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32.5_MEGAN CORWIN.CB.FINAL.JD FINAL 9/3/09 3:29 PM Page 48 NANCY MEGAN CORWIN Carl Little or her first teaching stint at the Haystack Mountain date treatment, and recognizing a dearth of literature on the School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, this past June, techniques, the jeweler got to work, gathering examples of F Seattle-based metalsmith Nancy Megan Corwin came chasing and repoussé from around the world. well prepared. A seasoned instructor at all levels of metal crafts, While pleased with the gallery section of Chasing and Corwin arrived at the seaside campus with samples of her work, Repoussé and the diversity of work reproduced throughout, a wide array of tools and a passion for two techniques of which Corwin derives the greatest pleasure from its instructional she is a celebrated master and teacher: chasing and repoussé. aspect. Her foremost hope is that the book will serve as Corwin also brought along the galley proof for her first a teaching tool for jewelers of all levels of experience who can book, Chasing and Repoussé: Methods Ancient and Modern, learn from the process “and get excited about it.” which will be published later in 2009. Seated in the Gateway To that end, detailed step-by-step explanations of the building, the welcoming and lecture hall at Haystack, techniques are featured and illustrated, with a special focus on she unveiled the work, the fruit of many years of labor and the tools and how to make them. In her classes and workshops, a powerful desire to create a beautiful and useful study of Corwin teaches students how easy it is to make their own those centuries-old methods for transforming metals into tools, and they find the experience as empowering as she did objects of art and adornment. when she first learned the technique from Eleanor Moty The inspiration for the book came from a number of in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin more than sources, including Marcia Lewis’s self-published Chasing: twenty-five years ago. Chasing tools, she notes, are “as Ancient Metalworking Technique with Modern Applications, individual as the chasers who use them.” And Corwin is as published in 1994, which Corwin describes as “a gift to the individual an artist and teacher as any in the metals field. field.” Feeling that the subject needed fuller and more up-to- How did she end up an author, artist and teacher? A DILEMMA scented oil bottle with hair pin stopper of ster ling silver, gold plating; chasing, repoussé, hollow construction, patination, 35.56 x 12.70 x 5.08 centimeter s, 1999. NANCY MEGAN CORWIN at work. VASE WITH NINE HAIRPINS, a scented oil bottle with nine hair pins of sterling silver, eighteen karat gold, eighteen karat gold bi-metal; hollo w construction, fabrication, patination, 38.10 x 7.62 x 7.62 centime ters, 1999. 48 ORNAMENT 32.5.2009 All photographs by Doug Yaple, except where noted. 32.5_MEGAN CORWIN.CB.FINAL.JD FINAL 9/3/09 3:29 PM Page 49 A PASSION FOR TECHNIQUE Born in New Jersey, Corwin spent much of her early life in she requested a course in jewelry. After a short-lived trial run New Hope, Pennsylvania, a small town north of Philadelphia. with a visiting instructor, the school encouraged Corwin to Growing up in a renowned art colony, the young woman was teach the course herself. She was even given a budget; “I ended not particularly interested in the landscape painters or up giving my friends grades,” she recalls with wonder. This playwrights. It was the woods she roamed (and sometimes unusual arrangement launched a teaching career. “I enjoyed the rode horseback through) that captured her fancy. She camaraderie,”Corwin states, “and trying to figure things out.” remembers building little structures out of sticks and other From Florida Corwin moved to Boston; she had spent detritus. An imprinting took place that has carried through some time in London and wanted to live in an American city her life and work. similar to it. To support herself, she took a secretarial position After high school, Corwin headed to Florida to attend at the Harvard Business Review (she was a phenomenal typist Stetson University. She was studying ethnomusicology, but she in the days of computer punch cards). At night she took classes soon discovered new passions. One of them began in a drawing with metalsmith Linda Kindler Priest (Ornament 22.4, 1999; class with metalsmith Gary Noffke. About half way through 31.1, 2007) at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. “She’s the course, Noffke decided he did not want to teach drawing a great teacher,” Corwin states; “her love for what she does anymore and offered the students a choice: ceramics or comes through all the time.” metals. They chose the latter. As Corwin recalls, “From the Some time later, Corwin landed a job as a bench jeweler at minute I touched a piece of silver, I was in love with metalwork.” a Boston company. Her learning continued: she went from Two years later, Corwin transferred to Eckard College silver to gold in a year. The house jewelers were required to (which had just changed its name from Florida Presbyterian produce large quantities. Corwin remembers making fifty College). The school offered a create-your-own curriculum so rings in a morning and several hundred bracelets in the course CHESTNUT BROOCH of ster ling silver, chestnut, paint, gold leaf; chasing, repoussé, fabrication, 7.62 x 3.18 centimeter s, 2000. LIGHT BROOCH of sterling silver, black pearl; chasing, repoussé, bezeling, 7.62 x 3.81 inches, 2009. FAN BROOCH of sterling silver, boulder opal; chasing, repoussé, bezeling, 10.16 x 10.16 centimeters, 2004. 49 ORNAMENT 32.5.2009 32.5_MEGAN CORWIN.CB.FINAL.JD FINAL 9/3/09 3:29 PM Page 50 THE BOARD MEETING NECKPIECE of s terling silver, emerald dr usy, sapphires; chasing, repoussé, fabrication, bezeling, 30.48 x 17.78 centimeter s center piece, 35.56 centimeters tube chain, 2004. Below: OVAL DOT BRACELET of s terling silver, twenty-four karat gold; chasing, repoussé, hydraulic press f orming, keumboo (gold fusing), hinging, patination, 17.78 x 6.35 x 2.54 centimeters, 2006. of a day. Every once in a while—“the candy part,” she Moty and Fred Fenster, among others. It was Moty who calls it—someone would come in with a request for an introduced her to chasing and repoussé. “I thank her every individual piece. day,” Corwin says, for these intertwined techniques would Despite the heavy production schedule, the work become the foundation of her life as an artist and a teacher. helped affirm Corwin’s passion for the field. From time While continuing to catch up (she had never had a basic to time she was asked to design an ornament, and metals course), Corwin explored other mediums, including sometimes the piece would be produced and marketed. sculpture, glass, theater design, and computer graphics. At the To this day, she remembers the thrill of seeing someone time, she was especially taken by the work of two metalsmiths, in downtown Boston wearing one of her designs. Linda Watson (now Watson-Abbott) and Linda Threadgill. “It was a lovely feeling: something I made was put into The former’s use of natural forms, as well as the textures in production and people liked it enough to buy it.” her work (some of it chasing) and the latter’s small vignettes Corwin finally decided she needed to go to graduate featuring intriguing objects—“like a metalsmith version of school and chose the MFA program at the University Joseph Cornell boxes”—captured her imagination. of Wisconsin at Madison. She studied with Eleanor A teaching assistantship at Wisconsin allowed Corwin to continue to be involved in education. She had two classes a term, in basic design. Her love of teaching grew. “I think it was because I was thrilled by the interactions, exchanges, sharing of ideas,”she recalls, “and the excitement at the success of students.” After graduating from Wisconsin in 1983 (her degree was in art metals), Corwin decided to pursue teaching. She landed a couple of sabbatical-leave appointments, including substituting for Linda Watson at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. She fell in love with the place—and the state. After teaching a term, she became an adjunct, a position she has held to this day. All the while, Corwin was growing as an artist in her own right. In the early years, she explored textures. For inspiration, she turned to the natural world, remembering her time in the woods at New Hope. When she moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1989 to teach at the university, she became 50 ORNAMENT 32.5.2009 a passionate gardener, which intensified her connection to 32.5_MEGAN CORWIN.CB.FINAL.JD FINAL 9/3/09 3:29 PM Page 51 the environment. She began studying plants and collected drawings and botanical illustration books. These activities heightened Corwin’s awareness of the cycle of growth and death. She remembers her awe at the sunflowers she found in Oregon—“they were huge!”—and how they fit into the scheme of life: squirrels climbed the stalks to eat the seeds. Today, she maintains flower and vegetable gardens, as well as fruit trees, at her home on Whidbey Island on the northern edge of Puget Sound. “I’ve never been the kind of artist where you’d say all those pieces came from one person,” Corwin states. Even so, the metalsmith will often create several related objects while exploring a particular design, or focus on brooches or another ornament for a stretch of time.