A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #58: February '12 - Cont'd
A Penny for Lorna Leedy’s Thoughts
Penny Necklace
Photograph courtesy of Lorna Leedy
Leedy was living in Marfa, Texas, when inspiration struck. She lived close to the town’s railroad tracks, and began noticing that the tourists traveling through loved taking home train-flattened pennies as souvenirs.
“Someone should be making jewelry out of these,” Leedy said time and time again, but she’d seen no artists take the bait of creative opportunity, and so she began the process on her own through her fashion-diving venture that’s now 10 years in the making, Fancy Pony Land.
Leedy places several dozen pennies on the rails at a time, then heading back to her studio and storefront to labor away at the often whimsical and colorful sets of clothing she designs for men, women and children.
When she hears the trains fly through on the tracks, she leaves her shop behind and sets out to find penny after flattened penny for her necklace supply.
“Some trains, whether because of speed, weight or the way they rock, shoot the pennies out further from the tracks, but usually, they’re right there in the gravel along the rails,” Leedy says.
To her, scouting for the newly morphed coins is one of the most fun aspects of what she does.
Lorna Leedy with Strand Penny Necklace
Photograph courtesy of Lorna Leedy
“I have to grind each hole in the penny to remove the burrs and sharp bits,” Leedy explains. “I use a Dremel tool for that, and I use jewelry pliers to assemble the necklaces with copper jump rings.”
While most pennies made after 1982 are primarily made from zinc and coated with a copper skin, Leedy has developed an unparalleled affection for the older ones she finds, as their characteristics carry a whole different feel to them.
Pennies minted from 1962, for the next 20 years, were 95 percent copper.
“The older pennies have a wonderful dark brownish patina, sometimes with bits of green, white, red or black in them, maybe from being painted or exposed to other chemical processes or from being buried in the ground or underwater,” Leedy continues. “The ones with a higher copper percentage are also harder and a bit tougher to drill.”
Out of her designs both fabric and metal-persuaded, the penny necklaces are one of her most popularly purchased stock materials both in her Texas storefront and on her website, with the idea of a lucky penny playing its part in how the jewelry is so valued even as the coins themselves are worth a cent.
“It looks so good against the skin,” Leedy says, “and I love how copper warms as you wear it.”
Resources:
Fancy Pony Land, 203 E. San Antonio St. Marfa, TX
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Jamie Spinello Metalworks: Wearable Fashion Art Creations
Seaspray Necklace
Photograph courtesy of Jamie Spinello
Over the course of a year, she dedicated a few hours each week to working with metal, and learned invaluable experience that eventually helped her build her own metal working studio.
"In my studio, I first began using silver but such expensive materials were hindering my creative process and making me afraid to take risks,” she recalls. “So I started hashing out my designs in copper first, then I would fabricate successful ones in silver. After I started working with copper, I found I didn't want to stop. It was very freeing. I felt like I could do anything with it. It has so many properties that were exactly what I needed. In addition to copper liberating me as a creator, it inspired me to dabble in chemistry so I could alter the surface color into varying patina finishes. I still haven't gone back to silver.”
Once she made the switch, copper started finding it’s way into her studio. Printmaker friends furnished extra copper trimmings shaved off plates they cut down. She received copper wire and tubing from friends and family that had extra pieces after remodeling their homes or offices. Other artists' friends donated copper they didn't think they were going to use.
"I stripped a lot of rubber off electrical wire in the beginning,” says Spinello. “Eventually, my production queue required more copper than I had stashed at my home studio in Austin, TX. I began buying drop from local scrap metal and fabricating companies. I'm currently working on designing a series from recycled rubber motorcycle tire tubing, copper and brass rivets."
Barnacle Necklace
Photograph courtesy of Jamie Spinello
Her work has had great success at the SOCO Artisan Market on Congress in Austin, and on Etsy. She was also recently commissioned to complete a public art installation in Austin with a collective called the Pay Phone Revival Project, where she will use elements from both her metal designs and her rubber sculptures to recreate the inside of a gutted, out-of-commission pay phone.
One artpiece consists of raw copper wire soldered and hammered into links to produce a faux tattered neckpiece that conjures up images of the sea. The stack of fused copper rings is antiqued to a teal color. Other techniques, like layering the copper, form shapes that resemble barnacles when assembled and contribute to the uniqueness and beauty of her jewelry.
"Most of my work utilizes a butane or propane torch (for larger pieces), which I use to heat the metal and melt lead-free stick silver solder to hold forms and copper links together,” she reveals. “I build forms by soldering wires, copper sheets and domed surfaces into one piece, turning simple patterns and materials into wearable art. My most recent adventure has been cutting unique contours out of copper sheet to produce personalized cuffs. The relief patterns on the surface of my metal cuffs are etched electrically using a volt regulator and various chemical solutions. Torch oxidation creates different finishes and home made chemical solutions produce colorful patinas.”
Resources:
Jamie Spinello Metalworks, Austin, TX
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MinusOne: Contemporary Copper Jewelry with a Vintage Twist
Art Deco Copper Choker
Photograph courtesy of Jen Wofford
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MinusOne, however, the jewelry line she started up on Etsy three years ago, is something she always finds time for.
“For those who like to design and don’t have time, this part-time work is perfect,” she says. “It’s what I enjoy.”
Wofford, a working wife and mother of two young children (ages 3 and 8) living outside of Ithaca, N.Y., is a study programs manager in graduate and professional studies and part-time faculty member at Ithaca College. She has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
It is her hobbies that feed her creative brain, through fabrics, knitting and sewing, as well as jewelry design. Her first Etsy shop, Blue Hair Knits, a gallery of vintage fabric pincushions, have now been moved into MinusOne.
“I’ve taken two years to knit a sweater, two weeks to sew a piece of clothing, but in two hours I can create something that changes everything about getting ready for work the next morning,” Wofford shares on her Etsy site. “I love how jewelry so simply declares your sense of fashion.”
Jen Wofford with Patina Earrings
Photograph courtesy of Jen Wofford
“I’m a jewelry designer, not a metalsmith,” she says. “But I have the same appreciation for the dynamic elements of brass and copper – how they easily oxidize, and you can polish it, color it, buff it, brush it with steel wool to change the look. And reusing vintage pieces makes my jewelry eco-friendly.”
Grounded in academia, Wofford would love to share her love for Etsy as a computer arts educational tool for schoolchildren; she calls the program Etsy K12. Wofford has a vested interested in online craft communities and, as she describes, “broadening participation in computing, print media in virtual environments, qualitative research and assessment of K-12 computer arts education.”
For now, she’s kept busy wearing other hats, and in addition to Etsy, sells her MinusOne line at local Ithaca boutiques.
“The message I really want to pass along is that anyone can design jewelry,” says Wofford. “As long as you have some imagination, just put some pliers in your hands.”
Resources:
Jen Wofford, MinusOne, Ithaca, NY
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
One of the First Crafted Copper Pennies Fetches Unprecedented $1.38 Million - February 06, 2012
This rare one-cent copper coin dates back to 1793, and
was created the first year that the U.S. made its own coins.
Photograph courtesy of Heritage Auctions
“This is the most a United States copper coin has ever sold for at auction," says James Halperin of Texas-based Heritage Auctions. The coin was made at the Mint in Philadelphia in 1793, the first year that the U.S. made its own coins.
Heritage officials said that the name of the buyer was not revealed but that he was "a major collector." One of the coin's earliest owners was a well-known Baltimore banker, Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr.
"Mr. Eliasberg was nicknamed, 'the king of coins' because before his death in 1976 he assembled a collection that consisted of at least one example of every coin ever made at the United States Mint, a feat never duplicated," Halperin says.
Halperin said there remain a few hundred of these 1793 one-cent coins in different condition, but that the one auctioned off was rare because it wasn't in circulation. Officials say it showed no wear on its lettering, its Lady Liberty face or the chain of linking rings on its back.
The copper penny was known as a "Chain Cent" because its chain of linking rings was supposed to represent the solidarity of the states. The design was changed to a wreath after some critics claimed it was symbolic of slavery.
