A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #59: March '12 - Cont'd
Kiln Design: Old School in the Natural World
Hand spun, enameled copper bowls from Kiln Design Studio.
Photograph courtesy of Kiln Design Studio
Leritz owned an art metal fabrication furniture design company in California for years. At the time, he bought preformed enameled copper for the business. Randomly, he spotted a night course offered at the local community college and decided to learn how to do it himself.
“I got hooked,” says Leritz. “Then I met my wife. We started doing it together and became addicted.”
Soon the couple spent all of their spare time creating decorative houseware from enameled copper, and trying to figure out ways to sell it.
Today, Kiln Design does everything by hand, without the use of industrialized processes in their Brooklyn, NY studio. Sometimes they form the copper in a hydraulic press. Sometimes they spin the copper, creating three-dimensional symmetrical objects, like bowls and plates. Most often, they incorporate the old fashioned silversmithing technique of raising. Using a hammer and stake, Leritz stretches and pulls flat metal into whatever shapes necessary.
“It’s a dying art to do it by hand,” Leritz told me.
Enameling comes next. Leritz and Ehlin heat glass to 1500 degrees in a kiln, so it becomes a glaze. Then they can melt the glass onto the surface of the metal. The wrong metal – like stainless steel, for instance – can separate from the glass. Copper is the best metal for this process because its rate of expansion is so close to that of glass.
Elissa and Jay in their studio.
Photograph by Paul David
Leritz also plays with shape and design. He applies a ball peen texture with a hammer or embosses a pattern onto the copper. This adds to the dimension and depth of a piece.
From this overall process, the couple creates jewelry, bowls, plates, and sculpture. Bowls and plates are cooking and serving friendly – but because of their fragility, customers often purchase them for decorative means.
What really makes Kiln Design unique is the hand spinning, which is almost obsolete.
“Other artists work with preformed bowls that they buy,” Leritz explains. “We can make our own shapes and find the best process.”
The couple makes custom pieces when parts aren’t available – from chandeliers to lamps and antique motorcycle parts.
Scraps of copper do not go to waste. Most often, that’s what inspires Leritz and Ehlin to keep working.
“If I make a mistake, or burn something, then I’ll realize it has a neat effect,” says Leritz. “I think about it until I can come up with something to use it for,” says Leritz.
From leftover pieces of copper, they’ve fashioned unique jewelry, giant bugs, sea creatures.
When asked to describe the inspiration for their work, Leritz describes it as an environmental concern – both ecological and aesthetic.
Kiln Design creates objects that are intended to endure—not be thrown away. This eco- friendly mindset carries over into how they operate the studio. They avoid working with toxic chemical and processes and they don’t create waste.
They also appreciate that each piece “has its own fingerprint, creating one-of-a-kind pieces.
“We make a ring, and make it the same way every time, but the process allows it to look different every time,” he explains. “Just like how each person is unique, each ring is unique.”
Resources:
Elissa Ehlin Demonstrates how to make an enameled bowl.
Kiln Design, Brooklyn, NY, (718) 456-6722
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Kiln Design, Brooklyn, NY, (718) 456-6722
Studio 78: Artistic And Functional Hand Painted Furniture Enhanced with Copper
Studio 78 Tune Cubes. Copper and
painted wood.
Photograph courtesy of Studio 78
Eventually, Grossman bought a studio in the Catskill Mountains where her passion for painting on wood led her to design commissioned wall-size murals and closet doors.
"I started working with copper in 2002,” she recalls. “I was making the transition from pique assitte furniture to painted furniture and it took me a few years to find my voice.I began with zinc and nickel. One was too expensive, the other too soft. Then, I tried copper and I had my medium. Today, I buy my copper wholesale because the price has doubled since I started using it. I have experimented with all sorts of methods to individualize the metal, including my own version of patinas like blue, green and red. The painted furniture is extremely enhanced by these patinas. If I use steel wool in addition to chemicals I can achieve a unique color palette.”
When Grossman began adding copper to her painted wood, it took her work to another level.
"Copper made my artwork sing,” she says. “It was the missing element that made my designs more contemporary and allowed them to stand out from other artists that were already painting furniture and accessories. Embossing copper to an elegant finish added the striking contrast to the painted wood.”
Studio 78 Tune Table, Copper and painted wood.
Photograph courtesy of Studio 78
Grossman recently attended an exhibition in Florida that showcased her work. She will be teaching classes at her studio in the spring.
Resources:
Studio 78, P.O. Box 432, Phoenicia, NY, (845) 688-9823
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Inspired by the Past: The Copper Art of Annie Keifert
22" RAKU fired "sun" platter in opal moonglow colors. Wired to hang flat against the wall. Has raised domes around the center.
Photograph courtesy of Annie Keifert
For Keifert, it all began when she discovered the copper roots of Jameson, Virginia, where she traces her family's lineage. Back in the early 17th Century when the English settlers first arrived to the area, they came bearing sheets of rolled copper, which were then introduced to the Native American Indians. Keifert began studying this unique style of early Native American copper art and today continues this tradition with her contemporary metalworks.
Kieferts foray into copper arts began in the mid-1990s, when she was living in Arizona. She noticed that a workman installing air conditioning at her home had a 1x3 foot piece of sheet copper in his truck. Though she had never formally worked with the material, she demanded to buy the copper, and her career began.
Before long, Kiefert became fascinated by the Native American coppersmithing from the Piedmont region of Virginia, where she traces her family’s lineage. Today, she’s making art, sculpture and functional objects inspired by that early work: Large colorful plates and bowls, woven copper baskets, along with children’s toys and finials, or caps, for rooftops in the Washington D.C. area, where she sells her wares at the Eastern Market on Capitol Hill.
“My basic platters use patterns from the Jamestown era,” she said. “My more artistic pieces often have a cosmic appeal, a Milky Way scientist, Hubble telescope kind of thing. I hammer out domes and bowls that look like craters.”
Finished custom 3ft x 5ft "wave" copper wall sculpture. Wired to hang all ways.
Photograph courtesy of Annie Keifert
Sometimes Keifert uses a torch to paint designs on her work, and she often relies on Raku firing techniques, which involve removing a piece from the heat source at its maximum temperature. The rapid cooling creates wild designs on the copper surface.
In recent years Kiefert has become increasingly interested in the anti-microbial properties of copper, which has prompted her to develop crude copper children’s toys made from stringing old pennies with holes bored in them onto bits of grounding wire. Laboratory testing has shown that when copper interacts with certain bacterium*, it compromises the cellular structure of those strains, killing them and neutralizing their potential as pathogens. Kiefert believes that her toys act as intrinsic anti-bacterial agents for the children who play with them, reducing their chances of contracting bacteria that cause communicable diseases.
“I do consultations on how to incorporate copper to daily touch surfaces, like hand rails, door push plates and even over deck railings,” she says, noting that so long as copper isn’t sealed or lacquered in any way, its anti-microbial properties remain effective.
* Laboratory testing shows that, when cleaned regularly, Antimicrobial Copper™ kills greater than 99.9% of the following bacteria within 2 hours of exposure: MRSA, Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus faecalis (VRE), Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter aerogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and E. coli O157:H7. Antimicrobial Copper surfaces are a supplement to and not a substitute for standard infection control practices and have been shown to reduce microbial contamination, but do not necessarily prevent cross contamination; users must continue to follow all current infection control practices.
Resources:
Annie Keifert, Indios Copper, Chantilly, VA
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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: NEWS
Robert Arneson: Self-Portraits in Bronze - March 12, 2012
A-Head with Little Pain, 1991
Photograph courtesy of Brian Gross Fine Art
Gary Garrels, in his preface for Robert Arneson: Self-Reflections, SFMOMA (1997), states, “As one of Arneson’s great obsessions, self-portraiture reveals the coherence and the tension of his work. In portrayal of self, Arneson often reached his most playful and inventive forms while opening up the starkest appraisal of his subject.” Creating hundreds of self-portraits throughout his career, the works included in Self-Portraits in Bronze represent his examination of everyday life, art history, politics, and his own mortality.
In Bowee Wowee, 1982, Arneson placed his head on the body of a dog, putting himself “in the dog house” surrounded by his own excrement. Bowee Wowee is a tongue-in-cheek response to the rejection of Arneson’s tour-de-force, Portrait of George, 1981, a commissioned portrait bust of Mayor George Moscone, that was ultimately rejected by the San Francisco Arts Commission. Bowee Wowee is a witty, self-effacing, and bitingly funny self-portrayal.
Starting in the 1990’s, Arneson shifted his focus inward, dealing with issues of mortality. Diagnosed with cancer in 1975, the work produced in the last two years of his life reflects his contemplation of illness, aging, and death. Portrait at 62 Years, 1992, made in the last year of his life, exudes timeless immortality. Placing a ghostly white self-portrait bust on a black column, Portrait at 62 Years is reminiscent of Greek and Roman portraiture. Arneson counted the 62 years of his life with hatch marks on the column in sober precision and simplicity.
In the words of Robert Arneson, “I want to make ‘high’ art that is outrageous while revealing the human condition which is not always so high.”
Resources:
Brian Gross Fine Art, 49 Geary St. , 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA, (415) 788-1050
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