I am both an artist and a scientist, a symbiotic relationship I have nurtured throughout my life. This brooch illustrates my current fascination with electroforming, which brought me full circle back to a seed I planted in my early twenties. The process involves creating organic forms out of copper screen, a material I find somewhere between cloth and metal. It’s much more direct and intuitive than fabricating with sheet metal, but my experience with fabrication is what leads the way. I start by cutting out shapes with scissors then micro weld them together into a larger form. The screen is malleable, impressionable and ephemeral. I then electroform them, giving them enough mass to be self-supporting yet not too heavy. The color is vitreous enamel which also acts as a resist to the electroforming process, allowing metal to grow around and between the color fields. When all goes well it feels like a natural, organic growth spurt. A human-made act of nature.
From the Body, in Red
Deborah Lozier
Photo credit: The artist
Bio
At my roots I will always be a monogamous craft artist quietly discovering new things about simple materials, one question at a time. I find solace in the fact that continuing on this path creates a continuity of purpose, with the promise that time spent learning through my hands holds meaning.