12:33 - 2004-10-31
Week 11: Homage to The Wire Artist Jeweller
Week 11: Homage to The Wire Artist Jeweller
This week's theme is "A WAJ Project".
It strikes me as tragically ironic that the week we have this theme is also the week when The Wire Artist Jeweller magazine announced it was ceasing publication of its print edition due to a family crisis.
I know all of the founders of the magazine personally. Susan and Mavis Llewellyn are owners of The Amulet, a little craft gallery in Stratford, Ontario where they sell their wire art jewellery and other Canadian crafts. Mavis' late husband, Jim, authored several books on wire jewellery which are still in print. They have had a booth at the Gem & Mineral Club of Scarborough's annual show for as long as I can remember. I was always at the show doing demonstrations.
I met Helen Goga and Alan Gooding in 1998 through Karen Lechner (also a GMCS member and current contributor of the "Tools" portion of the magazine). Karen was working at The Nautilus, *the* place to get lapidary and wireworking supplies in Toronto. Helen was a regular customer and one day mentioned that she was thinking about starting up a guild for wire artists. This, naturally, piqued my interest when Karen told me, since the topic had already come up on the two internet boards I was on. I got in touch with Helen and on their next trip in to Toronto, we arranged to get together.
Helen was an enthusiastic newbie with wire, having taken it up a little over a year earlier. She had begged Mavis to teach her, and Mavis obliged. Helen had run into the same attitude towards wire that I had: that it wasn't considered "real" jewellery. She felt that the only way to counteract that perception was to educate the public and provide a forum for the talented artists to showcase their work. Mavis and Susan were the most experienced wire artists she had ever met and Helen felt that their knowledge would be vital. It was Mavis' and Jim's designs that formed the initial pool of projects published in the magazine. Alan had experience in publishing. The four of them hatched the plan for promoting wire jewellery. I remember sitting in the food court at the Royal Bank Plaza, listening to Helen and Alan lay out their idea for the guild/magazine.
I was sold, and handed over a cheque. It turned out that I was their first subscriber.
The guild never materialized, but the magazine did. The premiere issue was launched in September 1998. Through their hard work, determination, constant promotion and sheer chutzpah, the magazine has grown into the virtual "bible" of the wire artist community.
The shockwave that has run through the internet boards over the news that the magazine is ceasing publication is testament to how influencial the magazine has become. Countless other magazines, from Lapidary Journal to Bead & Button, have now incorporated wire into their pages. An entire industry has now sprung up in support of wire artists.
Even though there have only been a handful of projects published that I have actually been compelled to try, I read the magazine every month and continued to renew my subscription every year. I have never stopped believing in what they were doing.
So now, while they are navigating the crisis that brought them to this decision, my prayers are with them. I hope that the magazine will resume print publication again at some time in the future. Even if it doesn't, Helen, Alan, Mavis and Susan can look back on the last six years and be proud of their wonderful little magazine, knowing that its influence will go on for many, many years.
Thanks Gang.
***HUGS***
I looked through all of my copies of WAJ and pulled out six issues with projects I thought I'd try. Of the six, I only managed to get one done this week - the Pearl Enhancer from May 2001 (Vol. 4, No. 5).
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