Just like you, Melissa, I have been fascinated by the black ‘halo’ surrounding liquid enamel on steel and many pieces have been built around it, polishing the surrounding steel back to a silver surface. It is so very frustrating though that sometimes the ‘halo’ is beautiful and jet black, at other times thin and frayed. My theory is that it depends on the particular batch of steel, the iron content, how it is rolled etc. (And of course, how I feel when I work and apply the enamel)
The below is an example of a piece from ‘Playing with Fire’, perfect edge.
I have never been able to achieve the same, although I am trying to embrace the serendipity of the kiln and the material. The results for Drawing, Permanence and Place were rather different.
And a close-up:
Any advice would be great.
I have begun drawing, drawing, drawing. First on paper, then in Illustrator. I have been looking through my photographs from the arcades in Paris, still loving the strange netting on the roofs and curved ceiling lights.
I am ‘circling’ around many ideas; at the moment I am thinking of an installation of many multiples. I will write more about the concepts underlying the work in a future blog, for now I would like to give a brief visual flavour of what i am thinking.
Here are my first experiments, in paper:
and water jet cut in pre-enamelled steel. They will change quality once they are ‘properly’ enamelled.
Beate Gegenwart
Beate Gegenwart is an enamelist and educator originally from Germany who lives and works in Wales, UK. Her studio is located on the beautiful Gower peninsular and she is a Honorary Research Fellow at Swansea School of Art (University of Wales Trinity Saint David). Her large enamel works exhibit an expressive interplay between polished stainless steel and fields of delicately applied and inscribed enamel. She is currently supported by a major production grant from the Arts Council of Wales.
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Beate it is very nice to see your photographs. The cut paper models, they are so delicate and light. It would be beautiful to bring that quality through in your installation. Are you reading about Arcades by any chance? Perhaps light and shadow. No good advice on oxide, but perhaps firing times and thickness of enamel.
Hi, Kirsten, so nice to hear from you. Yes, I am reading about arcades, Walter Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’. It is a huge collection of his thoughts, sometimes tedious, sometimes fascinating. I have begun to be increasingly interested in him as a person rather than solely his writing. He was very eccentric, writing in the tiniest handwriting for instance, less than a millimetre in height. He was able to condense hole books into 20 pages in a notebook. It is that urge for the tiniest detail that fascinates me, text and writing plus spending time in Paris observing the arcades as very differing spaces and environments. And you are right: light and shadow. It’s all so very interesting!!
The halo: it has occurred to me that it could be thickness. I used to spray horizontally and now spray vertically. Maybe the build up is deeper horizontally? Thank you for that suggestion, it’s really good.
Beatexxx