When silversmith Ruth Von Büren enrolled in her first metalwork classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology after coming to the U.S., she hardly spoke any English. It turned out not to matter because neither did the teacher. “A famous silversmith from Denmark was the teacher,” she says. “Since he couldn’t speak much English, he’d show us how to do something, and then we’d try to do the same.”
For woodworker Michael Hampel, his wave sculptures are a way to bring the ocean to him. “About 10 years ago, I got back into surfing,” he says. “When you’re going over a wave, there’s a second where you can see right through it, and that’s what I’m recreating.”
For mixed-media artist Yoshi Aoki, working in a variety of media is one of the main reasons he enjoys being an artist. “I love materials,” he says. “Only after coming up with a design do I choose the materials I’ll work with to create it.”
While he was working and exhibiting in Germany, metal sculptor Mufu Ahmed’s friends gave him an unusual nickname: Iron Must Obey.
When mixed-media sculptor Stephen Adams moved from San Francisco to Oregon six years ago,it changed his art.
You can take an artist out of his hometown, but you can’t always take the hometown out of the artist. “I was born in a little town in Poland called Zamosc,” says Tomasz Misztal. “It’s an Italian Renaissance town: An Italian architect designed the architecture as a twin town to Padua, Italy. I just realized about 10 years ago how that little place explains the Renaissance tones in my art.”
