About
Sharon Stampfer embraces the physicality of working with her hands. After more than two decades working as an architectural designer, she fell in love with metalsmithing while learning to raise metal into vessel forms. She finds joy in the meditative nature of this craft and considers her practice a form of nurturing, in which she draws upon the patience and devotion honed while raising children. Her work is inspired by relationships, rituals and objects that promote and celebrate human connection.
Her process is research driven. Rather than a focus on producing specific forms, she invites improvisation, experimentation, and play to lead toward new lines of inquiry. Acts of making create new potential, adding building blocks with which to construct a form language. Stampfer’s meticulous collection and documentation of her process is a rich visual library for her ongoing research and also an archive that reveals the tenderness she feels toward the work. Similar to the preservation of cherished moments in a child’s development, her collections capture ideas, and objects at their earliest stages, recording the stories of their evolution.