July 2009

CMAG Board
Barbara Covey
Lyn Simon
Earl Lovejoy
Susan Lovejoy
Wayne Acton
Ken Patton
Hobbs Wells
Maybe YOU?

CMAG Board Meetings
Board meeting are generally held the last Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm. Members are encouraged to attend and contribute. Contact Mandy for location.

How to Reach Us
Website:
www.cmaguild.org
Write:
Creative Metal Arts Guild
P. O. Box 8946
Portland OR 97207

Newsletter
Contributions, comments,
classified ads, display ads
metal_fx@comcast.net
Lyn Simon email

Membership
Please visit CMAG's website:
www.cmaguild.org
Annual membership dues are
$60; students $30

The Creative Metal Arts Guild, a non-profit organization, exists to create a community for metalsmiths, jewelers and metal artists, by facilitating communication, providing information and benefits, promoting a positive image of the creative metal artist and increasing public awareness of the artist's contribution to the community.

Editor's Comments

We are off to the Oregon Country Fair, www.oregoncountryfair.org, tomorrow and I seem to have been in the throes of preparing for weeks. Which is by way of saying that this issue is a tad light. Even though this marks the beginning of my second year publishing the newsletter online, I'm still inexperienced enough to this editor gig (not to mention the whole writing phenomenon,) to completely lack order or discipline in my effort and am thus consistently against deadline.

Don't forget to send in your renewal forms. Thanks to all who have done so already.

As always the newsletter(s) along with meeting pictures and so forth are available at our 'secret' archive

www.cmaguild.org/picts.html

Contents
Programs
Program Review
Meeting Report

Announcements
Web Stuff
Meeting Times

Programs Go back to contents

July 14 - GENERAL MEETING PROGRAM
"Isamu Noguchi"
By Lee Haga

Do you like rocks and stones? How about big rocks and stones? Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), the innovative Japanese-American sculptor, explored the creation and placement of monolithic, sculptural boulders, slabs, and rocks in large urban areas, playgrounds, and gardens, and expanded the world's conception of the interaction of space and nature. His eclectic training included a 6-month apprenticeship to the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Paris in 1927, as well as several years studying rock quarrying and sculpting in Italy, and training in Chinese brush painting and Japanese ceramics in 1930-31. Drawing from his dual heritage, he blended the Japanese concepts of rocks as "spiritual deities," gardens as sacred places, and the importance of handcrafting with Western boldness, "modernism, " and appreciation of abstraction. Equally important as his monumental gardens in Japan, Houston, Paris, New York, and Jerusalem is his attention to bridging the gap between fine and applied art, as shown by his famous bamboo Akari lamps and innovative furniture. Truly, his aesthetic philosophy could be called the "sculpture of spaces." In the jewelry/metal-smithing world, his influence can be seen in slate pieces of such artists as Thomas Hermann and Donald Friedlich.

On a recent trip to NYC, Lee Haga made a pilgrimage to the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum to refresh her admiration of his simplistic aesthetic and superb use of negative space in design and shares this DVD of Noguchi's life as inspiration for all of the Guild members. www.noguchi.org/

August 11: ANNUAL SWAP MEET ! ... MAKE MONEY! CLEAN OUT YOUR STUDIO! FIND TREASURES! ... FIND THE UNEXPECTED! FIND BARGAINS! HAVE FUN!

Round up your unwanted/unneeded supplies, tools, and stones and sell them at our Annual Swap Meet. That odd something (or piece of something), the one that you can’t remember why or where you got it, could be just the thing someone else has been searching for. Leave no stone unturned. Your castaway may be someone else’s treasure.

Program ReviewGo back to contents

Design Inspirations, June 2009
presented by The Gang of Five

In this group program, a quintet of CMAGers presented examples of their work and tried to put the inspiration behind them into words. This turned out highly intriguing for me. Wide variety existed in the group, from the very methodical and pragmatic to pure intuition. Leroy Goertz tries to "make my mind a blank, I don't know how to talk about it." Linda Bretana's ideas "come from everywhere," she makes many sketches which she keeps impressively orderly. Carey Smith never really got around to addressing the question but anyone who's ever listened to one of his intricate stories will grasp that found objects and non-traditional materials always have their way with him. Lyn Simon is also a sketcher but what I found enthralling in her talk was an unexpected insight into the design requirements of her arcane surface-grinding & heat-coloring discipline. Ken Patton is building polished women out of the scrap from his other sculptures, his inspiration initially from a ceramic sculpture. [I believe Ken will forgive me one small Adam's Rib jocularity here.]

These five had been commissioned for the evening's program and all did well indeed. There had been a general call as well which I answered by bringing a new bracelet design, which I mention only to demonstrate how mundane inspiration may be. Mine here are the exigencies of filling a hole in our product line. My presentation was, by comparison to theirs, equally mundane. While the group managed, thanks to the efforts of the presenters, to considerably soar the dim heights of the aesthetic and its inspiration, our crowd, as is its wont, had its feet firmly planted. The usual brush fires of technical interrogation broke out frequently, which always happens when somebody brings their 'stuff' to meeting. When I attend one of these 'home-brewed' programs, where members talk specifically about themselves and their relation to their art, I come away with a considerable optimism.

Wayne

General Meeting ReportGo back to contents

Report of CMAG General Meeting June 9, 2009

Tee shirts & Visitors: The meeting was called to order by Mandy Allen who sported her latest tee shirt sewing creation, a double CMAG skirt. Très élégant! Although this masterpiece consumed two shirts, enough remain to adequately outfit all members. … Teresa, recently returned to Portland after a sojourn in SoCal where she took some jewelry instruction, hopes to become more active making things. She also visited the Spring Show. … Gene Dietzen is a returning member who conducted beginning jewelry classes at The Shop People over on S. E. Oak for a while. He now offers these at his home in Camus. One of his students, Pattie, was also in attendance and is considering membership.

Newsletter/Membership Renewal: Lyn Simon reported that the annual membership renewal newsletter was in the mail. This special print edition includes the renewal form and a return envelope to make continuing membership almost too convenient. The envelope has not been stamped. Leroy Goertz suggested a 42¢ deduction might be allowed. The proposition was briefly debated but not adopted and no Leroy Goertz Commemorative Postage Deduction will be allowed. [At this writing, the forms should be long delivered to all members. Many have been already returned. Thanks to you. Please take the time to fill in the form even if it's all the same as this helps our volunteer record keepers make an annual a check on things. The (new and improved) renewal form is available here (www.cmaguild.org/newmembershipform.pdf) for download in pdf.]

Show committee: When asked for a report, steering committee representative Judy Acton stated that the 2010 Spring Show will happen. With the bills mostly paid the show account stands at a pretty flush $16,500 which I guess accounts for her optimism. Three revenue streams combine to finance the show, booth fees, sponsor contributions and sales commissions. The first two are expended in the same year they are collected but the last mostly carries over to seed the next show. Judy adamantly maintains that she requires a short break from show business (well, two months is what she sez) but we're quite fortunate that this doesn't stop her detailed reporting at meetings.

Board Elections: A ballot with a slate of board candidates was distributed and unanimously approved. The people are: Rebecca Melton, secretary, Barbara Covey, treasurer, Earl & Susan Lovejoy, Wayne Acton and Ken Patton, at large members. [At the subsequent board meeting it was learned that Rebecca may not be available to participate and that Hobbs Wells may. In my opinion this continued lack of volunteers for the board and especially the lack of guild officers constitutes a serious and growing threat to our continuance for which there is seemingly no resolution. The next board meeting is on the 28th of July at Hobbs' house in N. E. Portland. Get details at the general meeting or from a board member. Come to the meeting and volunteer in some way. This is vital. Wayne.]

Metal-Urge: The Tacoma Metal-Urge is a "summer-long, city-wide celebration of metal arts." As part of this mega-festival, the Tacoma Art Museum is hosting "Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt English Collection." There are infinite details at the website: www.tacomaculture.org/arts/MetalUrge.asp.

Mandy Allen, who is apparently our resident Visigoth, is enthused to mount a guild expedition against this worthy objective and reports favorable auspices between June 27 and September 13 when yet another famous thing is scheduled and so the opportunity for a dual sacking arises. [The second exhibit is "Loud Bones: The Jewelry of Nancy Worden."] There was discussion of the various and intriguing forms which such an expedition might take ranging from a car-pooling day trip launched pre-dawn from a local Denny's rendezvous to a luxury overnight train cruise complete with dome cars and marble bathtubs. What is certain is that any form of this foray north will require the magic of volunteer organization for which our tribe is famous. And for which Mandy has apparently consented to be the nexus. The horde mustered for the evening evinced considerable excitement at the prospect of taking such a rich prize and it's the opinion of your scribe that it's high time the guild undertook another such project. Just has to be after Country Fair.

Respectfully submitted
Wayne
5 July 2009

On the WebGo back to contents

MCC

This from the Museum of Contemporary Craft for July

Craft Conversation
Studio Gorm and Rob Slifkin
Saturday, July 25, 1 pm

Engage with Studio Gorm (John Arndt and Wonhee Jeong), a product design team from University of Oregon and Rob Slifkin, assistant professor of art and humanities at Reed College. This artist/art historian pair from the Museum's exhibition Call + Response will discuss the writing and studio works they contributed to the project, as well as the collaborative process leading up to the final exhibition.

Read Rob Slifkin's essay on Studio Gorm and view installation images here:
www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org/call/pairings/gorm.html
Read more about Call + Response:
www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org/call/index.html

SNAG

SNAG sends word of The 2009 Enamalist Society Conference:

WHAT
Let your creativity loose at the 2009 Enamelist Society Conference in Oakland, CA. Stimulating speakers, enlightening workshops and breathtaking exhibitions promise something for artists and collectors alike who are exploring or experienced with enamel.

WHEN
AUGUST 4 - 6, 2009 PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

AUGUST 7 - 9, 2009 THE CONFERENCE
AUGUST 10 - 12, 2009 POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
AUGUST 1 - 26, 2009 INTERNATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITIONS

WHERE
Oakland, California
Marriott Downtown Civic Center, The Oakland Art Gallery and The Crucible
Santa Rosa, California
Special Workshops at KVO Industries, Inc.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Linda Darty, Chair of the Metals Program at East Carolina University
Explores the Resurgence of Enameling in the 21st Century

BREAK OUT SESSIONS
Kiln Maintenance, Copper Art Clay, Raku-fired enamels, Dry Screen Printing Patterns and Textures,
Metal Corrugation, Principles of Silver and Gold Soldering, Viennese Enamel Pen Drawing,
Current Enameling in the Ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About
Cloisonné, Pricing for the Marketplace, Enamel Repair, Professional Development for Enamelists.

ENAMEL EXHIBITIONS
Surfacing, The Enamelist Society International Juried Exhibitions at the Oakland Art Gallery
August 1 - 26, 2009
500 Enameled Objects at Velvet Da Vinci Gallery, San Francisco
August 5 - September 13, 2009
Fred Ball Enamels at the San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design
July 24 - October 4, 2009
Alan Osborne, Enamels and Sculpture at the Richmond Art Center
July 29 - August 19, 2009

WORKSHOPS
Building Images in Enamel, Cloisonne Iconography, Raku-fired enamels, High-fired Enamels on Copper Bowls, Sheet Metal Techniques, Experimental Surfaces, Metal Corrugation and Dimensional Form.

COME EXPLORE...
www.enamelistsociety.org
or call: 770-807-0142

Meeting AnnouncementsGo back to contents

MONTHLY MEETINGS & PROGRAMS

WHEN: General CMAG member meetings are held the second Tuesday of each month. Door opens at 6:45pm, meetings begin at 7:15pm, and adjourn by 9:15pm.

WHERE: Room 34 at the Multnomah Arts Center, 7688 SW Capitol Highway Portland 97219.

WHAT: Meetings consist of a general business and a short break with refreshments, followed by a program which may be a demonstration of a technique or tool, a slide presentation, a panel discussion, or other presentation of interest to CMAG members. The CMAG Library is open before the meeting and during the break for checking out books and magazines.

WHO: Meetings are open to CMAG members and their guests.

CMAG Webpage