| | Issue #19.26 :: 01/23/2008 - 01/29/2008 | Jeweler’s loupe
Jewelry of Virginia transplant captures artistic history in her small, handmade, wearable pieces
| BY STACEY HUDSON
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AUGUSTA, GA - Margaret Lane is a woman who clings to life with her bare hands. It’s the way she makes her art and the way she lives and learns. Right out of high school, Lane knew what she wanted and how to get there. And she followed a path to her art that was more traditional than people might imagine.
Even though the University of Virginia was right up the road in her native Charlottesville, Va., Lane skipped the college route. Instead, she began apprenticing with Lee Angelo Marraccini, an award-winning contemporary jewelry artist in Charlottesville who is known for his strong but playful designs.
It is a path traveled by many of the greatest artists in history. Masters like Leonardo da Vinci and Auguste Rodin didn’t attend universities to learn their craft. They apprenticed with established and respected artists, beginning with menial chores and working their way up to grinding pigment and preparing tools as younger students came on. It was years before they were able to pick up a brush or chisel.
Fortunately, Marraccini didn’t beat Lane or make her sleep in a hayloft, as was common centuries ago. Instead, he mentored her in a way that he himself had to seek out from other artists. But being that he came to art after leaving his post as a high-school teacher, it might have been in his nature. Lane spent years with Marraccini, learning the techniques of the trade: casting, metalsmithing soldering and more.
She also learned a lot about what it takes to market a retail line, something she’s not quite ready to do, she says, even though Blue Magnolia on Broad Street carries a large selection of her work. She also has a site up on Etsy, a vast online community of handcrafters and fine artists that helps people to shop independent stores all over the nation for original designs. Even though her site just previews the designs available, she’s found it validates her craft through increased sales.
Artists who mass produce for retail make permanent molds for their castings. But Lane just breaks the plaster off from around her pieces. It keeps her designs fresh and new, ensuring every piece is an original, and it keeps her from falling back on old designs. It forces her to move forward with her artistry, always creating something different, even if only by a little bit.
And after leaving her mentor, she began looking for opportunities to expand her education, most recently traveling to San Miguel, Mexico, a small, silver mining town known for the Belles Artes San Miguel de Allende School of Art.
“I took a class there in fabrications, which has really inspired my line now,” Lane said.
Asymmetrical balance, strong graphic elements, florals reminiscent of the Art Nouveau movement and a sleek, modern flair are hallmarks of Lane’s work. That she lacks in formal education doesn’t mean that she lacks in knowledge of art history or theory. In fact, Lane’s work in her spare but clean studio may encapsulate the whole cycle of modern artistic culture.
Follow along: You see, the father of modern graphic design is William Morris — no, not that William Morris — a British pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement. His work, in turn, influenced the Art Nouveau movement and is indirectly responsible for progress in early 20th-century graphic design in general. Now, in the new millennium, fine artists all over the world are influenced by Art Nouveau as it regains popularity and then incorporate it back into their designs — local mosaic artist extraordinaire Paul Pearman included.
It’s the visual art equivalent to the elementary school whisper game, and artists all over the world play it. Call it an “influence” or call it an “inspiration,” if you want. But the process is more organic than that. It happens from the way artists take in and synthesize everything they see. It is rather incredible, inundated as we are by information, that they can create anything original at all.
Lane draws her designs by hand then transfers them to metal in various ways, depending on the design. For a bracelet she is working on, for example, she carves trees into metal plates with a tiny hacksaw, rendering a soft, flowing design more delicate than one might think such a coarse method could deliver.
There’s definitely a feminine bent to Lane’s work, a curve to her carving and a flow to her forms that often highlight elements from nature, whether they be stones she finds along a riverbank or etchings of trees, flowers, birds or other creatures.
“I love the idea of taking away the emphasis on jewelry on the value of a stone or the value of a precious metal and putting it on the originality of a piece or what it means to a person.”
Her designs are popular enough to help her eke out a living at craft shows and regional art showcases while cementing her craft in the Summerville home she shares with her boyfriend.
Jeweler Margaret Emma Lane
Blue Magnolia
emmajewelry.etsy.com
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