Aesthetics in Time and Space

Time and space are essential to rhythm. Time is coppersmithing’s medium and rhythm its duration. Time and rhythm can be seen in the artisan’s body, movements, balance, and postures and is transferred to the copper form, transposed into its design and surface texture. Time is made present in the rhythms of making and rhythm is integral to style, to its aesthetic and temporal appreciation, not only visually but aurally in the observation of the artisan’s performance. In my apprenticeship I had to learn to calibrate my tactile, aural capabilities in conjunction with my kinesthetic haptic senses to work in copper. Beholders of copper things must also calibrate their visual and haptic experience spatially in ambulation, incorporating tactile, aural, and motor experience. Boas (Primitive Art, 355. New York: Dover Publications, 2010 [1927]) contrasted the arts of space, graphic and plastic arts, with the arts of time, poetry, music, and dance, and concluded that rhythm is common to all of these. Dance, explained Boas, merges all these arts through the use of temporal flux, spatial order, symmetry, balance, and rhythm. How is coppersmithing, like dance, an art of both space and time? How do the aesthetic affordances of time and space link making and perceiving in coppersmithing?