Art Furniture and Installation Artist Vivian Beer to Headline Innovative Sheet Forming Seminar

Dec. 17, 2011 - PRLog -- Vivian Beer set out to form sheet steel into bold expressive forms, and when she couldn't find a workshop to teach her the things she wanted to know, she taught herself.  The techniques behind her flying, ribboned, curvy art furniture works are the topic of her seminar series at the Center for Metal Arts.

This winter, Vivian Beer is offering two full weekend seminars on Sheet Forming topics. Hot Sheet Forming Seminar I (Jan 11-12, 2012) will cover the processes of rolling, curving, sinking and raising in sheet steel. Students will have a fully tooled studio to work in, with forming stations where they are able to form their own pieces.  

The tooling pieces that appear on anvils and leg vises for the Hot Sheet Forming workshop are beautiful in themselves as a collection of forms and negative space, ready to fold and curve and bend the hot iron. From improv sinking tools to a concave tree stump and swage blocks, the tooling is a playground for hot sheet forming.

In Creative Sheet Forming Session II (February 11-12), participants will form and fabricate steel sheet in order to make hollow expressive forms. Topics of pattern making, basic hot and cold forming, tool selection, welding, and finishing with various abrasives will be introduced. Students will cut, form, weld and grind their way from flat sheet material to expressive three dimensional form. This workshop is for intermediate to advanced students.

Registrations posted to register (at) centerformetalarts.com by midnight January 1, 2012, will receive an early registration discount. The Full Session Discount applies until January 8. Register via email or call the Center for more information.

The Center for Metal Arts is one hour north of NYC, in the black dirt farm country of Florida, NY. The metal arts center holds workshops and events for artists, craftsmen, and the lay public. The center holds introductory classes in forging, foldforming and other topics, as well as master seminars for advanced artisans. Charles Lewton-Brain, the legendary silversmith, educator and inventor of the fold forming process, gives an annual late summer seminar on fine metalsmithing topics at the Center for Metal Arts.

The metal arts teaching space is affiliated with the working studio of Fine Architectural Metalsmiths, an award-winning architectural arts fabrication workshop. Workshop participants can browse the upstairs gallery of “sketches in iron” in the center’s renovated 1890’s Borden’s Creamery Icehouse.

Vivian Beer, whose dynamic, referential art furniture pieces will be shown at the 40 under 40: Craft Futures at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery July through February 2012

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The Center for Metal Arts holds blacksmithing and other metal arts workshops for artisans, designers and the public. Located one hour north of New York City, The Center for Metal Arts offers an opportunity to work hot metal at the forge and anvil.