Annie Harris

The workshop with Jackie Oliver “Working with metal wire” was exciting. Jackie started us off by introducing several other metal/wire workers and showing examples of their work as well as telling her own story of being a wire worker. Both Jackie and the other artists worked in both small and very large scale. Several of them used mini arc welding techniques to join very fine wires together. These artists were Key-Yeon Son, Cathy Miles, Gego, Donna Aquino, Helaina Sharpley, Alexander Calder and Tom Hill.

Jackie showed us the metal wires she supplied, fine iron binding wire, copper coated welding rod, aluminium, brass, copper and more! Each wire was of a different gauge (thickness). We briefly talked about the different qualities of these metals, how ductile or malleable they are. Each metal offering up a particular quality.

Exercise 1 was a drawing exercise using the folded and cut paper Jackie provided. Then we had to create a simple line drawing from something that inspired us in the room, from our memory or a photo on our phones etc. We had five minutes for this.

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