Experience Southwest Silversmitaing with Jamie Halpern, Patte Ranney, Steve LaRance and Brandon Ruppert – G26010102
Experience Southwest Silversmithing is a three-week immersive course in how to make southwest-style silver and stone jewelry, including an introduction to the history of Southwest jewelry-making and its role in the culture and economy of the Southwest. This class is for beginners and experienced silversmiths. Students will learn a variety of silversmith techniques, including sawing and soldering, overlay, bezel setting, cold-connections, stone cutting and polishing (lapidary), channel inlay, tufa casting and stamping. Class participants will spend three weeks in the beautiful and fully equipped Ghost Ranch silversmith studio with master teachers and guest artists. Participants will also interact with silversmith artists from Santa Fe and the Pueblos, tour Santa Fe museum collections, and engage with native artists at the historic Santa Fe Plaza where makers have been selling their jewelry for generations.
Jewelry-making has a long history in Southwest cultures, especially among Navajo, Zuni, Hopi and other Pueblo Peoples. The making, trading, and selling of silver and stone jewelry continues to be a vital part of Southwestern art and culture. Students in this class will leave with numerous pieces of personally created wearable and sellable jewelry, including beautiful
pendants, earrings, bolo ties, bracelets, belt-buckles or other things of their own invention.
Each week of this three-week course with have a distinct focus, with different co-instructors having expertise in the techniques being taught. Week one will focus on introductory silversmith skills, including design, sawing, soldering, bezel setting, and stamping. Week two will focus on lapidary and tufa casting, including the construction of beautiful channel inlay bracelets. Week three will be an open studio with a focus on refining learned techniques, and the construction of western-themed jewelry such as bolo ties and statement rings.
Enrollment in this course is for the entire three-week session
Instructors
-
Jamie HalpernJamie Halpern is an accomplished silversmith, lapidary artist and metalsmith instructor. His work reflects southwestern art and jewelry-making styles and is influenced by travels throughout the United States, the South Pacific and Europe. Working with silver and colorful semi-precious stones through metal fabrication and inlay, and through his teachings with beginning and advanced jewelry students and artists, Jamie celebrates creativity and personal exploration and nurtures artistic expression. His jewelry is sold through private commissions. He has taught silversmithing and lapidary art at Ghost Ranch for a number of years to rave reviews and testaments to how professional pieces can be crafted with focused time. Examples of Jamie’s work can be found at: Jehalpernjewelry.com.
-
Patte RanneyPatte Ranney has been coming to Ghost Ranch since 2009 and has enjoyed a wide variety of workshops through the years. Admiring the end-of-week display of a silver class, about a decade ago, rekindled her long lost love of smithing – a craft she had dabbled with in high school. Actually, it lit the torch!
Since that awakening, she has dedicated nearly all her ranch time to the silver studio. She credits Jamie with teaching and guiding her to develop her smithing and lapidary skills. Though she once claimed that her trips to the ranch in both January and July were enough to quench her thirst for all things silver, she now has a complete studio at home. Her work is recognized for excellence in craftsmanship.
Patte spent her career as a licensed boat captain, interpretive naturalist, and environmental educator in the lowcountry of South Carolina. In her retirement, she has become a full-time artisan working in silver, leather, fiber, and paper. She is an exhibiting artist with the Art League of Hilton Head and sells her pieces at local markets and by commission.
You can find her at https://www.instagram.com/thesetwohandsstudio/
-
Brandon RuppertBrandon Ruppert has always been a maker and a builder of things. One of his fondest memories is as a child building birdhouses with his grandpa. Brandon attended the Krenov School of Fine Woodworking as a young adult where he developed an eye for craftsmanship, balance in design, and the method of building with raw materials, often with self-made tools. Brandon has spent the last three decades raising a family and working at his family’s cattle ranch in northern New Mexico, while continuing to create in both wood and metal medias. In 2021 Brandon attended the silversmithing class taught by Jamie Halpern at Ghost Ranch and has found it to be a wonderful creative outlet. Brandon’s work can be seen at MoMo Taos in Taos, New Mexico.
-
Steve LaRanceSteve Wikviya LaRance is an acclaimed artist of Hopi descent. He has studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe NM. He has exhibited his work and won numerous awards at some of the most prestigious Native American Art shows in the nation including The Heard Museum Indian Market (Phoenix, AZ), Eiteljorg Museum Native Arts Market (Indianapolis, IN), National Museum of the American Indian (Washington DC) and the Santa Fe Indian Market. His work is on exhibit at many prestigious institutions — in the Arizona State Museum (Tucson, AZ), Linden Museum (Stuttgart, Germany), Museum of Indian Arts & Culture (Santa Fe, NM), National Museum of Turkmenistan (Ashgabat, Turkmenistan), among others.
Mr. LaRance creates unique one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces utilizing the Tufa Cast technique originating from the metal smiths of the Native Southwest. This casting technique uses the volcanic Tufa stone found in the region. The tufa serves as the mold in which creative designs are carved by hand into the tufa. Molten silver is then poured or cast into the tufa molds to create beautifully textured artistic creations in jewelry. Steve’s work is found in many private and public collections throughout the world. https://denipahlarancefineart.com