Evansville Museum to Present a Survey of Contemporary

Jewelry Discussion
1

I thought some of you artists may be interested in this article and/
or exhibit about drawing with sterling silver:

The Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science, Evansville, IN,
will open a unique exhibition, The Luster of Silver, a survey of
contemporary silverpoint drawings, on June 28th, 2009. The
exhibition will remain open until 13th September, 2009". Silverpoint
is a demanding yet subtle medium requiring consummate draftsman
skills. Marks are made with fine or sterling silver on a prepared
ground, erasures are impossible, and the resultant drawing slowly
oxidizes to the warm golden brown of tarnished silver."

EVANSVILLE, IN.- The Evansville Museum of Arts, History and
Science, Evansville, IN, will open a unique exhibition, The
Luster of Silver, a survey of contemporary silverpoint
drawings, on June 28th, 2009. The exhibition will remain open
until 13th September, 2009. It is a rare opportunity for
lovers of drawings to be able to view a selection of
exceptional drawings executed in a medium about which few
people know but whose shimmering look is hauntingly memorable.

Silverpoint is a demanding yet subtle medium requiring
consummate draftsman skills. Marks are made with fine or
sterling silver on a prepared ground, erasures are impossible,
and the resultant drawing slowly oxidizes to the warm golden
brown of tarnished silver. Interest is steadily growing in
this medium, testimony to the power of its lustrous voice that
has endured for over eight centuries. Silverpoint’s history is
highly unusual, its practitioners today are superb artists
with great diversity in approach, and the Evansville
exhibition will reflect the medium’s strength and universal
appeal.

Twenty-seven US, Canadian and British artists will participate
in this show. All have gained widespread recognition for their
drawings. While many use a more traditional approach to
silverpoint, others are exploring new frontiers in the medium.
The exhibition thus offers an array of drawings of great
interest and diversity. Many of the artists, such as Koo
Schadler, Jeannine Cook, Susan Schwalb, Tom Mazzullo, Curtis
Bartone, Sherry Camhy or Carol Prusa, were included in a most
successful 2006 metalpoint survey curated by the Telfair
Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia. The Evansville Museum’s
exhibition, The Luster of Silver, will include additional
noted silverpoint artists, such as Ephraim Rubenstein, Jane
Masters, Timothy Mayhew and Constance McClure. All
twenty-seven artists have work in the permanent collections of
many museums here and abroad.

Lynn White
www.lynnwhitejewelry.com

2

Greetings all:

For us jeweler types, silverpoint is very simple to do. I had a bunch
of printmaking friends in college who were always hitting me up for
scrap silver wire to use as silverpoint scribes. I did a little bit,
just to see what all the fuss was about. It’s an interesting
technique. No room for uncertainty, and it’s loads of fun trying to
draw when you can’t really see what you’ve already done, and you’re
not sure what the final density’s going to be.

All you really need are some snips of sterling or fine silver wire,
heavy (about 10 ga) by preference, filed to a point. The reason you
want heavy is that the heavy wire will fit into a clutch pen. (the
big blue staedtler lead holders that use the big drafting leads.)
Failing that, use any old scrap, held in a pin-vise. File it to a
point.

Take some reasonably heavy paper (like bristol) and coat it with
white gesso. Let it dry.

Proceed to draw. You won’t see much at first. It’ll get more visible
in a couple of hours, but it won’t be really visible for weeks. (or
however long the silver takes to really oxidize. Fine silver works
because of all the sulfides in the air.) It works better to drag the
tip slightly, the way you would with a quill or fountain pen. Holding
the tip straight up-and-down is likely to just cut into the surface.
Now that I think more like a jeweler, and less like a printmaker, I
wonder what effect it would have to use rectangle wire, or odd snips
and scraps of sheet. Instead of point lines, you could get broad
lines and swathes.

FWIW
Brian.

3 
it's loads of fun trying to draw when you can't really see what
you've already done, and you're not sure what the final density's
going to be.

Hmmm, this was not my experience doing silverpoint back when I was in
college! We didn’t use gesso, but a special paint that had a “tooth”,
though I can’t quite bring up the name of it now. The drawing was
clearly visible, though gray, and it shifted color a bit over time,
as I recall. I really liked it, probably for the same reason I like
detailed piercing, because I like fine detail. It is like pencil,
without the smudging, and maybe even a finer line. Boy, haven’t
thought of that in a lo-o-o-ong time!

Noel