Touchstone

So, at last I have a reliable internet connection and can make a post... I'm home having been at Touchstone Centre for Craft with an intermittent satellite connection - as it is so rural - and in the rented apartment in Pittsburgh where the connection is supposedly broadband but is actually worse than dial-up!

I was at Touchstone as a guest of the marvellous Adam Kenney, the director of the centre, a bundle of enthusiastic energy who, when everyone called off from my classes at the last moment, invited me to stay as a mini-residency. Just as well, really as I had no accommodation booked for that week.

Touchstone is a beautiful craft facility in the middle of rural Pennsylvania, near a small town called Farmington. Being absolutely isolated makes for a unique experience, living in a basic cabin in the middle of a temperate rainforest, surrounded by dripping woodlands, rare plants, possums, bears and wild dogs: supplied with excellent workshop facilities for ceramics, metals and glass. The blacksmithing workshops are by far the best I've seen anywhere.

My own studio was expansive - even 15 students would have men manageable in the space - and with some exceptions, very well-equipped. I even had a studio technician in the form of the lovely Megan Leigh Gainer. Megan also works in steel and has been experimenting with liquid enamels. After making 'Cold Genius' a few years ago -which utilised enamelled steel from the side of a discarded fridge - I've been considering using enamels on steel in a very casual way. Working with Megan gave me a chance to explore these enamels a little, though I could have spent the whole week doing nothing but experiments with them. Megan is using industrial liquid enamels as a base for the more usual powder enamels used in fine jewellery. My own experiments were somewhat patchy but this gave me a taste for when I return home.

My main resource at Touchstone was the blacksmithing shop, where I found some marvellous materials, including rivet heads - a return to an old favourite for me - and thick expanded mild steel sheet for fencing.

This thick steel became a bangle:

One of the great things about Touchstone is that it gives the opportunity to see other craftspeople at work and we went to workshops in felting:

Fire-welding:

A demonstration of very innovative basket-weaving using natural materials:

And ceramics:

One of the highlights of the week at Touchstone was the fundraising auction. I can't quite explain how funny this event was as some of the studio assistants took on the role of auctioneer for the night and we were all encouraged to buy works by the makers who were teaching. I was delighted to buy one of the pots shown above as well as a "good luck spice spoon" made from a horseshoe nail! My own entry was a pair of rings with rivet-heads on top which proved so successful that I had to make another:

Historically, Touchstone has been bit of a hippy community and although it is not so much like that any more, it has some odd elements remaining. I found this dreadful book in the workshop:

Which contains probably the worst illustration of a piece of "jewellery" that I've ever seen:

I loved being at Touchstone and have already been in discussion with Adam with a view to returning in 2015.

More on my visit to Pittsburgh tomorrow, now that I have proper internet access. As Dingo has just pointed out, "I can't believe we went to America and couldn't use the internet... they invented it".

Exhibitions, New Designers and a Holiday!

Summer time at last. I've spent the last week or so in Brighton after shutting up the workshops, which I always find slightly melancholy.

Before I left there was loads of work to be done, including setting up an exhibition and making a pin for the O-pin project which I mentioned in a previous post about the Glasgow School of Art degree show. I'm fairly pleased with the pin I made from old steel dressmaking pins and a huge synthetic ruby:

Karen Dicken, a Glasgow-based jeweller who works extensively with new technologies, has  been the powerhouse behind the exhibition which involved the three colleges teaching jewellery in the city, "Handmade By Machines" in which students and staff showed off how they use technology to create jewellery.

Karen's own work is really interesting. She builds models and prints them in 3d which she then uses as an armature around which she constructs amazing laser-welded structures:

My own entry was "Supercollider", which you've seen before but which hasn't appeared in a show before:

And my colleague, David Webster, made this ring:

And the students work was great. It was cool to be able to see how the other colleges approached the technology...

It was then off to Brighton to begin my holiday after a quick visit to London to check out New Designers, the most important exhibition of work by recent graduates of the art schools and colleges around the UK. Obviously, all the people I have previously reviewed in my degree-show roundups were there and it was lovely to get to talk to some of them again - or, in the case of Sally Morrison, for the first time.

The show is enormous and the quality is universally high. The photograph below gives an overview of the main space, but there are further spaces all around the main space and it was in one of these spaces that the jewellery was exhibited.

It would have taken ALL day to photograph and talk to everyone who was involved but I can report that it is a marvellous event and the quality was exceptionally high. I will, however, take a moment to single out the work of Alexander Flood, a knife-maker who has impressed me hugely with his beautifully-made pocket-knives. I sent him my deposit yesterday!

Only a few days until I head off to Pittsburgh. Can't wait, as ever!