Celebrating 30 Years
of Metal Arts

Jewelry from the Archives:
1995 to mid 2000’s.

Garbage picking

In the blinding sun I trudge through the dry hay-like grass, climbing over a large concrete block and make my way down to the “beach.”  Picking is best when the tide makes its way out, revealing new treasures recently hidden by the murky bay water. I take out my “kit” which consists of a one-gallon zip lock bag and two pair of latex gloves and set out for a successful scavenge. A good crop keeps me hunched over for an hour or two, until the heat from the sun is deeply imprinted on the back of my neck.

On a lucky day I find purple, pink, and uranium yellow glass. Over many beach visits, I find matches to other pieces from previous searches.  So much of the glass I find fits the shapes that I envision for a necklace, bracelet, or ring. Every single piece I set is in its original shape. I don’t polish, form, or alter the glass in any way. It is the metal that has dedicated itself to the glass. 

As I inspect a shard, caught by the glare of the sun, strangers walk past me and look in disdain, all they see is some lunatic picking up garbage. If art is lunacy, then they are right. By setting these glass shards into metal the context changes, it is no longer refuse, but instead art, in this case adornment.

Alison Antelman
Glass Beach on the Mendocino Coast
Fort Bragg, CA. April 2003

In the beginning:

Arriving in the bay area from the East coast, my first glimpse of San Francisco was from the Richmond bridge. The following day, driving through the rainbow tunnel heading to San Francisco, the Golden Gate welcomed us in all of its lucid splendor…Like the Joshua trees welcoming the Mormon settlers heading West, we knew we were home.

Wandering on the rough, debris-strewn northern California beaches, it was December 1990, and I was feeling burned out from a Television Production career that I hadn’t yet begun. I became enamored with the weathered driftwood I had scavenged; small jewel-like treasures that ants had carved crevices and holes in with ocean softened edges. I started to forage these beach wood fragments, adding African sand beads from Mendels craft supply on Haight Street. I was given Fimo clay, which I incorporated into the mix using sterling Balinese beads, the sand beads, and fragments of metal found on the beach. Mixing the colors and playing with design, a friend recommended the Metal Arts course at City College in San Francisco.

With no preconceived notions, I enrolled at City College of San Francisco in Roger Bairds Metal Arts class and starting from scratch, I learned to make a steel stamping tool, solder a ring, sink and form a bowl and set stones. The first stone I had ever set was an emerald cut amethyst that I had purchased at the New York gem show age 12, as a stone collecting kid. In the Metals class I made an oval pendant with hammer formed tubing and prong set my amethyst. Complete with fire scale that you couldn’t remove with a sand blaster, I had created my first asymmetrical pendant. And I kept going —I made earrings using found debris including beach glass, I used mixed metals in thick gauges incorporating every technique I had learned as my design inspirations grew. I created really heavy jewelry. …This physical fact is something I address in my design process.

Matrix Dies and the Hydraulic Press

I began using the hydraulic press because my studio mate had one and I was given the opportunity to play with it. I took a workshop and learned how to make matrix dies

These allowed me to create free form shapes and either repeat the pattern or combine different shapes to create something grand and very wearable.

Transitioning to hammered hollow forms

I loved the freedom of hollow forms, their shapes and that they are light. I also got in to making hollow forms with my hammers, creating spiculum,  basically tapered tubing.

These shapes like other forms also allow me to go larger without the added weight and give me the freedom to create movement in my work.

My studio being a loft with no insulation was like a green house and while it was 75 out on the street, I was sweltering upstairs. I made a series of spiculum in all shapes and sizes…Natalie Goldberg says that for writers to create that one gem you need to keep writing down anything, keep working and sifting through and you’ll find that gem. Her book is applicable to any type of art form and as I was making my spiculum, I thought to push further and curve the forms. At first, they collapsed but in learning to understand the metal I created a series of curved spiculum that had the flow I wanted. My scrap pile was filling up, and I was learning, practicing and gaining knowledge from my experiments.