Christina Boy

Originally from Germany, Christina Boy attended the Craft and Material Studies program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. After completing her BFA in 2007 she headed off to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where she had been awarded a 2-year Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Crafts to continue and expanded her studies.

After returning to Virginia, Christina built a studio with the help of her father-in-law and husband in 2011, and is now a full time studio artist with her shop located at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Madison, Virginia.

Although she works with all kinds of locally sourced lumber and wood she particularly enjoys working with salvaged articles: old windows, barn wood, tractor seats, etc. converting them into something completely different and beautiful. “All these pieces carry and tell their own story,” Christina explains, “and saving these from the impending doom of the dump and converting them into something fresh and new gives me the opportunity to write another chapter in its story.”

When she isn’t busy in her studio, Christina can be found outside feeding her chickens, pulling weeds in the garden, or in the kitchen processing the ample produce her husband grows every year.

Phil Woodward

Working out of a small studio that I built myself next to a creek, I share my time and energies with a group of friends who all live in the same hollow in rural Tennessee. We share meals and work on projects together, but my studio is my private hideaway.

I want these oil lamps to be used. I use fiberglass wicks that never need to be replaced and include a squirt bottle that makes it easy to fill the lamp. I try to create work that reflects mindfulness and serenity and may bring a little more peace into the lives of those who use them.

I set up at a few art festivals per year. It’s a great way to get feedback. I love it when someone is charging past, not really looking at the booths around them. They’re going somewhere. Maybe it’s the flame, but something registers in the recesses and they stop- dead in their tracks- in the middle of the isle in front of my booth, dumbfounded for a moment, then walk in, with a glassy-eyed wonderment on their faces.

Cathy Vaughn

After more than two decades in graphic design, Cathy Vaughn finally delved into a more physical form of expression with her growing talents in copper. She opened her one-woman craft studio known as Tracery 157 in 2012.

She implemented the word “tracery” in her company name because of her love of this architectural term, describing it as “where line integrates patterns and interacts with the light of shadow.” The number “157” has weaved into her efforts across several instances, with one as the number of pros she originally wrote about why she should dive into starting the business, giving attention to her artistry in metalwork.

Vaughn first began testing out possibilities with copper in 2002; trellises and other ornamental garden accessories were some of her first pieces. In time, those seeing evidence of her skills began asking for commissioned gates and even an outside-oriented door to nowhere.

A place where a number of artists are gravitating to in recent years, her studio space in Richmond, Virginia is part of a former tobacco warehouse in the Manchester neighborhood.

Her drive’s origin stemmed largely from time spent watching her father in his wood marquetry shop in her childhood days.

“My dad was an inspiration,” she says, noting that he had a penchant for repurposing things. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago.

In learning the ways of metalwork, Vaughn often went to her father; he talked her through process and answered her many questions, and she spent a lot of time reading into basic soldering techniques, too.

“I love working in my studio, making things for people,” Vaughn says. “I use a lot of my dad’s tools and feel him there with me whenever I’m working.”

Fence mounts and insets, room dividers, tables, desks, trivets, patron oil lamps, coasters, meditation stands, bird feeders in hanging and tree-stand form, key chains, candle stands and holders, s-hooks, kitchen valances and fireplace screens are many of the pieces Vaughn now shapes.

Her copper tubing and piping sculptures done in a verdigris patina convey a curiously aesthetic use of space, lines, light and shadows for the eyes and how the mind perceives her work.

She also works with regional landscapers to develop customized garden accents for their clients.

Vaughn sources her copper fittings from Pex Supply in Farmingdale, New York and purchases her piping at sheets at a local hardware store. She recently participated in Richmond’s annual juried Arts in the Park days and is warming up for a few other juried shows in the next few months as well.

Some of the home accents in her collection are sold at Mongrel, a shop in Richmond’s Carytown section, and she is planning to partner with garden centers around the region to sell her trellises.

“I like to take everyday objects from a hardware store and re-imagine something like copper fittings so that when you look up close, you’re reinterpreting an everyday object,” she says.“The metal itself is so beautiful, malleable and strong. It looks good polished or in verdigris.”

Source: http://www.copper.org/consumers/arts/2013/july/Tracery_157.html
Issue #75 : July 2013; Tracery 157: Reinterpreting Everyday Objects; By Jennifer Hetrick