Ramsey Library Exhibits
Life Force at the Anvil
The Blacksmith's Art from Africa
May 22 to August 26, 1998
| This exceptional exhibition has been organized by Tom Joyce,
a blacksmith from Santa Fe, New Mexico, in conjunction with the 1998 International Forging
Conference of the Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America to be held at UNCA on
June 17-20. It contains 115 pieces of forged metal work from areas south of the Sahara
Desert in Africa contributed by various collectors. The exhibit has been underwritten by
UNCA and by ABANA. |
|
1998
International Forging Conference
of the
Artist-Blacksmith's Association
UNCA
June 17-20, 1998 |
Tom Joyce says of the pieces in the exhibit:
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"… I selected the pieces to accentuate their esthetic qualities,
to appreciate them as art alone is to separate the realities they activate and the
ideology of the groups they express. Most of these works stay hidden from view and
symbolize ethics that their makers conceived as the mythical framework of human
interaction at the beginning of time, and they instill social order and organization to
this day. The complex histories that brought each into being, however, are absent when the
objects are taken out of context from their place of origin. Therefore they must be viewed
as parts of wholes, residing now in a space entirely unrelated to their original function
…" |
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Related Web Site
National Ornamental Metal Museum - In
Memphis, Tennessee, "the only museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to
the exhibition and preservation of fine metalwork."
Articles
Lebow, Edward. "Tom Joyce: Architectural Blacksmith." American
Craft 55
(February/March 1995): 38-41.
Hillenkamp, Helmut. "A Wellspring of Ideas on the Prairies: A Visit with Tom
Joyce."
Hephaistos 3/4 (1995): 4-5. English
translation, Mike Spencer,
mspencer@ceci.mit.edu
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Exhibits
 
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