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“Drawing in Steel, Part One”
Day 198 of my artwork retrospective
When a few days ago I wrote about my Cosmic Sculptures, fashioned from 16-gauge annealed steel wire, I mentioned I’d also made some jewelry. So here are two of my necklaces.
As I was positioning them for their photos, memories came flooding back. Even simple pieces like these had been fraught with problems. Even though I’d studied several books, only when I was physically working with the wire did I find myself thinking, aha, so that’s what I need to do! Talk about a learning curve! To form the wire into the shapes I desired and then to make them behave themselves was both frustrating and rewarding.
Drawing a line on paper is something I’m pretty good at. I’m going to be a bit rude here and say that not everyone is able to do what comes naturally to me. Some people can barely sign their names. When you’ve always been an artist, you’re continually surprised by how terrible people are at tasks we handle with fluidity and grace. I’m thinking specifically of a guy in his twenties who was only able to print his name in teeny-tiny letters, and he’s not alone.
Then again, I’m of the age when “writing” was taught from fourth grade on, and our teachers were strict about penmanship. In high school I took drafting and used a dip pen and a jar of India ink to practice lettering. And as I’ve…
