Print detail artist | William Baran-Mickle

William Baran-Mickle

Crafts - Sculpture - Visual Arts - Metalsmith

Bainbridge Island, WA, 98110

Bill was a classically trained jeweler and silversmith – more or less- with the degrees that go with such training. He discovered that jewelry was too small for him and wanted to try larger forms. After the silversmith-metalsmith training, Bill found he was not really into making the utilitarian objects either. Times were changing and the “sculptural object” made its mark on makers in the various craft mediums. It seemed too similar to him to the utilitarian type works, and he had a desire to add personal content and go larger.

Bill added a degree in art history to deepen his understanding of art, artist and their expressive journeys. His content included humor sometimes, cultural and political commentary (current and historical), and allusions to personal experiences.

Bill will always be on an artistic journey. In the early otts, the 2000 – 2010 era, he sought a major realignment of his work methods (traditional craft based) with his growing need for personal self-expression. Bill developed a more rapid, flexible way to work in metals while remaining respectful of the craft behind it. For the past dozen years or so he has created in the format of the deep wall relief, also referred to as alto relief. The method allows for an on-the-spot dialog with the forms, a response to scale, and taking hints from the process itself to wonder toward unplanned and unexpected results. This interaction has been personally rewarding.

Bill's art production has recently ventured back into the fully 3-D sculptural mode, which requires tedious yet creative understructures to support the smithed “skin” of the sheet metal. He had missed working in three-dimensions, and will continue in both partial and full dimensional sculpture production.