BF artist is bringing copper to life

By DAVID GUNTER

Feature correspondent

BONNERS FERRY – Can a piece of copper drape lazily, like a strand of silk strewn over the edge of a table? Can it roll likes waves on the sea or evoke the vibrancy of leaves bending in a tropical breeze?

In the hands of foldforming artist Denys Knight, it can.

Knight came to the medium about five years ago, after studying with its inventor, Charles Lewton-Brain, in Calgary. She brought with her some 35 years of art background as a calligrapher, illuminator and letterist – work that required enormous attention to detail and unforgiving materials. When you mess up, you crumple the paper, toss it out and start over.

The transition to foldforming, which its founder calls “a conceptual, physical and intuitive approach to metalsmithing,” took Knight in a new direction.

“The nice thing about working with copper is that you can pound the devil out of it – destroy it – and if you don’t like it, you simply anneal it and there’s very little waste.”

The process of annealing is the same as that used by a blacksmith to heat up a section of metal that can then be pounded into a horseshoe shape. The technique, according to the artist, has ancient roots.

“Even cave people heated and pounded to make tools,” she said.

But it’s a far cry from her earlier career as a teaching artist in the calligraphic world. It was there that she met her husband, an internationally known calligrapher and author with not only an original typeface that bears his name, but a few books to his credit. It was while he was writing one of those titles that Knight – then on hiatus from the rigors of hand lettering – literally stumbled upon what would be her creative medium of choice.

“I needed something to do, so I decided I would make jewelry,” she said, adding that the learning process took her to Taos, N.M., to study with a jeweler there.

It didn’t take long for Knight to decide jewelry wasn’t going to be her thing, but she did discover a book at the instructor’s studio titled, “Foldforming.” She read the book one evening in Taos and saw the path laid out before her.

A little research led her to its creator and, when she found out that Lewton-Brain lived and taught in Calgary, she made plans to study with him. That was five years ago. Since that time, Knight has created about 60 pieces, nearly all of them in copper.

Even her earliest work garnered attention, winning her the Juror’s Award in the Charles Lewton-Brain International Foldforming Competition. She was tapped for the same honor for the next two years in a row until, this year, she moved into a new category by taking Third Place overall in the international competition.

The piece that won the prize is called, “ Morning Surf” – a study in movement and light that defies logic as it turns copper into breakers that appear to be in motion, graced by a shoreline complete with pebbles and a horizon topped with a brooding sky that swirls with unsettled weather. Cutting through like a beacon, shafts of light glint off the tops of waves in the distance.

The other winners hail from Wales and England, with the remaining participants representing various countries from around the world.

“I’m in a group of people who are unbelievably talented,” said the artist. “I never thought I’d be doing what I’m doing.”

One hallmark of Knight’s work is the painterly way in which she approaches metalsmithing. Where most of her contemporaries favor freestanding sculpture and functional art, the majority of her pieces are framed – looking, at first perusal, like rich, monochromatic oils on canvas. It’s only upon closer inspection that you find she has teased out these characteristics from a very solid starting point.

The medium was just what she needed to roam free as an artist.

“Having been a calligraphic artist and watercolorist, I knew the basic principles involved,” said Knight. “But when I started foldforming, the ideas just poured out. It was like they had been pent up in a closet for years.”

The metal, she added, also has ideas of its own. In the studio, she has learned to remain open to its suggestions as the work progresses.

“I find that if I force the metal, it’s usually a failure, so I let it tell me what it wants to do,” she said. “I might start out to make two flowers and it ends up being two giraffes.”

Trusting such instincts has informed her artwork, just as her rediscovery of an old metalsmithing tool has allowed her to create a suppleness that can make copper look fluid and alive. She learned of the tool in a conversation with Lewton-Brain, after she complained about the tendency of hammers to dent and mar the copper. He told her about the leather-headed hammers smithies once used for similar work – a material that was replaced with paper heads during World War I, when leather was designated as a strategic material.

Paper hammers continued in use through the 1960s, and disappeared by the following decade, disappearing into folklore and memories.

Returning from her intensive training session with her mentor, Knight broached the subject of creating a modern-day paper hammer with her husband, who also is something of an ace when it comes to engineering devices for such tasks. Although he seemed less than enthusiastic at first, he holed up in his shop and emerged, a few days later, with a solution.

Assembly of the tools requires 60 steps, Knight explained, with the end result being a sturdy, hickory handle topped with tightly wrapped, concentric rings of craft paper. The hammers give her the ability to work the copper without mutilating it and they have the added benefit of getting better with age.

“I’m still using my first hammer that I made three years ago,” Knight said. “It’s like velvet.”

The timing of all this is interesting, since Knight – whose various career chapters have included teaching scuba diving on Okinawa, working as a trauma counselor with military personnel going into or coming our of war zones and teaching calligraphy and lettering in Japan, South Africa, England and Canada – has only just begun to achieve recognition as a different kind of visual artist in her own right. For that reason, as the tool she has nicknamed “the accidental hammer” begins to resonate with her foldforming peers, she worries the sideline venture might encroach on her creative life.

Where that lands will become apparent soon enough, as the paper hammer is just about to launch with a series of industry articles and artist reviews.

“What I really don’t need is to get an order for 50 hammers all at once,” Knight said. “Two a week would be just fine.”

Now that her name is familiar with others in her corner of the art world, she plans to keep creating new work – a task that belies such a title.

“This is play for me,” Knight said. “When I get frustrated, I’ll grab a glass of wine and a paper hammer and just pound the hell out of a piece of copper.”

Denys Knight’s artwork can be seen at Art Works Gallery in Sandpoint, Artisan Gallery in Priest River and Entrée Gallery in Priest Lake.

Information: www.accidentalhammer.com