Images from the Enamelist Society Workshop: Vitreous Enamel for Public Art lead by Amal Ghosh, Iris Hudson Ghosh and Elizabeth Turrell at the Vasind facility of JSW Steel Limited

Three stainless steel brooches, with fixings already soldered to the backs, sandblasted and awaiting their appointment with the enamel brush. I started enamelling on them on Thursday. (What a tease, I know, but more images of where they’re now at are coming.)

By the way, those of you who work with steel, is the blackening that appears on the un-enamelled parts relatively stable? I’m contemplating leaving some expanses of this untouched. Over the sandblasted steel it’s quite an appealing matte charcoal colour.

gretchen, writing from the ohio. my first time blogging so we’ll see how this goes. i’ve been enameling thirty-some years. i began while in undergraduate school at kent state university with mel someroski. what i thought was a brief break from another studio major became the unintentional focus for life. my work is usually 2-d for the wall with an emphasis on drawing and a painterly use of enamel.  images are most often derived from the surrounding landscape including garden, fields and water.  my website www.gretchengoss.com shows examples of previous work but has not been updated for a couple years.  recent work has focused on bodies of water impacted by our existence on the planet. studies of the gulf of mexico and arctic circle follow.  the last work made focused on vernal ponds.  reading recent posts about walking in rural environments remind me of the small ponds and their budding life in spring.  the sound of spring peepers is a subtle joy of spring when living with widely diverse seasons.

blogging or time spend on the computer is not a favored activity.  teaching full-time provides a flood of daily of email and work on the computer so when it comes to my studio interests i don’t head for the computer except for some digital imaging.  i may not write often.  work for this exhibit has been weighing heavily on my mind.  i’m naturally inclined to work on the wall but have never been satisfied with work installed except through traditional hanging methods, ie nails in the wall.  due to the gallery restrictions i’ve been considering all options and am not sure at this point where the work will land.

I’ve been collecting visual information since I last posted here. Lately, I find myself drawn to the winter landscape of my home in North Carolina–it’s quiet and stark, everything is  “dead,” for lack of a better word…but everything is so beautiful! The dim and golden light, the gorgeous palate of brown, white, and gray, the movement of trees and grasses in the wind…

I drove to New York to visit friends and family for Christmas. It’s a long drive, providing 14 hours of thinking time. I noticed these same things as I drove through Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and then New York and couldn’t help but think about them. This is when I knew they were going to influence my enameling and be the starting point for my new work. I took lots of new pictures and sorted through files of images from the past on my computer, gathering together my favorites for this specific project. I have posted several images here and started a set on Flickr for all of them to be together and for you see, if you like. I have also posted some images of things I made during a wonderful enameling class with Helen Carnac. I see a similar thought pattern in these pieces, too.

Thanks so much for reading.

My name is Helen Carnac and I am an artist based in London.

I trained in metal in the late 80’s, early 90’s at a University in London and have lived and worked in London since. I started enamelling then and have continued ever since, but really felt that I had found the right material when I met Elizabeth (Turrell), she was running a masterclass at a University that I worked at and I was lucky enough to join in. I have always loved drawing and scratching on metal and so liquid process enamel was a great material to combine these things.

Over the past year I have worked in Berlin for 4 months as a Professor and ran a project about long design thinking processes. It revolved around walking, talking, looking and making. We are making a book about it at the moment and so if it is published soon I will tell you more about it here.

This is where I began a body of work for an exhibition that Elizabeth and Beate curated called Drawing, Permanence and Place. I am really fascinated in how walking is so akin to making for me and so I wanted to include sketches and marks made while exploring, and words and thoughts and found objects that I found along the way.

These are some words from my essay for the catalogue..

‘My work considers and is consumed by paths, lines, marks and time…in no particular order they run alongside and across each other. My practice is grounded in the environment and I develop projects using design methodologies that are rooted in an acute awareness of physical location, place and working practices…

I am concerned with relationships between humans and nature through observing short-term day-to-day impacts and longer term temporally evolved traces of co-existence. In practice this may involve watching for and identifying small change. I make observations through walking known routes over and over again, by understanding unknown place through journeying and collecting or by observing material change through using empirical and experimental methodologies in developing my work. I seek to track traces and patterns and to develop more metaphorical understandings’

By way of introduction – and as we are just entering a brand new year – I though I would write about some of my main projects of 2011 and what 2012 holds for me.

Between 2007 and 2011 I was employed full time working on a research fellowship with the rather unwieldy title of Innovation in Vitreous Enamel Surface for Jewellery. The project had both a practical and a theoretical strand and investigated the place of enamel within contemporary jewellery practice. Although the project was completed in September 2010 one of the research outcomes, a major international enamel jewellery exhibition, gained a life beyond the period of the post and was one of my major preoccupations during 2011. The organization of this project coincided with my first year as an independent artist so curating the show whilst trying to build up my jewellery business has been a challenge. The exhibition Substance and Substance – International Contemporary Enamel Jewellery – which includes a number of the Heat Exchange artists – is now in its final few weeks at Ruthin Craft Centre in Wales.

2011 was also the year in which I moved into a new studio space (photos coming soon). This is the first time I have had a studio outside my home in about 15 years so it has been a bit of a slow start and making the break from the little studio at the back of the house that overlooks my garden has been difficult. I plan to keep this room as my enamelling studio for the time being and see if this proves to be a practical arrangement.

The first few months of 2012 will be spent developing new work, not only for Heat Exchange but also for a major enamel show at Galerie Handwerk in Munich in March. Both these projects are very exciting and I am hoping that between them they will give me an opportunity to build on the technical research I undertook during my fellowship – I’ll keep you posted.

A happy new year to you all.

Jessica Turrell          Bristol, UK

Heat Exchange presents a moment of significant change in my practice as I start to address a different working environment and routine, and I am fascinated to hear how others of you have navigated the upheaval of changing studios.

In recent years I have commandeered a big kitchen table for drawing, and chaotically processed work on the attic floor and back yard. My choice of materials and processes has always followed concept and I defined myself as a fine artist distracted by a teaching job. Eventually I resolved my work-life balance by going back to college to study an MA. During this intense period I explored many new processes including enamel and most importantly identified myself as a ‘maker’: an applied artist using drawing with objects. So I realised a context for my work but now need a different studio fit for purpose.

Today I am once again constrained by my day job, trying to juggle teaching with exhibitions and grant applications. I have learnt that risk-taking is necessary for inspiration: this exhibition acts as a trigger for change, a transference activity to instigate a new approach to work and lifestyle.

This holiday I finally found time to instigate my project by working at college in lieu of a personal studio

Here are some photos of work in progress: I have taken old mining artefacts as forms for sand casting – piece moulds are made using sand hardened with carbon-dioxide. To complete the sand-surface in preparation for molten iron it is ignited with a solution of graphite powder in alcohol. I like the fact that several heat exchanges occur throughout my project during mould making, melting of iron, and enamel application, and through transference the replicated objects are rendered dysfunctional to become vehicles for reverie…

with best wishes for the New Year, Cath

Hello…My name is Heejin Hwang and now I am studying Art Metals at University of Wisconsin-Madison and will be graduating with an MFA next May.

I have been more focused on enameling since taking Helen Carnac’s class-Mark Making in Enamel-at Penland School of Crafts in 2010. What first attracted me to enameling was surface quality that I’d like to work with. Thus, the majority of my current pieces have sensuous surfaces that offer meanings that satisfy intellectually as well as aesthetically.

My work is about the tension between structure and sensuality. I am interested in framing female identity through the lens of beauty, control, dignity, strength and vulnerability. .As multiple units complete a perfect structure, the whole becomes animated and my jewelry comes to life. Only when the body ornaments are perfectly installed on the wearer, does an emotional and structural rapport begin. 

Steel sheet, steel wire, enamel, ground rock / 2010

Steel wire, enamel, ground rock / 2011

Steel wire, enamel, ground rock, hand-dyed yarn / 2011

One of my favorite activities in studio is to look at my lovely samples for a while sitting in front of the bench, which is the most basic of my creative process.

My sample board

Everyone, good luck with your project!!

Hello! My name is Amy Tavern and I am a studio jeweler.  I live and make my work at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina where I have been a resident artist since January 2009. Over the past three years I have done lots and lots of exploration of my medium, other materials, and process.

Bow Cluster Brooch with Tassel. Sterling, spray paint, cotton string.

The work I make primarily involves spray paint on sterling silver. I layer different colors and then once the paint is completely dry, I scratch the surface with files, a scribe, and heavy- grit emery paper. My use of spray paint comes from my love of graffiti, the scratching comes from my love of distressed surfaces and signs of age.

Leaf Crystal Brooch from Fabricated Memory: Jewelry Box, 1980. Sterling, spray paint.

Most recently I completed a large body of work for my first solo exhibition. The work was based on my personal history with jewelry. You can read my artist statement here and view the two collections here and here.

The front cover of my enameled book. Enamel, steel, book cloth.

Although not an enamelist per se, I have done some enameling and have wanted to focus more attention on it. During the summer I made an enameled book while Elizabeth was teaching a class here at Penland. Something went “wrong” during a firing of one of my steel pages, but Elizabeth suggested I look at it in another way. This “mistake” will be my starting point as I begin work for this exhibition.

My studio.

Thanks so much for reading.