Jewelry in Steel is Focus of Small Metals Program at the Center for Metal Arts

WARWICK, N.Y. - Sept. 8, 2014 - PRLog -- Jewelry-making in steel provides the combination of two very different work styles, says Laurie Marshall, new resident director of the Small Metals Program at the Center for Metal Arts. "Designing jewelry in steel," she says, "combines the industrial style of the metal fabrication studio with the refined meticulous jewelry scale work of the precious metals."

Students in the Small Metals Program at the Center for Metal Arts learn in a working studio facility that produces architectural-scale projects, surrounded by the tools of the blacksmith and the steel fabricator. Students learn sawing, drilling, filing and finishing in steel to make a pendant, or forming, forging, scoring, bending, riveting and finishing steel to make a bracelet. Ms. Marshall teaches how to design and make small steel components that may be used as multiples in various forms of jewelry and sculpture.

While steel is a focus of the Small Metal Arts program, students also learn to work in copper, brass, and the precious metals, with a choice of materials to work in. The workshops teach techniques in the use of traditional bench pins, jewelry saws, files and other low-cost tools that can be used in a small home studio.

Ms. Marshall, who graduated with an MFA in Metals/Jewelry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, found her own interest in steel as a fine jewelry material when she made prototypes for her jewelry pieces in steel and liked the results enough to not want to translate the piece into precious metals. Steel, she found, is cleaner to work with in terms of precision, and is more versatile. It can be heated, forged, sandblasted and treated as an industrial material. It can be worked hot or cold with a wide range of effects. "Unlike the precious metals, steel can feel elemental, earthy and accessible," says Ms. Marshall. "I like the energy of the blacksmithing culture. Working jewelry in steel is a balance of energies, bringing fine precision work to the blacksmithing shop."

Color is another reason to work with steel in contemporary jewelry design. Using powdercoating or enameling can build pieces with blocks of color that would be inappropriate for the precious metals.

Ms. Marshall's experience in working with students at the Metals Museum in Memphis, Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and most recently at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, gave her a love of teaching the jewelry arts. "A lot of students in the beginning metals program surprise themselves," she says. "In small metals you don't have to know how to draw to be artistic, and working in steel allows a freedom of creativity because of the low cost of materials. While discovering technique they are discovering themselves. The work is a tool to tap self-expression that they didn't know they had."

The Center for Metal Arts is located in the black dirt farm village of Florida NY, in the southern Hudson Valley. The teaching center, located in the historic 1890's Borden's Creamery Icehouse, is partnered with the working studio of Fine Architectural Metalsmiths, an award-winning architectural metal arts company since 1981. The Center for Metal Arts teaching space was launched in 2003, and offers weekend workshops and special events. The upstairs gallery of metal arts and museum of antique tools, with its self-guided tour, is an intriguing educational stop for workshop attendees. The Center for Metal Arts store of specialty forged tools is also in the upstairs gallery at the historic icehouse.

For more information on the Small Metals workshop program at the Center for Metal Arts, visit www.centerformetalarts.com and www.facebook.com/CenterForMetalArts.