Just visiting

WCC showcases new works
by seven invited guests

by Leon Nigrosh

Each year, the faculty of the Worcester Center for Crafts, the oldest craft school in the country, invites artisans from around the country to present workshops in technique and to showcase their latest works in WCC's main gallery. Right now, works by seven of the 10 visiting artists scheduled for this year are on display.

The most appealing work being shown is by New Hampshire woodworker Wendy Wilson, whose "natural-edged" turned-wood objects are marvels of technique and simplicity. Her bowls are turned to near paper thinness and left unadorned, except for rims of actual bark. The warmth of natural color in the cherry wood used to create her Natural Edge Bowl seems even more lustrous because of the accent provided by the rough undulating circumference. In fact, the few pieces without a raw bark edge seem bland and unfinished by comparison.

Three Scent Vessels, lathe-turned from cocobolo, striped maple, and yew, look like bark-covered sections of log with tiny stoppers. And they actually could hold perfume. Wilson has artfully hidden a tiny glass vial inside each so scents can't evaporate through the porous wood.

Wilson's Stitched Natural Edge Bowl combines artistry with a touch of humor. She's mended several tiny cracks -- made accidentally or on purpose -- in the thin walls of this turned butternut bowl by "stitching" them with fine sterling-silver thread.

Boston-area metalsmith Munya Avigail Upin weaves, braids, and twines fine silver threads to fashion segments of her sterling Judaica and functional objects. It's difficult to believe that a stem made up of tiny metal threads merely twined together has the strength to support the spun-silver bowl of her graceful Kiddush Cup. Using metal-weaving techniques to produce patterned panels, Upin has created a small sterling-silver flower container, Not Just Any Body: I, that shimmers with reflected light.

In almost direct opposition to these refined metalworking methods, New York's Rob Butler hammers and bashes his silver sheet-metal until it becomes a silky smooth vase or a high-relief repousse and gilt Mushroom Wine Bottle Coaster.

To give us a glimpse of what he'll be demonstrating later this month, the head of the ceramic department at the Rhode Island School of Design, Larry Bush, offers several sets of small press-molded and constructed porcelain vessels. His Pink Spot Lunch Plates, while obviously serviceable dinnerware, have been wall mounted -- unintentionally reminding us of African masks. His Small Turquoise Hex Bowls are most delicate, with lightly colored fluted interiors that exude an air of calm and quiet.

Berkshire jewelry-maker Linda Kaye-Moses not only masterfully assembles disparate metals, stones, and whatnot into complex earrings and neckpieces, she packages them in "nesting cases" that look like medieval reliquaries. Her Spring Hopes Eternal contains a neckpiece and earrings made of roll-printed and fold-formed silver, encrusted with various polished and uncut semiprecious stones -- all hanging in an antiqued box festooned with bits of paper zodiac symbols. These items are not to be worn by the faint of heart -- they're gutsy and rough-hewn. Interestingly, in her workshops, Kaye-Moses will not be demonstrating the techniques behind the work on display. Instead, she'll explore precious-metal clay -- a process that only recently came to artists by way of NASA. Precious-metal clay is a mixture of gold or silver with certain organic compounds that can be shaped and molded by hand. Finished molded items are then fired in a kiln and turn into permanent, and almost totally pure, precious-metal objects.

The textile offerings in this exhibit are well executed but, with the exception of one assembly of hot-glued plastic pockets, are too tradition-bound and appear to be more like fabric samplers than works of art.

The WCC gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 753-8183.