Rayce Min
Title: Adulthood
Materials: Copper, silver
Technique: Deep draw forming, raising, forging, fabrication
Dimensions: 29 x 8 x 15 cm
Date: April 2022
Artwork Statement: The teapot was created to commemorate my transition from the mindset of a high school teenager to an adult mindset (more or less). I started to work, started to care about things and people, started to face superiors at work, had weird relationships with others, etc. All of them were stressing me out, and it felt like all of them fused into a giant blob that was sitting on me. And yet I was still trying to find a way out, which led to the overall form of the teapot. The main material is copper with a little bit of silver for the stitches. The body was made with deep draw forming, and forcefully crushed with the hydraulic press. The lid is a raised ball-shaped blob, with hand-cut cracks and solder patterning as decoration. The texture on the lid was made with a wood file. The spouts are bent tubes soldered together to create a branch look, and the handle was forged from a copper rod, creating anorganic look.
Artist Bio: Rayce Min has been interested in crafting and expanding his artistic skills since high school. His primary experience with jewellery was the steam punk style jewellery he made for the school fair. Even though they were pre-made pieces glued together, he impressed people with his unique aesthetic toward jewellery, which he decided to develop further when he got into college. Real jewellery making and metalsmithing led him to a whole different understanding of jewellery, and metal became his favorite media. He appreciates how tough yet flexible the metals are. There are tons of different things he can do with metal. He is developing his jewellery/metalsmithing skills to incorporate his love of graffiti, especially the concept of leaving marks everywhere. Now he can leave marks on people, instead of just plain walls. Overall, he has been working toward the approach for a few years now, and he is still improving himself at NSCAD University.