Jasper Russ is a Metal Artist and Blacksmith based in the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, England. His practice is strongly rooted in his relationship with landscape, geology, and material.
To Jasper forging and hot metalwork is inherently geological in practice and process, drawing likeness between stone and metal in their reaction to pressure, heat and force. To him working metals is a way to connect himself to the landscape that he grew up in and understanding his relationship with material and his interaction with the earth.
Jasper believes in a material ancestry which connects stone to metal, a hereditary line of material properties passed down. Steel is born of iron, which is refined from ore, formed in the depths of the earth, a material genetic line which allows steel to mimic geological process when being worked. He aims to develop a dialect of material ancestry and hereditary material connection to the earth from ‘man-made’ materials.
Through using recycled and reclaimed materials he aims to understand and represent the cyclical life of materials such as stone and metal, in a state of becoming, every moment threshold to a new state of existence. He sees himself as an enabling factor to this cycle, not the sole creator but a part of the process which rebirths material.
