Barbara Minor

I am fascinated with color, surface pattern and actual or visual texture on fabric, natural forms or useful objects. My work has focused on employing enamel color and pattern, precious metals/stones and other materials in jewelry and decorative objects.

Wandering Pearls   

Pin--transparent enamel on formed fine silver/copper bimetal, 

Smithsonite, pearls, fabricated sterling silver

1.5" x 1.5" x .25"

2. 
   
   
   
   
   Triangle with Rectangles 
   Pin/Pendant--transparent enamel over fine silver foil rectangles 
   on formed fine silver, fabricated sterling silver
   3" x 3" x .25"
3. 
   
   
   
   
   
   Red Sticks  
   bowl - transparent enamel over 24 kt. gold foil and 
   underglaze black on raised copper, bone, glass, 
   carnelian, onyx, fabricated sterling silver 
   6" x 6" x 4"

Barbara will demonstrate and show examples of decorative vitreous enameling techniques that quickly yield colorful, exciting and complex looking enameled surfaces.
Dry screen printing and found/made stencils yield vibrant/detailed patterns, illusions of texture and individualized designs.

1. 
   Tendrils 
    pin - dry screen printed image in enamel on copper, brass, nickel silver 
   
   
2. 
   Four Leaves 
    pin - stencil design in enamel on copper, nickel silver

Drawing on etched enamel surfaces with various “fire-able” media allows for development of personal images by adding details and spontaneous marks.

Spiral
- graphite drawing fired into white enamel 

Quick inclusion of repeat designs, realistic images or a lustrous surface is accomplished using a variety of decals suitable for firing.

1. 
    Flora 
   pin -- iron oxide decal fired onto white enamel, nickel silver 
   
   
   
2. Golden Spiral  
   pin -- gold overglaze decal fired onto enamel on copper

Barbara began enameling during graduate school and continued enamel process exploration while teaching at SUNY Geneseo. During this time she began enameling on formed metal, creating enamel jewelry, sculptural objects and narrative reliefs. 

Flight from Water to Water 

sculpture -  enamel on copper, brass, silver 

5” x 5” x 4” high

Reaching 

series of pins

enamel on copper, sterling silver 

2” x 2” x .25” 

 

 

J.M. Meets S.R. in Mexico

 wall piece -- enamel over 24kt. gold and fine silver foil on formed copper, shells 

12” x 12” x 1” deep 

  

Barbara now lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she focuses on producing her colorful enameled jewelry, enameled beads and small sculptural objects that have been widely exhibited, marketed and collected. 

Egg and Sphere Beads on Chris’s Cables
transparent enamel over 24 kt. gold and fine silver foil on formed fine silver,

sterling silver – smallest = .5” diameter x 1” / largest = 1” diameter x 2.5”

Head, Heart, Soul – pin
- transparent enamel over formed copper/fine silver bi-metal, Smithsonite,

pearl – 3” high x 1.25” wide x .25” deep 

Golden Spirals 

bowl - transparent enamel over 24 kt. gold foil on raised copper, fabricated sterling

silver, lime jade, brass – 4.5” diameter x 4” high 

 

“in 2011, I began using minimal enamel color on formed, pleated, folded and gathered copper screen, copper foil and steel. My methods involve learning fabric and paper techniques for creating volume, translating and applying those methods to manipulation of very thin sheet metal or screen and creating a metal forms suitable for enameling. These explorations are resulting in jewelry and objects that emphasize the form and surface over applied color/pattern.” 

13. 
     Screen Floral – pin - enamel on copper, copper, glass, brass – 3.5” square x .33”deep 
    
    
    
14. Twisted Pearls – Pin
    - enamel on copper, nickel silver, brass, pearls – 3” diameter x .33” deep
15.  
    
16. Manipulations 
17. experiments with copper foil, screen and enamel

I am really looking forward to meeting everyone at the YUMA Symposium!!!! 
www.barbaraminor.com 
 www.barbaraminorenamels.com

Jason DeMarte

Hello Yuma!

First of all I am very excited to be attending and presenting at Yuma! After hearing rave reviews from friends and artists I am very eager to take part and see and hear all the wonderful things the symposium has to offer. 

It’s been a busy year, my summer started off with a bang by going straight into a residency at the Vermont Studio Center after my classes wrapped. This was a wonderful experience and led to the start of a whole new body of work, which I will be including in my presentation.

Goldfinch - Pink Cord

40x60, Archival Ink Jet Print

I will also be speaking about the work I have been involved in making over the past several years. With all my work I am interested in a dialog between the seemingly natural world and the simulated or manufactured. I am interested in comparing established idealist utopian ways of representing the landscape to the hyper-perfect way products and modern consumer life are represented in media. I’m particularly interested in the idea of disillusionment through false or misleading representation.

Hydroginated Bounty

43x33, Archival Ink Jet Print

Cheeted

43x24, Archival Ink Jet Print

I work digitally combining images of fabricated and artificial and staged flora and fauna with commercially produced and processed products. I look at how these seemingly unrelated and absurd groupings or composites begin to address attitudes and understandings of the contemporary experience. I represent the natural world through completely unnatural elements to speak metaphorically and symbolically of our mental separation from what is “real” and compare and contrast this with the consumer world we surround ourselves with as a consequence. Ultimately this work is an investigation into the manipulation of truth.  

Forage

23x31, Archival Ink Jet Print

Pink Placebo

23x34, Archival Ink Jet Print

Bologna

23x34, Archival Ink Jet Print

Andy Glantz & Zenith Design

Although I have heard about the Symposium for years, and always intended to attend, this will be my first time, and I am really excited about it. I always enjoy being with a group of people who make things. The opportunities for sharing materials and methods and for cross-pollination are fantastic, and I always come away energized and full of design ideas for new pieces.

I just like to make things. I work with lots of different materials in addition to wood and often combine materials in the pieces I create. Here’s a piece with an outside frame of wood (wenge) and drawer fronts made from Avonite, which is an acrylic material usually used for counter tops.

Wenge Sticks

I enjoy working in metal, and have made jewelry in the past. I got on a bit of a jag with replacing all the lights in our home with ones I have made. Here’s a sconce for the bathroom vanity.

I made some of the lights for outside the house. These are copper and leaded glass.

After promising my very patient wife a new dining table for 25 years, I finally delivered one, shown here with pendant lights above and shoji screens in the background.

 It’s actually five tables, the small ones doing double duty as buffet tables when not need for a big crowd.

I also make all the pulls for my pieces, often in aluminum or brass. Here are the pulls for a small piece before installation.

And here they are installed.

       Torii Gate Reliquary

Here’s a piece with glass doors and brass pulls.

     Convex/Concave

The upper part of this piece is concave and the glass doors are curved inward. The lower part is convex, with doors curving outward.

So my plan is to talk about the kinds of pieces I make and how I make them, and my wish to get away from the square edges and flat planes of lumber and back to the more organic forms of nature. In the end, though, it’s about making stuff – and enjoying the process of creativity, problem solving and tinkering in my studio.

Andy Glantz  ----Zenith Design

www.zenith-design.com

Henry Horenstein

Over the years I’ve photographed many different types of subjects, even animals and the human form. But I’ve always returned to my roots as a documentary photographer. More than anything, I like a good story. And I try to tell one in a direct way, with humor and a punch line, if possible.

With this in mind, I have photographed country musicians in Nashville, my family and friends in Massachusetts, horse racing at Saratoga, nightlife in Buenos Aires, old highways everywhere, everyone in Cajun Louisiana, South American baseball, camel breeding in Dubai, tri-racial families in Maryland, and much, much more.    

For subjects, I prefer older cultures and places, especially disappearing ones. That’s what my history teachers, Jesse Lemisch (at University of Chicago) and E. P. Thompson (at University of Warwick), taught me to do. These cultures and places might vanish, but it is a historian’s righteous duty to make sure that they leave a trace.

 I also was very influenced by another teacher in Chicago, John G. Cawelti, who taught me (and doubting historians predating him) that popular culture should be taken seriously. One other great influence for me was my teacher at Rhode Island School of Design, Harry Callahan. Harry encouraged me to “shoot what you love,” and to pay no attention to what others are doing. “Even if you make bad pictures,” he said, “you’ll have a good time.” 
Thank you for that, Harry.

See more about Henry at www.horenstein.com

   All images:

WESORTS, from an unpublished body of work about a 300-year tri-racial community in Maryland.