| August 31-October 4, 2005 COLORADO METALSMITHS INVITATIONAL and DAN LECHAY: Photographs from India and Nepal |
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Five Colorado metalsmiths show work in an invitational exhibition at Iowa Artisans Gallery, August 31 – October 4. Daniel Lechay also shows color photographs of India and Nepal. Lechay is donating proceeds from sales to Oxfam Great Britain, to be used in Nepalese relief efforts. A reception takes place Friday September 9th, 5-7pm. The Chat Galleries Downtown will also hold a reception at that time. Both receptions are free and open to the public.
Colorado Metalsmiths Association artists include Nancy Blair, Lori Colina-Lee, Julie Jerman-Melka, Sharon Schaffner and CeCe Wire. Their jewelry spans a range of styles and is constructed from sterling silver, and precious metal clay. CeCe Wire is especially known for her work with PMC, or precious metal clay, which was developed in Japan and introduced to American jewelers in 1994. Prominent jewelers and educators such as Tim McCreight spearheaded its use and the distribution of technical information. CeCe Wire is the author of Creative Metal Clay Jewelry: Techniques, Projects, inspiration (Lark Books, 2003) and served as the Executive Director of the Precious Metal Clay Guild, an international organization created to inform, educate, and provide technical assistance for anyone working with PMC.
Her work was recently exhibited in Tokyo, Japan. Travel and cultural influences are notable in the figurative approach in Sharon Schaffner’s work. A metalsmith for more than thirty years, she has also curated and participated in international jewelry exhibitions in Spain and Japan. Her figurative jewelry incorporates precious and non-precious stones as a contrast to silver’s basic shape and texture. Lori Colina-Lee’s jewelry explores elements in nature, specifically flowers and the words associated with growth and development. The floral imagery relates human relationships to the cycles of nature. Nancy Blair incorporates rich graphic patterns and natural stones into sterling silver bracelets and other jewelry.
In the accompanying photography exhibition, Iowa City resident Dan Lechay shows thirty images of people, temples, and animals in Delhi and Nepal. “These are amazing places, and the purpose of the photos was to convey the amazement I felt,” says Lechay, who plans to earmark proceeds from sales of the photos to Oxfam Great Britain. Oxfam programs link health care and human rights, with particular emphasis on stopping the traffic in young girls, empowering women, and aiding the miserably treated Untouchables. Lechay goes on to describe Nepal as, " one of the most impoverished countries in the world with enormous inequities between rich and poor, and the economy today is even worse than it was when I was there. Last February, the king abolished the democratically elected parliament, assumed absolute power, suspended civil rights, and instituted total censorship of the press. There is also a growing Maoist insurgency in the countryside. Tourism is down, and a lot of people are suffering as a result.”
"I'm not a professional photographer, but I like taking photos that give a sense of how strange and interesting people are, whether they live in Iowa or in Kathmandu. I was particularly impressed by the friendliness of people in Delhi. They were very welcoming and, as you can see from the photos, many were delighted to have their pictures taken. In Nepal, as in India, people have very hard lives, but visitors are overwhelmed by their good nature, dignity, and industriousness, and by the omnipresence of Buddhist and Hindu spirituality." Dan Lechay grew up in Iowa City and earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa. He lived in New York for many years, and for a decade directed investigations into health and other issues for the New York City Council President. He has also taught college English and edited a quarterly magazine for ACT. His book of poetry, The Quarry, was published last year by Ohio University Press.
COLORADO METALSMITH INVITATIONAL ARTIST STATEMENTS
CECE WIRE I’m not going to lie to you. I’m worse than a yuppie. I am a D.I.N.K. (dual income, no kids). I live in a middle class American Midwest suburb which my friends and I jokingly refer to as Pleasantville. Two days a week I travel from the cozy suburban neighborhood of one town to another. I pass through the flatlands of Eastern Colorado on my forty minute commute. This is beef, beans, and beets country where farming is the only occupation, where hog futures are speculated, not the price of Intel stock. There is terrific rural architecture along the way to keep me company on my drive. The bold shapes of grain silos, holding tanks, feed mills, and barns with cupolas have become so familiar to me, they are like old friends. Good friends, the kind you don’t get tired of visiting. The dramatic verticality of these structures breaks the otherwise horizontal view so they are not easy to ignore, even if you wanted. CeCe is an artist and metalsmith from Fort Collins, Colorado. Her BFA was earned in 1987 from Kutztown University of PA and her MFA was awarded in 1995 from Colorado State University. Teaching experience includes Colorado State University, University of Northern Colorado, and Aims Community College where she earned an Adjunct Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997. Workshop teaching has taken her across the globe including London, UK, Vincenza, Italy and Tokyo, Japan. She has been invited back two consecutive summers to teach at the Arrowmont School of Art and Crafts, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Her work has been exhibited nationally since 1993 and most recently her Precious Metal Clay work was featured in a month long exhibition hosted in Tokyo, Japan. For five years she served as the Executive Director of the Precious Metal Clay Guild, an international organization created to inform, educate, and provide technical assistance for anyone working with PMC. Her book entitled Creative Metal Clay Jewelry: Techniques, Projects, inspiration was published in the spring of 2003 by Lark Books, a division of Sterling Publications.
SHARON SCHAFFNER
LORI COLINA-LEE
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