Patina: 50 Years in Metalwork at David M Bowman Studio
May 1-29, 2022
Over 50 years, David M Bowman has shaped his own career creating original works of fabricated brass and patinas. From living in a silver schoolbus selling silver jewelry and brass belt buckles, David and his family settled in Berkeley, where he moved on to larger works in patinaed brass, which were exhibited and sold at shops and galleries across the country. David’s son Reed joined him in the business in the 1990s, working especially on David’s larger abstract wallpieces, steadily increasing his own contribution to the studio’s techniques and adding his own designs.
David is almost entirely self-taught as a metalworker, and he and Reed have developed their own range of techniques over the decades, focusing on fabrication starting from sheet brass and copper and torch technique patination, which enables them to extend metalwork into the world of natural colors offered by chemical reactions on the surface of copper and brass. Over the last thirty years, their main artistic focus has been on abstract wallpieces constructed from folded boxes of patinaed brass, which allow a huge compositional scope, with a limited palette of colors but unconstrained by the shape of canvas or the plane of the wall. In recent years, the techniques of repoussé and foldforming have broadened the possibilities of form and texture, and led to a return to jewelry design as well.
David is almost entirely self-taught as a metalworker, and he and Reed have developed their own range of techniques over the decades, focusing on fabrication starting from sheet brass and copper and torch technique patination, which enables them to extend metalwork into the world of natural colors offered by chemical reactions on the surface of copper and brass. Over the last thirty years, their main artistic focus has been on abstract wallpieces constructed from folded boxes of patinaed brass, which allow a huge compositional scope, with a limited palette of colors but unconstrained by the shape of canvas or the plane of the wall. In recent years, the techniques of repoussé and foldforming have broadened the possibilities of form and texture, and led to a return to jewelry design as well.
Artist Reception Friday, May 6: 6-8pm (Limited Attendance is Full)
David BowmanI have made my living working with metal for the past 50 years. I am mostly self-taught after taking a short class in jewelry-making at night school in Ann Arbor, where I was studying aerospace engineering. My opposition to the war in Viet Nam caused me to shift gears, and I spent a long year organizing a safe space in Ann Arbor for runaway kids that we called Ozone House (which is still operating today, providing general social services).
In the spring of 1972 my wife and I and our baby boy, Reed, moved to western Massachusetts and I started making and selling silver jewelry. Over the years I developed bigger and bigger work in brass and copper and have become expert in the use of patinas. My sense of form and composition comes from studying all types of ancient and modern art, architecture, and crafts, and from looking intently at all the forms, shapes and compositions to be found in the natural world around us. It has been a pleasure to have my son Reed working for me for more than 30 years, during which time he has steadily contributed to every aspect of the work until now we have become actual partners. |
Reed BowmanGrowing up in the world of fine craft instilled in me an appreciation for form and design for their own sake, and a love of working with my hands. My parents gifted me with a love of learning and of creation, as well as a rock-solid sense of the value of my own vision, work, and abilities, which is further affirmed by living in Berkeley most of my life, with its embrace of the arts and crafts tradition and community.
My design sense in metal and love of working with my hands started from working on my father's designs, but also derives from my study in the worlds of medieval archeology, art, and architecture (especially the Craftsman style in Berkeley), calligraphy, book arts (medieval and modern), graphic and typographic design, and to some extent science fiction. I have worked for my father on his brass designs since I was four years old, and have worked at the studio full time since 1993. Working with my father, I have learned his techniques, design sense, and devotion to creation with simple tools and hands on every part of the process, and have gone on to extend and improve many of his techniques in our collaborative work, and expanded my own design vocabulary in my own. |