Candice Wakumoto’s She Shells, of silver clay, 22K and 18K gold, pink tourmaline, Hawaiian coconut fiber, sterling silver. Photo: Larry Sanders.

Instant gratification.
That’s how artists almost universally describe the appeal of metal clay.

“The metal clays have an extraordinary immediacy to them which allows one to develop methods and ‘sketch’ with them in a way that has not been truly possible in metal before,” says Greenacres, Washington, artist Kurt Madison.

That instant gratification is the source of both metal clay’s growing popularity, and its struggle to be taken seriously as a jewelry material. When metal clay was first introduced in the United States, its hands-on immediacy led to a flood of textured silver pieces, many rather primitive. Jewelers and hobbyists alike were enchanted by the ability to simply press the clay onto a surface to transfer a texture. But that accessibility to those with no jewelry skills — or artistic training — left some in the industry deriding it as little more than Play-Doh for jewelers.

“The traditional metal world is somewhat rigid. A lot of metalsmiths go through a fairly lengthy training process to become a jeweler, and it requires a wide variety of skills that take a long time to develop . . . and then metal clay comes along and I can teach someone to make jewelry in one day,” says Carl Stanley, a metal clay artist in Santa Barbara, California. “It’s just sort of a slap in the face of traditional techniques. [Trained jewelers responded by saying] ‘Anyone can do this, so why should I get involved? There’s no artistry involved.’”

But for Stanley and other artists, it isn’t the medium but what you do with it that counts. And a decade after metal clay’s introduction into the United States, the material is beginning to show its true potential. “I think initially there was a lot of resistance, and it wasn’t respected as a medium,” says Shahasp Valentine, a San Francisco jewelry artist who works almost exclusively in metal clay. “No one was making anything that really looked like [traditional] jewelry in the beginning. But I think now, as people are doing more with it and the work becomes more sophisticated and more interesting, I think it’s gaining a lot more respect from the jewelry community at large.”

Metal clay artists generally share a love of texture, since one of metal clay’s great advantages is its ability to be textured in an almost infinite number of ways. They also tend to possess a fondness for the way they can manipulate the material with their bare hands. Although virtually every artist is initially attracted by metal clay’s pliability and immediacy, many have taken it beyond its clay roots. Their work ranges from the organic to the architectural, from rough-hewn to sculptural. Some artists work exclusively in metal clay, while others use traditional metalworking techniques alongside the metal clay, and combine it with a variety of other art mediums, from dichroic glass to polymer clay.

These seven artists are only a few of the many creating truly unique, beautiful jewelry in metal clay. But their work is an excellent place to see the medium’s potential.

Two of the Four Petals necklaces from Shahasp Valentine's Precieux series (above), in which she sets white sapphires either in silver (left) or 24K gold (right) bezels. Photo: Shahasp Valentine.

“My work really has evolved quite a bit since I started with PMC,” says Valentine. “I’ve had some of these ideas in my head since junior high school, but to try and execute them traditionally is a really big deal. Like my lily pendants — to do that traditionally would require a ton of work in wax, and then casting, or hammering or texturing endlessly. I find PMC is so gratifying because it’s so tactile. I can execute these textural ideas and concepts in my head in a way I can’t get from any other jewelry technique.”

Valentine’s work is currently split into two distinct collections: the Precieux series, which uses historical motifs, and the Organic series, inspired by nature. Both take advantage of different features of metal clay.

For her Precieux series, Valentine scans designs, such as a fleur de lis, into her computer, and uses an illustration program to produce perfectly symmetrical patterns. The pattern is printed and traced onto soft polymer clay, which is then partially baked and carved to form a mold for the metal clay. Although she may create up to 50 pieces from each mold, each is individually decorated and shaped for a one-of-a-kind look.

Shahasp Valentine's Knife Edge necklaces, made of 24K gold PMC with pearl. Photo: Shahasp Valentine.

For the Organics series, Valentine works directly in metal clay, shaping pieces inspired by the ocean. “A number of years ago I went on a trip with my boyfriend to South Africa,” Valentine recalls. “I was sitting on a beach and looking at these amazing tidepools filled with little creatures and it just hit me. I came home with all these sketches and photos. My Habitat rings and necklaces are my interpretation of the tidepools.”

Valentine’s Knife Edge series came out of this type of hands-on shaping in the days after September 11, as the pendants she was working on inexorably took on a sharper, harder edge. “Right after 9/11, I just wasn’t feeling very fluffy and happy. The Wave pendants are very undulating and textural, and I was feeling, ‘life is harsh,’ and the Knife Edge design just kind of happened,” Valentine recalls. “I started making the pendants really straight with a super fine edge, a knife edge, representing how harsh life can be and that the world can be a really harsh place.”

“PMC just allows me to so easily create whatever has popped into my head,” concludes Valentine. “It also keeps me interested in what I do. I don’t want to make 100 of the same necklace. With PMC I do multiples, but every single one is different. It’s always changing, everything’s always fresh and new. With traditional lost-wax casting, once you get it cast, that’s all you’ve got, and that’s not interesting to me. PMC has given me the freedom to really create in a more one-of-a-kind way.”

Carl Stanley’s Kit #1, of PMC silver, 18K gold, enamel, sterling silver, and plastic. Photo: Patrick Flannery.

Carl Stanley’s artistic journey in metal clay has been one long experiment. Even his discovery of the material was through a test. “Every time I’d look through the Rio Grande catalog, I’d be intrigued (metal clay, what’s up with this?), so one day I just ordered some,” he remembers. “I already had kilns because I do casting, and I had a lot of metal experience, so I just went ahead and made a couple of things — a little vessel, some funky sculptural items — and fired them. And I just sort of fell for it right away.

“What I like best about PMC is that it really opens a new creative door in my mind,” Stanley says. “It makes me want to experiment all the time.” And experiment he has. He has developed techniques for torch-firing gold metal clay slip (metal clay mixed with water to form a paste) onto silver clay, and is testing methods of combining metal clay and glass into mosaics. When metal clay paper was introduced, he immediately started playing with combinations of metal clay and fine silver wire to create lightweight earrings.

Carl Stanley’s Long Face Spirit from his Shaman Bead series, of silver PMC and enamel. Photo: Brian Meek.

As a senior instructor with the Rio Rewards PMC program administered by the PMC Guild, Stanley also finds his students a source of inspiration. “When you work with students, your students’ work influences you as well, especially people with no experience whatsoever with metal or metalsmithing,” he says. “They have no expectations, so they’re the ones that break the rules. I once heard Charles Lewton Brain say that if you make a mistake three times and it works, then you’ve discovered a new technique. I just love that.”

Between experiments, Stanley returns to his more sculptural work, especially bead designs featuring faces. “When I was in school I took a lot of anthropology courses because I’ve always liked ancient cultures, [and those] cultures seemed to sculpt images of themselves and their desires in facial form,” he says. “My shaman beads are like expressions of unknown ancient cultures. They look like they were buried, dug up, and need to be interpreted.”

The faces have a humorous side, as well “When I start doing a design, the first thing I do to get warmed up a little is draw little cartoon faces,” Stanley says. “Probably because they’re so familiar and because I like to make funny expressions, with twisted faces and big long noses.”

Stanley says metal clay is the ideal material for producing those expressions in silver. “It’s so sculptural. I know it’s going to end up as metal, but when you’re in the clay state working with it, it doesn’t feel that way. The mind doesn’t associate with metal at this point,” he says. “It’s so different from carving wax, where you’re digging and chipping. With metal clay, you’re sculpting with clay, smearing and smoothing. It’s so much more sculptural.”

Color is king for Wendy Wallin Malinow. “I’m extremely nonsubtle,” she laughs. “My illustrations and drawings from day one have been with very bright water colors. People ask my color theory, and I tell them I have these toy paints I’ve had since the ‘60s, and I use them right out of the pan. That’s my color theory — I like bright colors.”

Malinow’s polymer and metal clay pieces reflect that love of bright color. Her current work features polymer clay inlaid into a fired metal clay piece, producing jewelry that is often mistaken for cloisonné enamel. “I’ve always been kind of a mixed media person anyway,” she explains. “I started combining metal clay and polymer because I wanted color with the metal clay, and in reverse, I wanted a more precious feel with the polymer. To me, the contrasts are really great.”

Although she has also experimented with enamel in metal clay, polymer clay is her preferred medium. “With polymer, if you smear it into the piece and it doesn’t work, you just take it back out. It’s also flexible on the surface, so if you bang the jewelry around it stays in pretty well. I can have it matte, or shiny, or add glitter. It’s just got that plastic quality that you can do a lot of things with.”

Wendy Wallin Malinow combines metal clay with other materials to reflect her love of bright color. At left is Neck Jest, made of metal and polymer clay; to the right is Sea Heart, of PMC+, polymer clay, resin, and sterling silver. Photos: Courtney Frisse.

Malinow worked in polymer clay for years before she added metal clay to her repertoire. “I remember hearing about it through the grapevine,” she says. “I read about it, and I thought, ‘That sounds great.’” When an opportunity came to take a workshop in the material, she jumped at the chance. “I’ve been hooked ever since.”

While polymer fulfills her desire for color, metal clay meets a need for substance. “Three-dimensional [polymer-only] pieces don’t hold up well on their own. [Now I use] a shell of silver that protects the delicate pieces from wear,” she says. “And with the metal clay it just feels like I’ve added more preciousness to it. One of the frustrations I had working with polymer is that I didn’t like the feel and the weight of it. The metal clay has added that [to my work.]”

The House of Infinite Wisdom Necklace is of kiln-fired silver clay with a lab-created padparadscha sapphire and an amber lab-created sapphire cabochon (on reverse). The pendant hangs from a woven sterling necklace with fine silver endcaps and sterling beads and toggle clasp. 45.9 mm x 47 mm x 8.8 mm. Image by Gordon Uyehara.

Until he discovered metal clay, Gordon Uyehara of Honolulu, Hawaii, was a computer scientist. Then a blurb in a local newspaper led him to a metal clay class at a bead shop, and an artist was born.

“I think I’ve always been an artist, but I guess I got to believing that you can’t make a living off art,” he says. “Then they had a reorganization at work, and it wasn’t working for me, and I did two things: I started reading ‘how to live the life you love’-type books, and I started meditating. And one morning I woke up at 2 a.m. and said, ‘I’m free.’ So I resigned and said I was going to be an artist.”

Now pursuing his passion full time, Uyehara builds carefully crafted pieces. He normally works from sketches, shaping the clay in its wet form, then refining it further after it dries. “I like to focus first on shape, and then on texture. And then I just generally like to do something that hasn’t been seen before,” he says.

His pieces can take as much as a week to complete. “My pieces are fairly complicated, so I’ll work on it a little, put it down, do something else and come back,” he explains. “I think the fact that [metal clay is] easily shaped and carved makes it easy for me to work with. The other aspect that I really make use of is that it’s easy to join separate pieces, so I can work on different shapes individually, refine them, and then paste them together.”

Although he is currently learning traditional metalsmithing techniques, he says metal clay still holds an almost mystical fascination for him. “I think it’s the metamorphosis of having something that you can shape, and then it’s easy to get it to silver,” he says. “I still find it fascinating.”

Kurt Madison’s Blue Wrap pin, made of Art Clay silver sheet with a dichroic glass insert fused in; 1/2" x 1-1/2" x 1/3". Photo: Matt Winghart.

For artist Kurt Madison, metal clay is just the newest in a series of media he’s worked with in the last 30 years. “I do a lot of different things,” he says. “Right now I’m working on a three-ton full-scale carving in brick in the form of a coiled firehose for a public works project. So one day it’s glass and [metal] clay, and the next day it’s a seven-foot sculpture or ten stained glass panels for St. Francis of Assisi Church. But all that is feeding the art, and [metal clay] is a part of that.”

Jewelry has been part of Madison’s artistic endeavors since he studied metalsmithing during his undergraduate studies in art and sculpture. But the addition of metal clay to his repertoire has helped jewelry become a more prominent part of his portfolio. “Metal clay has moved me from a long period of casual designing to a much faster-developing phase, which is wonderful,” he says.

V-Pendant, by Kurt Madison, of Art Clay silver built over a cork clay form with fine silver flakes fired into the surface and a sterling silver chain; 3" x 1-1/2" x 1/2". Photo: On the Edge Images.

Madison recalls being intrigued by metal clay the first time he saw it in the Rio Grande catalog, but it was several years before he actually tried the material. “[My wife and I] saw it right after it came out, but it took eight or nine years for us to acquire some,” he remembers. “I took a Saturday workshop, and that was enough for me. I took the workshop in late July, and by August 10 I had a kiln. I don’t have a lot of money to stock a studio just because I’m interested in a material, but it was clear that this was a dynamite material.”

With metal clay in his tool box, Madison began making jewelry from sketches he’d been doing for years. “When I was sitting in meetings in whatever job [I had], I’d be doodling on my pad and I’d look and say, that’s a pin, that’s a bracelet . . . The metal clay has allowed me to start going from little nurdles and doodles to actually fabricating stuff.”

Although he finds that some in the art community don’t take metal clay seriously, he’s confident that as more talented metalsmiths and artists begin working in the medium, metal clay will become a respectable material for artistic endeavor. “There are people more traditional than I am who would say I should use my traditional skills, that I shouldn’t use that metal clay goo,” he says. “I think they’re wrong. I think 10 years from now, we’re going to see a revolution in the jewelry trade because of these materials. The jeweler’s trade isn’t going to look the same at all.”

Candice Wakumoto’s Ipulani, made of silver clay, 22K and 18K gold, blue topaz, amethyst, Hawaiian coconut fiber, and sterling silver. Photo: Larry Sanders.

Candice Wakumoto’s background is as a graphic designer, so it probably isn’t surprising that her jewelry pieces all start with a sketch. “I have to draw everything exactly how I want it, and then when I fabricate I have to exactly follow it. Everything is planned,” says the Mililani, Hawaii-based jewelry artist. “Sometimes when people see my sketches, they think I drew it after [I made the piece].”

Even the immediacy of metal clay hasn’t changed that work habit. “I don’t like wasting time working with stuff,” she explains. “If you plan it ahead of time, you can always add to where you’re going, but I like to know the basics of it. It’s easier to get started.”

While Wakumoto may be an advance planner, she enjoys the inspiration offered by metal clay. “I just like that whatever you want to do, you can do with it,” she says. “You just have an endless amount of textures you can deal with. And shapes — it’s just a matter of working out the technicalities. I work with a lot of hollow forms, and it’s ideal for hollow pieces.”

Wakumoto also enjoys combining metal clay with other fabrication techniques. “I like the idea of marrying the two together,” she says. “I can do silver clay and add fabrication, and make something one-of-a-kind and unique.”

Gemstones are also set using traditional methods. “You can fire gemstones in the clay, but I’m not satisfied with what it looks like, because it’s just pushing gemstones into the material,” she says. “I like having gemstones bezel set, and I like big stones and mixing stones, and to me, that means you have to fabricate settings.”

A two-time Saul Bell Award winner, Wakumoto is largely self-taught in metal clay. When she began working with the material shortly after it was introduced, “the information just wasn’t out there, and I felt that working with it was the only way to go,” she says. “And I found I had to do it myself, because I’m trying to do different things, like marrying it with fabrication. So I just try it and see if it works. And if it doesn’t, well, sometimes perseverance pays off.”

CeCe Wire’s Bird House Bead II, made of PMC+, PMC+ paper, and sterling silver cable. Photo: Kyle Castle.

If CeCe Wire’s current work brings to mind nostalgic memories of rural America, well, it’s supposed to.

“Two days a week, I drive through farmland [on the way to work], and I sort of get nostalgic about growing up on a farm,” says Wire. “I know the reality is that it’s a lot of hard work, but my memories are those of a five-year-old, of hunting for kittens every day, of geese and ducks and Jack the Mule, and of flowers in the springtime.”

Wire has turned those romantic memories into a series of rings featuring barns and silos. “The images close to me now are silos and barns with interesting cupolas: as a shape, they intrigue me,” she says. “They’re architectural, but for me they also evoke these memories.”

Although Wire could have used traditional fabrication techniques to construct her barns, she finds metal clay frees her creative impulse. “With [metal clay] I can construct in the same way as with flat sheet, but the seams are held together with slip, which allows for seams that are not as perfect. It’s much faster and easier to construct that way,” she says. “[It also] gives more warmth to the piece: you can see the maker’s hand in it. When you solder-construct sheet metal, it has a certain coolness and crispness that’s actually less attractive. It can push people away because it’s so crisp and tight and fussy. There’s something about working with PMC that has more warmth and softness.”

Asian Assemblage, by CeCe Wire, of PMC+, woven PMC+ paper, sterling silver, sterling silver tubing, brass tubing, brass nuts and bolts, Nepalese chain, antique Chinese coin, carved horn, and ostrich eggshell. Wire calls this piece a “fusion of traditional metal working techniques with PMC.”

Wire builds barns and boxes by rolling out slabs of metal clay, allowing them to dry, and then assembling the piece from the dried, unfired components. “I work with [metal clay] more in the dry stage because it’s what I’m used to as a metalsmith,” she says. “So, for example, in assembling those barn structures I roll out slabs, sometimes I texture them, let them dry, and then I have walls and I can build just by ‘gluing’ things together [with metal clay slip.]”

Like most metal clay artists, Wire is fascinated by the variety of textures metal clay can take on. “With [metal clay] you can get a very deep, juicy texture that’s really not possible with a steel tool or hammer. The rolling mill is a very different type of texture, and it’s shallow by comparison,” she says.

That deep texture would also pose serious problems in traditional construction. “Texture gets in your way when you’re soldering,” Wire explains. “But with [metal clay] you can get an intricate texture, and then use slip [to join pieces] so it doesn’t become a hindrance in assembling.”

From her perch as director of the PMC Guild, Wire says she sees more and more sophisticated work being created, and is excited by the material’s potential. “I feel as if we’re just playing around at the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “We’re introducing glass and natural stones, using the gold as slip to encase things in gold, combining [metal clay] with porcelain and other ceramics — all of these have a lot of possibilities. I think there’s a whole world out there that has yet to be explored, and that really excites me.”

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Suzanne Wade has written about the gem and jewelry industry for more than 10 years. Formerly editor/associate publisher of AJM magazine, she is now a part-time freelance writer, editor of the PMC Guild’s newsletter Studio PMC, and a full-time Mom.

To contact the artists in this article:

Kurt Madison, P.O. Box 833, Greenacres, WA, 99016, punctumdesign@yahoo.com Wendy Wallin Malinow, (503) 697-3877 (phone/fax), 10815 SW Southridge, Portland, OR 97219 Carl Stanley, (805) 687-5415, cstan@earthlink.net Gordon Uyehara, P.O. Box 1373, Aiea, HI 96701, gordon@honudream.com, www.honudream.com Shahasp Valentine, (415) 920-9439, P.O. Box 460624, San Francisco, CA 94146, www.precieux.com. Candice Wakumoto, PO Box 893113, Mililani, HI 96789, CandiceWakumoto@msn.com CeCe Wire, (970) 419-5503, cece@PMCguild.com, www.PMCguild.com.