Andy Cooperman | Marine Redux
Artist: Andy Cooperman
Materials: Sterling, sterling/copper mokume-gane, sterling/22K bimetal, 14k, 18k
Dimensions: 4-1/2" x 2" x 3/8"
Origin of featured materials: Shining Wave Metals / Phillip Baldwin
Story behind the piece: I haven’t used mokume in a long, long time. It’s always seemed too strong a presence, too loud a voice and I couldn’t seem to navigate around that--even though an image of a mokume piece by the Pijanowskis was one of the things that hooked me back in the first days of Metals 1. But I use Phillip’s 22k/ sterling bimetal all the time and, whether I drove up to Snohomish and grabbed it up or it arrived in the mail, the package would hold a sample or two of new mokume patterns. Phil was always trying to ignite my latent mokume fuse.
While I considered how to begin a piece that for me was so loaded, I straightened up the studio (it always clears my head) and was surprised to find an old piece from 1983, one that just snowed me under technically and that I could never finish. With that piece as muse and roadmap, and Phil’s samples and bimetal as material, I built Redux, a brooch that harkens back to the work I was making (or trying to make) back in the day, when I was a fresh young metals guy. I could never have imagined back then that the guy who is, in large part, responsible for integrating mokume into contemporary metalsmithing would become a friend.
Artist Bio: Seattle metalsmith Andy Cooperman makes all sorts of things from all sorts of things and is known for applying the rigorous craft of fine metalsmithing to a wide variety of, often disparate, materials. He has been a jeweler and metalsmith for over forty years and a writer and educator for close to that. His work has been published widely and can be found in public and private collections. Andy received 1st Place in the 2017 Rio Grande Saul Bell Awards for Alternative Materials. He has delivered the keynote addresses for the International Society of Glass bead Makers and the Eastern Carolina University Materials Topics Symposium and has spoken at the SNAG and CoMA conferences, the Yuma Arts Symposium and many other venues.
This piece is part of, From Wave to Shining Wave: a Celebration of Phil Baldwin and Shining Wave Metals Baldwin. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Seattle Metals Guild. 5% of sales will be donated to help fund an endowment at Pendland in Phillip Baldwin’s name. Learn more HERE. All work will remain on exhibit through July 20, 2025.
📂 [View the entire collection HERE ]
ℹ️ [Learn more about the exhibition HERE]
