AJF Blog

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Keith Lewis gave this short and swaggering answer. Try reading it with a cowboy twang. On second thought, perhaps a homoerotic bass tone would work better . . .

The Tool

My favorite tool is a Craftsman brand machinist’s reamer that belonged to my father. As an object it is completely beautiful: tapered, fluted, sharp and poised. It is also singularly specific in its usefulness. It makes holes bigger and is good for nothing else.

I use it all of the time and whenever I pick it up I remember the smell of my father’s shop and the sense of violation I felt selecting tools after he died.

A construction worker who walked like John Wayne and could have been a craftsman, my father made useful things around the house. I have his checkering tool, used for texturing gunstocks. I have a scribe he made from an old dart. And I have his machinist’s reamer.

Keith Lewis is from the wilds of Pennsylvania, where he learned that he liked men a whole lot more than he liked man stuff such as hunting and fishing. He is a jeweler and teaches in the wilds of Washington state, though he craves the city. His favorite fruit is jaboticaba.

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Raissa is a new addition to the AJF membership committee and an enterprising young maker. Here is her response to the question.

A Tool in the Hand

My first instinct was to go with a basic hand tool that has come to feel like home in my hands. Simple, portable, versatile, ancient, I choose a center punch (though in my studio I use this small tool in many ways). It is a key to success of much of my work. I use it for its intended use: to mark the center of a point – the essential step before drilling a hole in a precise spot (grids!). I use it as a scribe, burnishing lines into metal (argyle!). I tap it with a hammer to press into metal – spreading and dispersing it, creating pattern and dimension (texture and facets!).

A typical day for me is hours spent in studio directly holding and manipulating materials in my hands—making sure to  take breaks for yoga, a walk on the beach, or to cook. I formally studied at Rhode Island School of Design but my love for self-expression through adornment has been with me since I was a little girl growing up in the Hudson Valley, NY.

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. I was wondering if anyone would choose not to take the question so literally – and here is a more philosophical reaction from contemporary jewelry’s master alchemist Ruudt Peters.

Between Head and Belly

It is a very old-fashioned romantic, nineteenth century idea to describe the tool. At first I didn’t feel the need to react to this question. But upon further consideration I would like to explain why the description of tools is nonsensical. As an artist and jewelry maker my hands are faster than my mind. My hands produce the fight/dialogue between my head and belly, rationality and emotion. From this continuous interaction the work arises. Increasingly the work investigates different techniques and/or material questions. The artist translates his inner philosophy and motivation for the work with a freedom of form and technique. My tools are my brain and intestines, which I have worked with my entire life. All other tools are an extension of my personal action.

Ruudt Peters is a jewellery artist who lives in the Netherlands. He is professor at Alchimia Contemporary jewellery school Florence Italy. www.ruudtpeters.nl

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. For a jeweler, Agnes, who was the winner of the Emerging Artist Award in 2010, works with an unusual material – pitch-black carbon. Her choice is of tool is poetically described.

Grinding Machine

I love the great power of my most recent grinding machine.
Today I actually own four different ones.
I like that it takes away a whole lot of material fast.
And that at the same time has the ability to polish the finest surfaces.
The last two years we have spent a lot of time together.
This is a tool I could not manage without.
I do not enjoy all the black dirt I produce with it.
I have to stand outside using it; in winter I don’t like that.
I do not like that it is so heavy and difficult to navigate. more...

I invited Ethan W Lasser, curator at the Chipstone Foundation, to discuss the inspiration behind The Tool at Hand, an exhibition he curated at the Milwaukee Art Museum that brings together the work of sixteen artists who made objects using only one tool. We have been hearing from various artists about the tools they love the most, but I wanted to know why Ethan chose to curate the exhibition in the first place.

Tool Stories

Truth be told, this idea originated where all the great ones do: in a bar. I have taken a bit of poetic license to protect the identity of those involved in the initial catalyzing conversation. At a pub in South London last spring, the conversation turned to tools.  Three artists and a curator of craft and design were seated around a table.  First, the artists riffed on their favorite tools, extolling the virtues of a particularly prized hammer passed down through the generations and a contractor’s saw that seemed capable of any feat. Then a short detour into Heidegger: the ‘present at hand’ and the ‘ready at hand’ and the two sides or states of toolness. Another round and we made it back to the oldest tool of all: the stone hand axe, specifically the 1.2 million-year-old Olduvai Handaxe at the British Museum. more...

The application for the Amsterdam, Artist in Residency Studio Rian de Jong sponsored by the Francoise van den Bosch Foundation is due on January 21 – just a few days from now. The Foundation pays for a two month stay in Amsterdam in the home and studio of Rian de Jong. If you are interested in applying, it’s time to get busy. For the simple application form contact info@francoisevandenbosch.nl The residency was first offered in 2011 to Sidney Caldwell Deaghlan. I asked her some questions about her experience.

Susan Cummins: Where are you from and where did you study?

Sidney Caldwell Deaghlan : I’m originally from Richmond, Virginia, United States. After travelling around a bit, I returned there to study at the Virginia Commonwealth University, in the Crafts/Materials Studies department. I was particularly drawn to the metals department because of the challenging curriculum put together by department head Susie Ganch. After graduation I worked for two years as the Master Caster at Hoover and Strong. I decided that I wanted the creation of my work (instead of that of others) to be my full time gig, which led me to Cranbrook, where I studied with Iris Eichenberg. While I’m still processing Cranbrook, I feel that’s where craft and emotion really came together for me.

Susan Cummins: Why did you apply to the Amsterdam residency?

Sidney Caldwell Deaghlan: First reason is because its part of my job as an artist. And this was an opportunity I knew I wanted to go out for, even though it’s always a long shot. I was intrigued by the location, the peace and quiet of a studio and apartment for two months and the foundation itself.  I also felt like it would be a good fit with my work. The research I was working on in the studio at Cranbrook was a lot about identity, history and a sense of place and time. I felt like Amsterdam would be a great place to pursue this exploration and a nice place to reflect upon my ‘terminal degree,’ which was quite the whirlwind. more...

This is part of an AJF series called Maker's Tool. It was inspired by a show called The Tool at Hand, which opened recently at the Milwaukee Art Museum and will travel to numerous other locations. Everyone knows that Andy Cooperman loves tools, so he was an obvious choice to ask which he preferred.

A Boy and his Torch

The torch begins things and the torch can end things. I like that about it. I like that it channels something as elegant or brutal as fire and relies on my skill to decide which it will be. On a good day I can solder the wings onto a fly (I tell my students) but on a less good day I ignite the stray things on my bench and singe the cat. On a bad day I have the RMT (Reverse Midas Touch) and the torch in my hand can reduce a week of work to a puddle. But, ironically, on an average day in my studio the puddle is where things begin.  In a clay crucible I melt scrap and false starts and pour that hot little puddle into fresh ingots, which I roll into sheet, draw down into thin wire or forge. I like that too, the recycling. It takes some of the fear and caution away, since I can always start again. more...

Displays and installations are fascinating to me. Artists and jewelers seem to be trying to find more and more compelling ways to show work and add to its meaning through the use of display strategies. In the past year the installation that I found the most amusing and brilliant was the Marzio Cattelan retrospective at the Guggenheim. 

He hung all his work from a system of pulleys and ropes from the top of the large opening in the middle of the building, creating an awkward mobile of floating things. Since he likes to poke fun at the art world it seemed to be a great way to do that while at the same time saying something that needed saying about Frank Lloyd Wright’s crazy design of that museum. In this installation Cattelan found a way to occupy the vast amount of space usually devoted to the architecture but denied to the artwork exhibited in this museum. Clever.

In another fascinating example of a thoughtful installation, this time in the jewelry world, Bruce Metchalf painted silhouettes of people on the walls of the Snyderman Gallery and then attached necklaces and brooches to the figures. I asked Bruce a few things about his show.

Q: What is your perception of how the show was recieved?

A: Some people saw it as an art installation, with the painted silhouettes constituting the real content of the show. They tended to overlook the jewelry in that case. Which I thought was unfortunate, since the jewelry was so much more complex and interesting than the painted figure.

more...

   This is part of an AJF series called Maker's Tool. It was inspired by a show called The Tool at Hand, which opened recently at the Milwaukee Art Museum and will travel to numerous other locations. Sergey was an Emerging Artist Awardee in 2005 and has such an unusual way of working that I thought it might be interesting to see what tool he preferred.   

Looking Closely

Since I constantly experiment with new materials and techniques, the set of tools I employ varies significantly from idea to idea, object to object. Given that for every new process I either acquire an already traditionally associated tool, sometimes alter it, or devise and make a totally new type of tool, I am never fully satisfied with any of them. This makes it difficult to choose one that has the most impact on my work. However, there is a particular device that stands out in my mind, because it neither fits within a traditional definition of a tool – an extension of the hand – nor does it help me manipulate a particular material. What it does allow me do is shift my perspective, my vision and my focus. It is a device for the extension of the sense of sight: a precision industrial inspection stereomicroscope.

A microscope is not a tool, but an instrument and it is an instrument that came to industrial use from the world of science. Historically, the microscope was to reveal something that lay just beyond what could be seen with an unaided eye. Its stereo mechanism was designed to mimic and enhance the mechanics of the geometry of our vision. In physics, it brought to light the components of matter, in biology and medicine, the components of living organisms. The microscope enabled miraculous feats of observation and became the connector, a mediator between the levels of existence: the very tangible and its underlying nature. The presence of such devices not only stood for a stamp of methodical scientific inquiry, but also the incidence of the imagination, the creative drive to search for the essence of the physical world. more...

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand, I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Helen Carnac was the person who actually told me about the exhibition in the first place, so it only seemed right to ask her which tool is her favorite.

Rolling Mill 

I often think about the tools around me and what they mean. I have many since I collect them as well as use them to make my work. It’s really hard to pick out a particular favorite and my thoughts on this waver between a pencil and a scalpel. I do a great deal of drawing and so I have a bit of a thing about pencils and particularly like retractable ones with really fine leads. I also like to draw and scratch with a scalpel when I am making my enamel vessels: metal on metal has a wonderful scritchy, scratchy quality to it and I am drawn to the sound and feel of doing this.

Earlier this year I was invited by Ethan Lasser of the Chipstone Foundation to make work with just one tool. After much thought I decided to use my rolling mill. It’s a tool that I have had for about seven years and it has some history. It belonged to a silversmith who worked in Hatton Garden, London, in the 1950s. I often think about him, as I have many of his old tools, including a fine set of gravers and so I guess in some respects we have a connection. He told me some wonderful stories about how he used to work, including re-polishing and selling cutlery that had been found in the London sewers. more...