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Hammer and Vessel
Jennifer Day takes on the Bronze Age.
By EDWIN DANIELS
"The moment I held a torch in my hand I became a metalsmith,"
reveals artist Jennifer Day. "It's what I've become. And I look
forward to getting up every day, walking into my studio and picking
up a piece of metal and letting it dictate whatever adventure we're
going to take together."
Day harbors no doubt when it comes to her attraction to metalworking.
She brings the same commitment and discipline to the craft that she
brings to all aspects of her life. Day also understands precisely what
attracts others to the art as well.
"Hand-wrought metal vessels, whether copper or bronze or silver,
are wonderful things, 11 explains Day. "People love to touch their
hammered surfaces. It's sensual. And people love to peek over the edges
and into the vessels as if there were secrets inside."
Day has achieved a sense of power and ease over the challenges of metalworking,
a difficult and labor-intensive art, in just two short years. But it
has not come about without a struggle.
"For the first year all I did was jewelry because that is what
you do when you first explore metalworking--manipulate small pieces
of metal that go together in fabrication. I was a little frustrated
because while my design sense was good my skills were not. It takes
years to develop a skill. I was frustrated because I wanted to develop
it quickly and it doestA work that way. It wasrA very satisfying."
Day became aware of a course in forming metal offered through the renowned
Southwest Center for Arts and Crafts in San Antonio. After investigating
she discovered that metalforming, unlike jewelry-making, did not necessarily
entail fabrication. instead, a work of art was created out of one single
piece of metal. So she gave it a try.
"When I struck the metal with a hammer over a steel stake and watched
the metal move it was like I'd come home."
Days affinity for her materials is clearly evident in her artworles
elegant surfaces-visions of ceremonial craft, Art Deco styling and Modern
d6cor spring from the beauty and simplicity of her work. It is also
apparent in the way she beguiles her medium into performing distinct,
if unnatural, acts.
"The first piece I ever created I made the metal fold back in on
itself," Day says. Never wanting to do something easy, she decided
to take on the hardest thing she could think of creating----a bowl with
a shape that gets larger and then smaller.
"I chose to make the metal do something it doesn't readily do.
Metal hates to move back in on itself because it has to get smaller.
And metal doestA like doing that. Metal likes to stay big."
The art of forming metal continued to fuel Day's creative energies despite
the sheer physical demands of the craft. "I start with a flat sheet
of metal, primarily with copper or bronze. They are hard metals but
will imprint whatever you lay them on while hammering. I lay the metal
on a variety of stakes and forms. I have around fifty different steel
stakes and each has a specific function to make the metal do a certain
thing."
Despite Days well-equipped toolbox she often finds that she doesi* have
precisely the tool she needs to move the metal in a particular direction.
But she has discovered that almost anything solid will do whether it
is a railroad spike, a garden rock or a kitchen soup ladle.
"I'll try anything that works."
Day devotes seven hours each day to pursuing her craft and approximately
four of those are spent hammering. "Hammering is hard physical
labor and I'm at it all the time. I'll arm wrestle anybody," she
exclaims with a laugh.
Day wields a heavy, steel-loaded plastic hammer to coax the flat slabs
of metal into desired shapes. Then, using a solid steel hammer, she
finishes the surface in a process called planishing. The process can
be used to create a machine-like smoothness or the more tactile and
hand-wrought surface she prefers.
Creating traditionally shaped vessels provides Day with an opportunity
to improve her skills. But her free-form pieces give her room to invent.
She typically has several pieces going at once and with each work of
art tries to push herself by making things a little harder in order
to gain expertise.
This ambition is no doubt derived from years of running her own design
studio, where she saw her business grow from a one-woman shop to a busy
multi-designer studio. Armed with a degree in interior design from the
University of Texas in Austin, Day developed both residential and commercial
clients through her firm. While she no longer designs interiors for
a living, having closed her business in order to raise her children,
she does maintain her standing as a member of the American Society of
Interior Designers. In addition she sits on the advisory council of
the College of Fine Arts architecture department at the University of
Texas, San Antonio.
Day and her husband, a successful Texas entrepreneur, own homes in both
Santa Fe and San Antonio and she maintains a studio in each.
"My studio in Santa Fe is on the portal so I try not to hammer
when somebody is taking a nap."
However her home in San Antonio offers all the sound proofing her family
needs. Built in the 1920s by a San Antonio social matron and heir to
the Stower's Furniture fortune, the Mission-style/Italianate hybrid
sits on an acre of land in the historic Monte Vista neighborhood in
downtown San Antonio. Her studio, a converted carriage house behind
the main house, serves as an ideal place to bend the metal to her will.
But the main house, built for entertaining, is where Days social agenda
blossoms.
"We do a lot of entertaining and political fund-raising for issues
we believe in. I can put two-hundred people in my living room and handle
five-hundred people outside, she says, and then laughs as she alludes
to her political leanings, "but you can~t find that many Democrats
in Texas."
As an activist, artist, wife and mother of two young teenagers,
Day sees her energies fully utilized. She is also a committed and enthusiastic
experimenter in her life as well as her art.
"Life is always very interesting, life always changes. My husband
and I are not stagnant people. We have acquaintances that call us every
five years just to see what we are doing. You never know what twists
and turns life will give you."
After recently celebrating her forty-seventh birthday Day discovered
that life had provided another unexpected turn of events. She was pregnant.
Due in March of 2003, this new addition to the Day family has been,
like her love for her newfound craft, unanticipated and fully embraced.
"Right now I've got it really good. I'm fixing to have another
child and I'm involved in an art that I never knew existed but is totally
fulfilling to me. I am really going to run with it."
It will be well worth running after Jennifer Day just to see where she
ends up next.
New hand-wrought sculptural vessels by Jennifer Day will
be featured at Michael McCormick Gallery, 106-C Paseo del Pueblo Norte,
December 13January 13. A reception is scheduled for December 13, 4-8pm.
758-1372 or 800/279-0879. wwwmccormickgallerycom
TAOS MAGAZINE November/December 2002
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