Barbara Smith + Blog

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. June 13th-16th was spent in Memphis, TN at the Society of North American Goldsmiths annual conference entitled: Directions Unknown: Looking Ahead, Learning from History.

I always enjoy these conferences. They are well put together and never fail to deliver excellent speakers and artwork. (I have to say that going to this conference makes the SPE conferences look like kindergarten, not that I don’t like SPE.)

Speakers of note include the keynote Ralph Caplan, a cute old guy who used to be the official stand up comedian for the Marines. He is not a metalsmith per se, but had recently republished an article entitled “The C Word” which discusses the idea that the word craft has been/is a “dirty word”.

Then there was Tom Joyce, who was featured in the PBS series Craft in America. Now, I have to say that before I saw him on PBS, I didn’t know who he was although I had seen his work at some point. When he got up to speak, he totally blew me away. He has this very calm demeanor and a very hypnotic voice that is coupled with wit, intelligence, and work that you can’t look away from. He started out his lecture with stories from his past: being excommunicated from the Catholic church when his mother fell in love with their priest, almost destroying Will Rogers birthplace by accidentally starting a forest fire as a boy, and how his daughter was coming into NYC early in the morning on 9/11 on the same plane that turned around and crashed into the WTC.

He talked a lot about the similarities in beliefs/myths between cultures, which is something that I am always interested in, specifically “holes.” One of the items he mentioned was how the Greeks believed that your umbilical cord remained attached to you throughout your life (it comes out of the fireplace in the home?). As you moved around, your umbilical cord created a weaving of sorts out of your movements in life. Apparently, when you died, Hecate in the role of the midwife, would use her knife to cut the umbilical cord, therefore severing the connection between the body and the soul. It is a similar idea to the Australian Dreamtime mythology surrounding Eingana, the Snake Goddess and mother of humanity:

Initially she had a lot of trouble giving birth, not having the relevant aperture. This was rectified by another deity, who obliged with a spear in the appropriate place.

And if she herself should die, everything would cease to exist.

Tom Joyce is currently working on a great project in which he is inviting everyone to collaborate with him on an international war memorial right now called “Iron Cairn”. He is asking people who may live by or might be traveling near a battlefield to stop and take a soil sample (about a tablespoon) and any written or oral history and send this to him. Each bit of soil will be placed in a forged iron “boulder” with a little recessed area covered with a plaque that informs the viewer where the battle was fought and who fought it. Tom says, “ Each iron “boulder” is laid down as a symbol of solidarity in a unified pledge for peace and an urgent call for alternative conflict resolution.”
I for one will participate! I don’t have a good image of this work in progress, but I assure you it is quite beautiful and poignant.

In addition, I really enjoyed the lecture given by Felieke van der Leest. I love her work but was most interested in the photographs she showed us of her living and working space as well as some of the photos she began creating with her work. She stated that she felt that her creations were getting lonely in their isolated photographic environments so she began constructing sets to photograph them in…you’ll have to imagine cut Styrofoam for an iceberg, blue pearls for water….a fun, playful marriage of metals and photography.

Object: Camouflage Deer with Target Pants 2003

You can take the head off and wear it as a necklace.