldn’t get the broader palette she desired. “I had colored air brush inks and liquid acrylics in my studio and I started fooling around with them.” She found out quickly that applying them directly on copper dulls the ink, therefore she started using gold, silver and copper leaf over copper sheet which allowed the colors to pop. “The reason I use copper sheet is that it provides a structural base to my work so I can sculpt it. It holds up much better than a traditional canvas.”
Before the Storm, woven copper.
Photograph courtesy of Freefall Designs
“People buy my work in part because it’s sculptural, its not static art on a wall,’ she admits. “I want to find the point where light interacts with the landscape,” she says. Some owners of her copper pieces hang them specifically so they capture the light of the sun which interacts with the copper disbursing little flecks of light around the room like a Kaleidoscope. She’s currently working on three hospital commissions and a few corporate commissions, which accounts for about 40 percent of her work. Not one to waste her copper, she still occasionally makes jewelry. “I take the end cuts from the copper and roll them over a dowel, then string them with beads.”
She does very few shows; however one upcoming show will be at the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge MD in October. And her big solo show is held each July at the Waxlander Gallery in Santa Fe and 2011 is already booked. Her freefall into copper is looking up.
Resources:
Suzanne Donazetti, Columbia, MD, (443) 325-0703
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Modern Abstract Decor: Melding Modern Art and Science
Barren Season
Photograph courtesy of Nicholas Yust
“My inspiration for entering into metal art itself is in studying the scientific fundamentals – the thermal and chemical properties of metal, the scientific elements and how they react to metal,” says Yust. “On the art side, of course, it’s not as controlled, but I understand the physical nature of things and what’s going on with different chemicals to create those colors.”
The Cincinnati native started out in oil pastels while a student at University of Cincinnati’s School of Design Art Architecture and Planning, but after two years, grew bored of the medium.
“I always loved math and science on the side, so that began to spark my interest on the more technical side of things,” says Yust. He completely switched majors, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in materials engineering and a master’s degree in metallurgical engineering in 2002.
Yust’s passion for science, however, would soon fuse with his undying love for art after he worked on some experiments for the United States Air Force on thin, film-coated conductors and cut out patterns in aluminum.
Scientist evolved further into artist after he fell in love with a metallic triptych at the mall but couldn’t afford it. So he ground out his own aluminum triptych for his apartment. “That’s where it all started,” says Yust. “I got a lot of positive reviews from friends and family, sold one on eBay and have gotten a good response ever since.”
Reluctance
Photograph courtesy of Nicholas Yuth
Yust’s business, needless to say, has taken off, with work sold to collections in more than 36 countries. And that’s his own triptych passion, along with creativity and science: his business. “The thing that’s kept me focused and interested beyond the art is the development of a small business,” he says. “A lot of artists don’t know how to control or expand their business. I’ve been able to go from making a couple pieces here and there and now I’m finishing up a 3,500-square-foot studio and gallery space to open near Cincinnati and really close to where I live.”
Yust says he also appears in local shows throughout the city, as well as art expos along the East Coast, such as shows coming up in Boca Raton, Fla., in January; Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Fla., in Feb; and Manhattan in March 2011.
For the future, Yust says fans of Modern Abstract Décor can expect him to “continue to make monumental designs and gain popularity with art collectors. I also hope to build art galleries in other parts of the country.”
Resources:
Modern Abstract Decor, Cincannatti, OH, (866) 533-1339
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Copper in the Arts: EVENTS
- Palm Beach Jewelry, Art, and Antique Show
Feb 15, '13 - Feb 18, '13 - Native Expressions: Dave McGary’s Bronze Realism
Mar 7, '13 - Jun 30, '13 - Evolving Character Head Demonstration with John Coleman
Mar 9, '13 - Mar 9, '13 - More Upcoming Events...
Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
Rare New Hampshire Colonial Copper Finds a New Past
New Hampshire Colonial Copper Plate, dating
back to June 20, 1775.
Photograph courtesy of Heritage Auctions
The plate was originally thought to be the engraving work of Paul Revere, due to striking similarities of form, layout and style of earlier plate linked to Revere.
“For many years, the engravings for these particular notes was attributed to silversmith and Colonial Patriot Paul Revere based on circumstantial evidence,” says Kathy Lawrence, Currency Cataloger fot Heritage Auctions. “Revere engraved and printed very similar notes for the Massachusetts issues of May 25, 1775 and July 8, 1775 and therefore it was believed that he also engraved the notes for the June 20, 1775 New Hampshire issue. However, recent research by Dr. Frank Mevers, the Head Archivist at the New Hampshire State Archives, revealed that the New Hampshire notes were actually engraved and printed by John Ward Gilman. As part of the authorization by the New Hampshire Provincial Congress on June 9, 1775, it was mandated that the notes be comparable to the copperplate issue of May 25, 1775 by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay thus leading to the inference that Revere engraved the plate. Gilman was a renowned silversmith and engraver as well and his family was quite prominent in New Hampshire.”
This rare plate made entirely of copper with a thickness of .08 inches, featured four different engraved denominations of Colonial notes authorized in denominations of 1 shilling, 6 shillings, 20 shillings, and 40 shillings.
“The plate was used in New Hampshire to print four denominations of Colonial notes issued by the colony and dated June 20, 1775. In the Act of June 21, 1794, they were referred to as "Copperplate notes," adds Lawrence. “In general, any surviving plates from Colonial paper money issues are very rare.”
The vignettes contained within each engraving were later modified circa 1855 by an unknown hand.
“The plate is well preserved. However, circa 1855, a few modifications were made to the designs as part of an agreement with the State of New Hampshire to allow collector Joshua Cohen to issue reprints of the notes,” says Lawrence.
Resources:
Heritage Auctions, Dallas, TX, (214) 528-3500
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Monumental Matisse Sculpture up for Auction at Christie's - October 06, 2010
BACK IV, HENRI MATISSE (1869-1954)
(NU DE DOS, 4eme état) Conceived circa 1930
Estimate: $25,000,000-35,000,000
Photograph courtesy of Christie's
“This is truly an unprecedented opportunity for the many collectors who recognize Matisse’s Back series as a milestone in modern sculpture,” said Conor Jordan, Head of Impressionist and Modern Art for Christie’s Americas. “Over the course of 20 years, from Back I to Back IV, Matisse traced the gradual shift in our collective visual language from figuration to abstraction. With Back IV, the final sculpture in the most sustained project of his career, Matisse conceived a starkly powerful, singular expression of the human form that defined a new era in 20th century art.”
Viewed together, the Backs afford vivid insights into Matisse’s formal and thematic concerns at critical moments in his career. Matisse undertook the first bas-relief around 1909, using clay to sculpt a detailed, naturalistic rendering of a lone female figure viewed from behind, her left arm raised to grip the top of a wall or screen in front of her and her right arm twisted behind her. Though this initial version no longer survives, Matisse returned to the theme later that year to model in plaster the more muscular, articulated version that survives as Back I. In the following years, Matisse returned to re-work the female figure again and again with Back II around 1913 and Back III around 1916-17. With each new iteration of the motif, Matisse re-worked both figure and ground, adding plaster to some areas and removing it from others with chisels and hammers, gradually refining the previous state in search of the purest, most reductive manifestation of the female form.
Around 1930, more than two decades after he first undertook the challenge, Matisse conceived Back IV, his definitive statement on the theme that had preoccupied him for so many years. As the most starkly refined and highly architectural of the Back reliefs, Back IV divides the female form into three nearly symmetrical zones, with the woman’s head, hair and spine fused into a startlingly stripped-down columnar figure at center of the work. Pleased with the outcome, Matisse kept a plaster cast of Back IV in his studio for the rest of his life, and scholars suggest that the reductive purity and spatial composition of the relief may have inspired some of Matisse’s finest late-career paintings, including La grande robe bleue of 1937, now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Resources:
Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY, (212) 636-2000
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