Artist Interview:

By Brittyana Pierro.

How long have you been doing metal work?

1 ½ years.

How did you get into it?

I was scrolling through the class catalog and nothing sounded really interesting. I’d been doing a lot of like 2d art already. So, scientific illustration and environmental science art. Everything was related to my focus back then. But this one class was like, a fine metals, ‘let’s make some stuff, let’s talk about things’ class. And I was like, ‘all right, I could do that’. I kind of wanted a break after doing this really long internship in New Zealand. I just kind of went in headfirst and fell in love with it. It’s crazy.

What were you doing in New Zealand?

I was living on a sheep and goat farm with two people, a married couple. We were processing animals, we did a lot of butchering. We did a lot of cheese making from the milk that we harvested from animals and did a lot of farm work: building stuff, welding stuff, making stuff. So I thought it was kind of appropriate when I came back to school, I still was kind of working with my hands and doing less of sitting in an art studio drawing things. Following that idea and philosophy of making things from the ground up. Living there, and having nothing except the things that we’d built really pushed my artistic focus a lot further.

You can outsource so much of what you make as an artist. Whether it be the raw materials or other components of the stuff you’re making, but I think it’s really important to have a part in like everything that I’m making.

So you just stumbled upon metalworking through a class at Evergreen. Can you tell me about the process you went through, initially, being in that class and how your art has grown since then?

In the studio, it’s a really steep learning curve. You have to mess up a lot to realize how the material actually works and also how it doesn’t work. As much as I can teach someone how to solder, you kind of just have to do it and experience it to figure out your exact process. I’ve recognized that especially recently because I’ve been a Teachers Assistant in the fine metals studio for the last three quarters. So I’ve been working on my own practice and my own art, and then teaching all of these newbies, how to do like really basic stuff.

When you’re first introduced to fine metal art, there is so much scrambling and messing up and wasting material and being really frustrated. But I think, as I said earlier, you have to really, mess up, and screw around and create a lot of garbage before you can get into the nice, shiny, pretty stuff. Things that are the prettiest and shiniest have gone through the most steps of like processing finishing, polishing, filing, and planning.

I walked into that class, having no experience or knowledge about the material at all. And then coming out of a year and a half, two years later, with, like, all this knowledge is kind of like, watching myself grow and change the way a piece I’m working on would. And it’s not a pretty process. Everything that I make looks horrible before it looks good. You have to really like climb through the, you know, metaphorical Lake, forest vines, or whatever, to get to the final finished process. And yeah, I don’t think anybody realizes how much work goes into fine metalsmithing, and metalworking in general. It’s really not easy.

What is the actual day-to-day, physical process of soldering and metal working?

I do both welding and soldering. In the large metal studio, I mostly do welding either MIG or TIG welding.

So welding is where you use both the parent material and an additive material usually a welding rod, to melt everything together. If you’re trying to put two pieces of metal together, you can just like fill that in with like a filler rod/ metal. So you’re melting three parts together.

When soldering, you are still using a filling element, but the two pieces that you’re joining have to be perfectly lined up with no gaps in it.

The exciting things and fiery things, like working with torches and molten metal, are the things I like to do most in the studio.

A lot of what I do is very like, organic, carnal. It’s not like perfect, it doesn’t look like some engagement ring that you’re going to buy from Zales or something. Like it’s not super shiny, not super high polished, nothing I work with is really high material. Using objects that are inherently very separated from the human idea of perfection makes it my style. I like to kind of fight that idea of jewelry being high polished and super exclusive thing. Let’s take a step back and think about why we wear jewelry and what we want jewelry to represent for us ourselves.

Why do you wear jewelry? What do you think it’s for?

That’s a really interesting question. Because why does anyone wear jewelry? Why are humans so attracted to shiny things and to putting holes in our bodies? People have been adorning themselves for forever, you know. Since the beginning of time jewelry has been something to identify class and culture and different religions. For me personally, I grew up such a tomboy. I cut my hair short, I didn’t want to do anything that was particularly girly. Now that I’m growing into my identity more I’m realizing that these things [pieces of jewelry] aren’t necessarily associated like sexuality, or like gender. I’m kind of trying to break down that barrier.

I like to make sharp things. Brass knuckles aren’t allowed in the state of Washington, and you can’t make weapons on campus.

But we’re in a day and age where we need to like protect ourselves. I don’t want to carry pepper spray in my bag if I don’t have to. So I’ll make stuff that I can put on and walk around and feel that I can protect myself in. I like to make things that people could rip off in a second and use to protect [themselves]. I never really wanted to have jewelry that’s just for jewelry sake, you know, I want [my art] to have a purpose.

You’ll find that like, I’m not wearing any jewelry right now, because I I’m gonna go to the studio after this. And jewelers don’t really wear jewelry. When you’re working in the studio, you don’t want to fuckup the things that you’re wearing when you’re making something else.

Okay, so what materials do you most often work with?

I like fine silver and sterling silver. Sterling silver being 925 parts, silver and 75 parts copper, and fine silver, just being 100% silver. They serve different purposes, like fine silver doesn’t tarnish as quickly because it doesn’t have the copper component. All of the chain that I make is usually fine silver.

I like working with organic objects too, so I’ve cast a lot of flowers, and a lot of bones, or pieces of skeleton. I’m really obsessed with the idea of like ephemerality and longevity, and like how we can preserve objects that would otherwise not be able to, like have a second life or live longer than their original lifespan.

Growing up, my dad was a paleontologist, and we worked with like preserving bone a lot. Being raised in that kind of philosophy, I’m still wanting to embody that idea of preservation.

Okay, I think that we are good, honestly. Is there more that you would like to share? Or talk about?

To the artists who are continuing in the same path I am: be tenacious.

Don’t listen to people when they tell you no. I just I’ve gotten this far at Evergreen breaking all of the rules not listening to what any of the deans tell me. Keep making people excited and show your enthusiasm. Get angry! Stand up for the art, stand up for yourself. Display your art places you know. You just have to voice that you care and participate as actively as you can. Opportunities will present themselves to you, but you don’t get there without being excited.