Variflorus
I found great quantity of the same sheets in the junkyard in Erfurt.
Laminations that are the residue of a piece for the industry.
I was thrilled with the idea of turning each into a unique, three-dimensional piece. Cutting, folding and enamaling appear infinite variations.
Silvia Walz was born in Germany. She lives and works in Spain.
I’m taking a break from posting sounds this week, to share a couple more photos from Erfurt. In these Gudrun is working, and Kaori is thinking while Elizabeth is cutting, then explaining.
I practiced Gudrun’s name in my head and out loud to myself, many, many times while I was in Germany. I can’t speak any German, apart from ‘Hallo’, ‘genau’ and ‘Tschüss,’ which I picked up around the studio. Oh, and the translations of “Can I have two beers, please?” and “I am allergic to nuts.” for their obvious importance (though I generally replace the word ‘beer’ with ‘whiskey’, which fortunately doesn’t need translation…)
Anyway, I was talking about Gudrun.
Her name is a good word to try and perfect the ‘R’ sound that is needed to speak German correctly (or, as was my aim, with fewer unforced errors). I tend to make a rolled ‘errrr’ like I was taught for Italian, but that’s not right, and a bit of a hindrance actually. So in trying to get the right ‘R’, I found having it in the middle of a word was helping with the momentum needed to get the ‘R’ cor-rect. So what better word than the name of the person on the table next to you?
Fortunately no one was following me around with a sound recording device, listening in as I muttered “Gud-run.” to myself. Over and over and over again.
Melissa is a jewellery artist from Australia living in Seattle in the US. Her works can be found in the National Gallery of Australia as well as the Cheongju City Collection in South Korea. Her enamel works typically display subtle enamel incursions amidst precise laser cut stainless steel layers.
As mentioned in my last post, I was collecting sounds as well as enamelling steel while I was in Erfurt.
Let me introduce our second Friend of Heat Exchange, Martin Schulze, properly. Here is a video of him screen printing, in this instance it’s directly onto a found steel object that he had pre-enamelled.
Once again, aeroplane noise just about scuttled the recording…
Martin fearlessly led two expeditions to the scrap metal yard, and picked himself up some great pieces to work on, so a lot of what you see in the image below uses this carefully mined booty. He brought all these wonderfully shaped bits into the studio, cleaned and pre-enamelled them before he screen-printed directly onto the surface, multiple times in many cases. (Be sure to click on the image to see the intricate line-work of his drawings, as translated onto screen and then into the enamel.)
Seeing my love of pattern (which, he pointed out, was as equally discernible in my work as my wardrobe) he was kind enough to give me one of his postcards that feature complimentary layers of differing patterns.
You can see a single sample of his work via his 850grad website.
Melissa is a jewellery artist from Australia living in Seattle in the US. Her works can be found in the National Gallery of Australia as well as the Cheongju City Collection in South Korea. Her enamel works typically display subtle enamel incursions amidst precise laser cut stainless steel layers.
