Wire Sculpture

Wire Sculpture

Wire Sculpture

Wire Jewelry is Wire Sculpture

Creating wire jewelry is undeniably the art of wire sculpture. While it is true that a structural building and typical clay sculpture are in their own rights masterfully created on a much larger scale the art of wire jewelry design employs the same sculptural art principles. As an architectural drafter I believe that the drafting phase of a sculptured wire design is the most important deciding factor in relating the proper scale of the completed piece for the proportion of the sculptural elements you plan to use in your design. And I also believe it doesn’t matter how sophisticated your abilities may be, if you sketch your design on paper or use a computer program when building your vision layer by layer, ultimately the drafting or sketching phase is where you will see every aspect of your design start to fit together perfectly.

Personally I love to sketch my sculptured wire jewelry designs by hand, I think of it as my brainstorm process and quite often it’s where I receive a heightened influx of inspiration and find myself sketching two or three versions of the “master” design. I find inspiration can come from anywhere the colors that pop out at me as I flip through a fashion magazine for current trends, an emotion outwardly expressed on a passing face as I walk down the street, a thought provoking phrase, a childhood memory that comes to mind out of the blue. While not all of the wire sculptured jewelry I create has an inspirational beginning, all will eventually provoke a memory, an emotion, or a visionary dream within the mind of a potential customer.

Let’s look at wire sculpture from a different perspective, the perspective of the emotional bond between the artist and the sculpture, the sculpture and the gallery, and the sculpture and the potential customer. Looking at this from the potential customer’s point of view, what do you see when you look at a sculptured figure created in clay on display at the art gallery? Would you think to look beyond the manipulated clay surface to wonder if the figure is a solid mass or understand that the clay may actually rest on a crudely sculpted wire frame? Do you notice how the artist’s manipulated clay image makes you feel, the emotions it provokes when you stand back to admire it? Do you see each passionate stroke the artist made with his or her bare hands to manipulate and form the lump of potter’s clay into the image their emotions express?  

And what do you notice about a skyscraper with its penetrating architectural form impressing itself against the downtown silhouette? Like the clay sculpted figure, most of us would probably take notice of the outer shell with its gleaming glass walls rising up to the clouds before we acknowledge the internal structure, the wire sculpture web of steel beams. To the architectural designer his steel and glass structure like the clay sculpture is much more than the components that comprise the image we see it is the artistic expression of the inspiration acquired by delving into the personality which the customer’s brand exudes.

Wearable Wire Sculpture

We now can better understand the justified relevance of wire jewelry design as an art form and not just a craft to the professional jewelry designer.

Did you enjoy reading this article, see more wire sculpture articles here: http://designingwsimplicity.blogspot.com/2012/12/for-love-of-handmade.html