The history of contemporary American metalsmithing is inextricably linked with the academy. Since the 1950s, nearly every significant artist working in metals has trained at a university or art school--fertile ground for innovation and exploration in metalsmithing and jewelry making. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's metals program is among the best in the nation, founded on the teaching legacy of Fred Fenster and Eleanor Moty, who instilled in their students a profound respect for craftsmanship, technical innovation, formal integrity, and thoughtful design. The work in this catalogue encompasses hollowware and jewelry, wearable sculpture, poetic and narrative objects, and conceptual installations. The show at the Chazen Museum of Art was produced by guest curator Jody Clowes

Renowned ceramic artist Karen Karnes has created some of the most iconic pottery of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The body of work she has produced in her more than sixty years in the studio is remarkable for its depth, personal voice, and consistent innovation. Many of her pieces defy category, invoking body and landscape, pottery and sculpture, male and female, hand and eye. Equally compelling are Karnes's experiences in some of the most significant cultural settings of her generation: from the worker-owned cooperative housing of her childhood, to Brooklyn College under modernist Serge Chermayeff, to North Carolina's avant-garde Black Mountain College, to the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York, which Karnes helped establish as an experiment in integrating art, life, family, and community. This book, designed to accompany an exhibit of Karnes's works organized by Peter Held, curator of ceramics for the Arizona State University Art Museum's Ceramic Research Center, offers a comprehensive look at the life and work of Karnes. Edited by highly regarded studio potter Mark Shapiro, it combines essays by leading critics and scholars with color reproductions of more than sixty of her works, providing new perspectives for understanding the achievements of this extraordinary artist.

HANDICRAFTS. With this comprehensive guide, jewellers can craft 30 stunning one-of-a-kind beads in shimmering silver, copper and brass. Crafters will build a repertoire of skills, from surface embellishing to adding decorative elements. A gallery of handmade beads provides inspiration. With this comprehensive guide, jewellers can craft 30 stunning one-of-a-kind beads in shimmering silver, copper and brass. An introduction provides metalwork basics, followed by design ideas and techniques. Transform commercial beads using simple stamping, chasing and dimpling. Use cold connections to produce riveted and woven beads. Create variations in the form by using patterned, textured or hammered sheet metal. Crafters will build a repertoire of skills, from surface embellishing to adding decorative elements. A gallery of handmade beads provides inspiration.

Makers: A History of American Studio Craft

Two accomplished metalsmiths, both with extensive teaching careers, have joined forces to provide a comprehensive survey of the ways to form sheet metal. The 256-page text covers a huge swath, from a basic dapped disk through synclasting, anticlasting and spiculums to a raised vessel. Along the way, special attention is given to anticlastic forming and the vocabulary first introduced by their mentor, Heikki Seppä. Creative Metal Forming includes 35 detailed exercises to explain the basics and as well as advanced nuances of each category. Metalsmiths Michael Good and Nancy Linkin have each contributed demonstrations of their forming techniques.