First Day of a Two-Day Workshop

Today was the first day of the two-day workshop in chasing and repousse taught in the Renaissance way. The instructor, Davide Bigazzi has been working as a craftsperson in the discipline since he was fourteen years old, originally growing up in the San Croce area of Florence. His personal website is: http://www.dbcollection.net/. If you do a search on his name, you will see various galleries that feature his work. It's really beautiful. The class I'm taking is being given at Art Academy of San Diego. Their website which tells about the school and gives class and workshop schedules is: http://www.artacademyofsandiego.com/

Of course Davide has been working with metal for years and he makes the process look so easy. I'd love to be able to knock out little pieces that I can use for jewelry, and certain he makes it look like an easy and relatively quick process, but believe me it's not. Certainly it's not at this point in my career as a craftsperson. I struggle the full four hours to produce a meager choppy looking piece of copper. However, I must say that I do feel I began to get the hang of what to do. I took the workshop in December and was extremely discouraged at my lack of profficiency. However, I really am determined to work this through and learn how to do the process. I love the finished product. I love working with metal. I love pounding and tapping on the metal. And I think it is a technique that should be kept alive and will be very interesting to demonstrate while I'm sitting at my work table in Spanish Village. In the past, I noticed that when I sat outside and worked with tools, people were interested. They were also interested in carving and etching. Perhaps one idea I could try would be to create something in chasing and repousse and then add etching to it to create a denser texture.