Since 2002, Vincent Hawley has been creating unique pieces of metal sculpture and jewelry. Having received his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he went on to graduate from the Gemological Institute of America in Italy as well as apprenticing in Florence, Italy. Vincent’s pieces incorporate some of jewelry and metalsmithing’s most challenging and classical practices including hand engraving and traditional raising/forming techniques. Vincent continues to teach and work out of his studio in NYC.
"By using certain shapes – specifically, a hyperbolic paraboloid - in my new body of work, I explore this transcending concept of the infinite and time as a vessel. A vessel can be something that ferries or something that contains, and time can be something manipulated and finite. A hyperbolic paraboloid is itself a vessel transporting and/or holding along its planer surface. The surface can hold something stagnant (indefinitely or definite) or tender the object along the surface throughout eternity as a proverbial Charon.
In the blackened pieces I created, I used a Korean process known as Keum-Boo. This process entails fusing thin pure gold sheet to the surface of fine silver. This creates a bond that can be soldered and worked as a single metal. The blackening is an acid that etches into the silver but does not touch the gold. These pieces of gold or “light” are trapped in the void of light in the Acheron that makes up the hyperbolic paraboloid. These pieces are trapped in the starless sky of the infinite, creating the finite in an infinite existence."