Copper Remembers Every Blow
Why I work the metal by hand — and what the surface keeps from every strike.
Copper is a material with memory. Every blow of the hammer stays in the surface, and the finished piece is really a record of thousands of small decisions made over weeks.
I rarely start from a drawing. The sheet tells me where it wants to fold, where it resists, where it will tear if I push too far. The work becomes a conversation between intention and accident — I propose, the metal answers, and somewhere in between the form arrives.
There is something honest about a surface that refuses to hide its making. Light catches the dents and ridges differently through the day, so the sculpture is never the same object twice. At noon it is hard and geological; in the evening it softens and seems almost molten.
People sometimes ask why I do not smooth it out. But the marks are the point. They are the hours, the effort, the body behind the object. Copper remembers every blow, and I want the work to remember too.