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arts & culture
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KANSAN.COM | THURSDAY, FEB. 9, 2017
Jewelry-making student cements memories creates wearable art through metalsmithing
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Junior Emmalee Squires, a Lawrence native, is a metalsmithing and jewelry major. Squires focuses mainly on creating bracelets, rings and necklaces.
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HANNAH COLEMAN
@hecoleman33
Jewelry making is an unforgiving craft; the metals needed to perfect the final product have rules and limits. For junior Emmalee Squires, working around those limits makes the craft exciting and unique.
"I think you have to be passionate about it and patient because you mess up a lot, you hurt yourself, burn yourself, and cut yourself and you're mad. But, I think it kind of weeds out the people that aren't into it enough," Squires said.
Squires started jewelery making in high school, when she was accidentally placed in a jewelry-making class. Believing she didn't have the mind of an artist, she said she realized jewelry making was more about the toughness than having innate artistic abilities. Once she built her passion for the craft, she started studying jewelry making freshman year of college.
Currently, Squires is working in holloware, tableware pieces with depth and volume. She creates the hollowe by making forms out of metal with hammers.
Squires enjoys making most types of jewelry, but focuses mainly on bracelets, rings and necklaces. In making these forms, Squires uses soldering and wax casting, traditional types of jewelry making. Soldering is the process of joining two pieces of heated metal together with a similar piece of metal, and wax casting is a process in which molten metal is poured into a wax mold.
Squires is currently making a hollow construction ring, for her mechanisms class, made of two pieces of sheet metal that she hammered out into a hollow form and soldered together. Drawing inspiration from the pieces in Goldmakers, a jewelry store in downtown Lawrence, Squires has developed an interest in fine jewelry making.
"It's hard because I work with jewelers who have been doing this for 50 years, and seeing that they can do something that takes
me 10 tries is difficult," Squires said.
Squires spends at least 24 hours a week in the studio. Squires said in order to work professionally she has to invest in her work and be willing to learn how to work with gold, precious metals and gem stones.
"I'm really excited to do that, but it's also a little scary at the same time," she said.
Through drawing from personal experience, inspirations from social media and the architecture in her surroundings, Squires has crafted some of her favorite works.
One of her favorite projects is a hollow construction ring that will contain one of her dog's baby teeth—a way of carrying him with her.
"Everything's inspired by something that happens in your life because you do what you know. It's like being a writer, you write what you know," Squires said.
Squires' jewelry-making professor Lin Stanionis said she agrees Squires' ability to create pieces from experience and her perseverance make her work particularly unique.
"What's special is that [her work] draws from personal experience, and that informs what she makes, like the piece with the baby teeth on it," Stanionis said. "And to work in this material takes a commitment because it's not easy, it's not forgiving at all. It has it's own rules and you have to be willing to learn and accept the rules of the material and I think Emmalee does a really good job with that."
Some of her major works include an enameled piece of jewelry, and a large necklace made of sharp, metal crescent moons. Squires said she had to make a computerized rendering of the necklace, a piece that was a way of expressing how she felt about herself in the world.
"Emmalee designed a piece that was sort of dangerous feminine, crescent with spikes," Stanionis said. "It was almost lace-like, but then it had these very small little spikes so if you got too close to the space, then you
would engage these spikes."
Squires also created a piece symbolizing her long distance relationship with her boyfriend. It's a red, shiny piece of stone. In the center, it is surrounded by metal spikes, with a rounded, blue stone on the inside. Though she fears for his life while he's in the military, she still has inner peace, which is what the piece of jewelry represents for her, she said.
Through life experience, and symbolism of the metal itself, Squires has enjoyed manipulating the materials in a visually fascinating way.
"I often like to make things that are delicate, I think metal is cool because it's hard core material, but then you can make it delicate like the lace with the sharp edges," Squires said. "It's not really soft but if you give it that illusion, I think that's cool. It changes the visual aspect until you touch it and then it's different."
Edited by Erin Brock
The Wires to perform at Lawrence Arts Center
> LANE HORNBACK
@Laner2301
Combining art forms like string instruments and paintings to create a new perspective on music is one of the newest ways the Lawrence Arts Center is looking to engage the community.
The Wires, a classical music duo from Kansas City, Missouri, plans to bring this enhanced art experience to life with its performance and display of visual art Saturday, Feb. 11. The event will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Contributed photo Sascha Groschang and Laurel Morgan Parks will perform at the Lawrence Arts Center on Saturday, Feb. 11.
We often play on multiple strings, so sometimes it sounds full, like a string quartet."
Laurel Morgan Parks professional violinist
The Wires consists of professional violinist Laurel Morgan Parks and professional cellist Sascha Groschang. The music will be accompanied by
Contributed photo urday, Feb. 11.
"We are hoping that a lot of people who are studying violin and cello will come out, because we think this will be very educational for them to see this kind of cutting-edge performance," said Sarah Bishop, chief communications officer at the Lawrence Arts Center.
The music people is inspired by folk, nonconventional string music, indie rock, celtic and Appalachian music, according to Laurel.
visual artist and painter Benjamin Parks, who will provide visual support to the music of the concert through digital projection.
"We will be playing a lot of dramatic music, and even though there are only two of us, people often comment that it sounds bigger than that," Laurel said. "We often play on multiple strings, so sometimes it sounds full, like a string quartet."
Benjamin, Laurel's husband, is involved with work in visual design, while also playing music on the side. For this show, Benjamin will have several
During the show, Benjamin will project an image on a screen, which will line up and change with the mood and sound of the music played by Laurel and Groschang. Laurel said that the image and music will progress as if they are going through the seasons,
paintings on display for attendees to observe before and after the show.
The duo first met while attending the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, and they have been musical partners ever since.
starting with spring and ending with winter.
"We had been drowning in work from other people's music projects, and being hired to do recordings and gigs," Parks said. "We
The event is $10 for University students. For more information, visit the event's website.
had a phone conversation late one night and we just decided that we would try to write our own music."
Edited by Frank Weirich