lunchtime lecture- Bill Price

Britney Boswell

lunchtime lecture 

Bill Price

January 29,2012

The Bill Price lecture was a lot more interesting then I had anticipated. i am not a sculpturist but learning about the Gold Smith's conference was very interesting. Bill Price attended the Society of North American Goldsmith's (SNAG) conference in Seattle, Washington. Last May over seven thousand people attended this three day conference. SNAG is usually printed in a metals magazine shown through out the country. This specific conference had the FLUX theme.

FLUX means a type of change. Many things are changing in the metal making world. From material to processes the metals world is expanding. At the conference there were a lot of objects being displayed, Price says this was a little surprising. Altogether they had fifteen galleries. The galleries ranged from master metal making works to students works. In the pictures I could tell each gallery was a little different and all of the pieces connected the gallery itself. In on of the galleries it was full of pastel colors and each piece was made of metal and some other material, such as ceramics, or glass. 

Along with the galleries, there were a series of lectures. According to Price,  one lecturer, David Wong, showed everyone some of his techniques. He could create fine surface texture and patterns using wax.They also would be able to contain some sort of inner light. In the picture he showed the objects were gleaming at a distance. He learned new types of casting while he attended more lectures.

Finally he came to his close and ended with a machine he found most interesting, and so did I. It was intended for jewelry stores. But Price was curious if it would be useful in schools and for educations purposes. So luckily they have loaned us one. When he said that I got really excited and then I remembered that I don't even know how to use one. But I would like to learn how. He showed us a lot of examples of some that were made. At this moment in time Adam hawk is still testing it out and they are thinking of having an upper level student course on it in the fall to see if the people can expand their market to education and not just jewelry stores.

The lecture overall was very good and interesting to me. It was short but I got alt out of it. The only thing that i wish was different was that I wish there was more images of the actual art works. When the lecture was over we got to go over into studio 1 and watch the machine in action. The lecture was very inspiring and I may take  a sculpture class next semester to see how I like it. I would love to create something three dimensional like the artworks I saw today.