It’s early spring in Vermont, drizzly and chilly, and Nick Anger is a bit crabby about the weather. He can’t open up the doors of his workshop to use his propane-fueled forge, and that prevents him from pressing steel for his knife blades.

Anger loves to work. He often says he does nothing but sleep and make knives. He never loses the fascination with turning “an ugly little chunk of steel” into a stunning yet wholly functional object. “I really just like the constant challenge of outdoing what I’ve done before,” he says.

Anger specializes in Damascus steel. Layers of different metals turn into a flat slicing surface featuring watery waves, floral loops, or jittery lines like those on a heart monitor. He finishes them with natural-wood handles boasting their own striking motifs: black-and-white ebony, box elder burl, spalted curly birch, and flame maple.

He has recently focused on more closely marrying the intricacies of the blades with their handles. “What I’m trying to do is understand the material more, and its relation to the natural woods that I find,” he explains.

A spatula and knives made with steel ball bearings and high-nickel powder. Photo by Nick Anger

In downtown Johnson, Anger’s workshop sits behind a Main Street shop, where he hopes to avoid unexpected visitors that disturb his flow. Big, burly, and lumberjack-like, Anger has a name that may seem like a suitable moniker—though the French name is actually pronounced “on-jay.” Heavy metal music blasts while he forges, or he listens to audiobooks through headphones. (2666: A Novel, by Roberto Bolaño, was his pick in the spring.) “When I work,” he says, “I shut off from the world completely.”

His 1,900-degree forge makes a thick chunk of steel, called a billet, glow orange hot. He twists the steel in a clamp, shoves it back in the forge, then hammers it on his anvil or in a pneumatic machine that pounds it with a rhythmic thud. A 24-ton hydraulic press provides the “squeeze” to meld the molten metal with as many as 400 layers. Each type of metal has a different chemical makeup, and reacts differently to the heat—creating the striated Damascus blade. Beaten into submission, the steel gradually flattens into a slicing shape, which Anger dips into ferric chloride, revealing the invisible pattern like magic.

The fiery forge. Photo by Scott Pasfield

Then, the grinding starts. Sparks spill from the grinder as the belt meets the blade. Sanding blocks with finer and finer grit finish the polishing. Anger fits the handles over the tang and attaches them to the bolster of the blade with industrial-strength glue, then coats them with resin.

The process involves as much chemistry as creativity. Anger recently coaxed some cool-looking squiggles out of a squeeze of powdered steel and 52/100 chromium steel ball bearings. “I love the constant surprise of grinding into that billet and seeing the pattern for the first time,” he says.

What he dislikes is any commercial aspect of his work. Anger gets ornery when someone asks about buying his knives. Questions posted on his Instagram feed—“How much and how can I get it?” is a common refrain—usually go unanswered. His 80,000 enthusiastic followers include fellow knife makers who gush “super badass” and “I drool every time” over each new image.

Anger has no interest in responding to email inquiries and taking orders. Customer demands will only restrict his vision, he states. “Then I’m no longer free to do what I feel like I need to do.” However, once he connects with someone—a chef, another artist, or even an eager young apprentice who manages to track him down—he will delve deep to deliver them the perfect knife.

A curly maple saya covering an eight-inch blade. Photo by Nick Anger

Matt Jennings found Anger while following other bladesmiths on social media and hearing about him from chefs he knew from the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier. The chef and owner of Townsman in Boston and a multiyear James Beard Award nominee, Jennings was immediately drawn to Anger’s aesthetic and homegrown approach.

Jennings direct-messaged Anger and they conversed about food, people they both knew, and other non-knife topics. Then he suggested that he’d like a new tool. They discussed Jennings’s needs. “He asked me to tell him the story of where my food comes from,” says Jennings, who specializes in fresh, hyper-seasonal ingredients. “I told him I was just a fool for the ocean, a fool for the sea.”

Anger made Jennings a 10-inch chef’s knife with a maple handle that has an open crack, allowing light to shine through, where Anger embedded a scallop shell and a piece of fool’s gold. Jennings was blown away.

The chef has since bought three more Anger knives—including one for vegetables and a Kiritsuke-style slicer for raw fish. They perform as well or better than any other knife he has used, he confirms. They hold up under the abuse of a professional kitchen and are sharp enough to slice through a cardboard box (which he would never do) and still glide through fish flesh. All of his knife-obsessed cooks view them with envy. “[Anger] spends a lot of time sourcing materials and giving mindspace to how those materials get put together,” Jennings says. “Nick’s knives are meant to be used.”

Nick Anger in his studio. Photo by Scott Pasfield

A native of Colchester, Vermont, Anger’s first post-college career was as a mental-health worker at Laraway Youth & Family Services in Johnson. In 2007, when his college classmate and best friend, Harlan Mack, was in residency as a metal sculptor and painter at the Vermont Studio Center nearby, Anger would hang out in the shop in his free time. “He was the smartest guy in school,” Mack says. “His brain is just beautiful.” Mack taught him a little about working with metal, and Anger was hooked. Still working at Laraway, Anger began apprenticing as a blacksmith at Iron Art in Stowe. Once he had enough money saved from his job, he quit to forge full time.

Anger devours information, and will ruminate for hours with Mack about, for example, the finer points of pairing 15N20 alloy with N29 steel, his friend says. “A lot of his creativity is generated from his ability to freely associate and create a web of connections between everything,” Mack explains. “The way he picked up metal was a way of letting his mind wander.”

Anger makes 100 to 300 knives a year and, when he sells them, charges $75 to $100 per cutting inch. But he’d just as soon give away a knife to a person he likes. These days, he has branched out with the business side a bit, offering pieces through eatingtools.com and homebutcher.com, allowing those websites to handle customer interaction. His online inventory quickly sells out.

The money has never been important to Anger. Only the work matters. That’s what feeds the insatiable imagination of an artist unable to stop forging—even in bad weather.

Nick Anger – knife maker
Johnson, Vermont
Website
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Top image: Anger’s Damascus steel can have a wood-grain look. Photo by Scott Pasfield

The post Making the Cut appeared first on Take Magazine.

Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
Website
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Website
Facebook

Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
Website

Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
Website
Facebook

Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Twitter

Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
Website

Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Website

J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
Website
Twitter

Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
Website

Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

The post Artists to Watch 2017 appeared first on Take Magazine.