Gary Lee Noffke (born August 27, 1943) is an American artist and metalsmith. Known for versatility and originality, he is a blacksmith, coppersmith, silversmith, goldsmith, and toolmaker. He has produced gold and silver hollowware, cutlery, jewelry, and forged steelware. Noffke is noted for his technical versatility, his pioneering research into hot forging, the introduction of new alloys, and his ability to both build on and challenge traditional techniques. He has been called the metalsmith's metalsmith, a pacesetter, and a maverick.Mitchell, LeeAnn, Studio Visit with Garry Noffke, Metalsmith Magazine , Winter 2004 He is also an educator who has mentored an entire generation of metalsmiths. He has received numerous awards and honors. He has exhibited internationally, and his work is represented in collections around the world.Attitude and Alchemy: The Metalwork of Gary Lee Noffke
Noffke along with Barbara Mann designed the original artwork for the Delta Prize for Global Understanding.Delta Prize Recipients Awarded Original Artwork, University of Georgia, 2011
Noffke taught for many years at the University of Georgia. Today he is retired from formal teaching and lives and works at his studio in Farmington, Georgia.
Early life Gary Lee Noffke was born in Decatur, Illinois and grew up in the small town of Sullivan, Illinois. His father worked in a shoe factory. His German grandfather had a small farm and was still using a mule to plow his fields. His family being poor, Noffke made his own toys out of whatever materials were at hand, scavenged from the farm, the factory, and construction sites. With just a hand saw and a pocket knife, he created birdhouses, slingshots, hinged boxes, and bows and arrows.Falino, p. 14. To this day he makes his own tools.Maschal, Richard, Forge follows function, Carolina Living, March 27, 2011 At the age of 12, encouraged by his mother and a neighbor who was a landscape painter, he began drawing and painting in oils. His mother was later able to help pay for his education by working at, and then becoming the owner of, a shelter care home business.
Education Noffke enrolled at Eastern Illinois University, getting his BS in 1965 and his MS in Education 1966. In 1967 he went to the University of Iowa intending to study painting, but soon found himself attracted to metalsmithing. He had already been exposed to metal in a course he took from Garret de Ruiter while at Eastern Illinois University. For a while at Iowa he studied metalwork under Raoul Delmar but soon abandoned that school and moved on to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where he studied with Brent Kington who was leading a revival of blacksmithing which lasted well into the 1970s. At Carbondale he met other up and coming metal artists such as Mary Lee Hu. He learned to forge steelFalino, p. 15. and was particularly impressed by a simple knife made by his mentor, Kington.Dunas, p. 34-35. Noffke got his Master of Fine Arts at SIU in 1969.
Career While he still was studying painting, Noffke had been influenced by the abstract expressionism of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Just as these painters had attacked the canvas with swirls, drips, splashes, and smears, Noffke would attack the surface of his metal objects with obsessive and intricate detail consisting of stars, letterforms, arrows, crosses, dollar signs, eyes, and other obscure symbols.Falino, p. 16. These richly detailed surfaces, stamped, engraved, and carved into the metal illustrate a paradox evident in all of the artist's work. On one hand, each object presents a surface of inscrutable markings. On the other hand, each object is in the end just an ordinary bowl, spoon, knife, or some other purely utilitarian object.Dunas, p. 34.
Noffke first taught at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, and then at California State College at Los Angeles. In 1971, he took a position at the University of Georgia at Athens where he was to remain for the next thirty years.
Noffke was awarded a faculty research grant in the early 1970s from the University of Georgia to explore the cold forging of fine silver from sheet. Expert opinion said that the hot forging of fine silver was impossible; but Noffke discovered an alloy that made it easy. He discovered that by eliminating some of the copper content in sterling silver he was able to cast his own billets of 969 silver. Still later he developed a method to forge gold from cast billets.
In the years 1977 to 1979 Noffke, working with the University of Georgia and several other artists, put together three annual "National Ring Shows" featuring the younger generation of metalsmiths.Falino, p. 18. The shows did not rely on museums but were escorted around the country by the participants themselves. The idea was so successful, that The Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Georgia Museum of Art repeated the format again in 2011.Lamar Dodd School of Art, The Ring Shows: Then & Now and Putting the Band Back Together
For thirty years Noffke taught at the University of Georgia and then retired from active teaching. He built his own studio—and all the tools in that studio—in the hills near Farmington, Georgia. Some of those tools along with his refrigerator from the studio were featured in his solo exhibition at Charlotte's Mint Museum in the fall of 2011. Richly and elaborately decorated, it is a perfect example of the artist's usual blending of surrealistic decoration and practical utility.
Award and honors 2005: Selected as one of the Fifty Outstanding Alumni of Fifty Years of Graduate Education by Eastern Illinois UniversityEastern to Celebrate 50 Years of Graduate Education, April 5, 2005 2001: Elected to College of Fellows by the American Craft Council 1990: NEA Visual Artist Fellowship in Craft, American Masterpieces of Southern Craft & Traditional Art 1988: Master Metalsmith of the Year award by the National Ornamental Metal Museum
Exhibitions From April to September 2011 the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina presented a major retrospective of the artist's work titled, Attitude and Alchemy: The Metalwork of Gary Lee Noffke. This was the first museum-organized project about Noffke in 20 years and featured over 120 pieces of his work, including silver and gold hollowware, flatware, jewelry, and objects forged in steel.Art & Artworks: Gary Lee Noffke at Mint Museum Uptown, March 11, 2011
A comprehensive list of exhibitions which have featured Noffke's work is shown below.
Solo
2011 Attitude and Alchemy: The Metalwork of Gary Lee Noffke, Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina 1991 Chasing the Runcible Spoon, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. 1988 National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee 1981 Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina 1979 National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee 1971 Humboldt State University, Arcata, California 1970 University of Georgia, Visual Arts Gallery, Athens, Georgia 1970 San Diego State University, San Diego, California
Group
2009 Soul’s Journey: Inside the Creative Process, The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, Henderson, North CarolinaThe Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, Soul’s Journey: Inside the Creative Process , February 2009 2008—2010 Tradition/Innovation, American Masterpieces of Southern Craft and Traditional Art, The Southern Arts Federation (NEA sponsored show traveled nationally) 2008—2009 Ring Shows: Then & Now and Putting the Band Back Together, Georgia Museum of Art (University of Georgia sponsored show traveled nationally) 2008 Is That Supposed to Be Funny? Wit, Sarcasm, and Humor in Craft, Penland Gallery, Spruce Pine, North Carolina 2007 Southeastern Invitational Craft Exhibition, The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts, Highlands, North Carolina 2006—2007 Material and Space, Missouri State University Art and Design Gallery, Springfield, Missouri (exhibition traveled nationally) 2005 Contemporary Cast Iron, National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis 2004 The Nature of Craft and the Penland Experience, Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina 2003—2006 The Art of Gold organized by the Society of North American Goldsmiths and Exhibits USA (a national touring exhibitions program) 2002 Contemporary Metalwork and Jewelry from Six Countries, Gallery Mukkumto, Seoul, KoreaLe Van, Marthe, The Penland Book of Jewelry: Master Classes in Jewelry Techniques, New York, Lark Crafts, February 1, 2011, 2001 Objects for Use: Handmade by Design, The American Craft Museum, New York, New YorkObjects for Use: Handmade by Design, review by Paul J. Smith, 2001 2001 Fellow's Exhibition, Work from the 2001 Awardees, The American Craft Council College of Fellows, S.O.F.A., Chicago, Illinois 2000 Rare to Well Done: Culinary Craft, National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee 1999—2000 Pieces that Serve, Yaw Gallery, S.O.F.A., New York, New York 1999 Seoul International Metal Artists Invitational Exhibition, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea 1999 Handmade: Shifting Paradigms, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore 1999 The End is Near—Artists Look at the 20th Century, Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine Wisconsin 1998 V + V (Five Plus Five), Craft Alliance Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri 1998 The Functional Vase Project, Yaw Gallery, S.O.F.A., Birmingham, Missouri 1998 Raised Metal Sculpture Exhibition, William Traver Gallery, Seattle, Washington 1998 Raised from Tradition: Hollowware Past and Present, The Seafirst Gallery at Columbia Seafirst Center, Seattle, Washington 1998 Refined North American Metalsmithing Exhibition, Stephen F. Austin Gallery, Nacogdoches, Texas 1997—1998 Watching and Waiting: Timepieces by Jewelers, Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1997—1998 L'Chaim, International Invitational Exhibition of Multi-Media Kiddush Cups, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, California 1997—1998 American Masters of Hollowware in the Late 20th Century, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia/National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee 1997 The Teapot Redefined, S.O.F.A., Chicago, Illinois/Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1997 Spotlight 97, American Craft Council Southeast Region Juried Crafts Exhibition, Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, North Carolina 1997 Food Glorious Food, Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine Wisconsin 1997 Centennial Metals Exhibition, Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, MassachusettsSociety of Arts and Crafts 1996 Pig Iron Art Cookers, National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee 1996 Ornament, National Invitational Jewelry Exhibition, Penland Gallery, Spruce Pine, North Carolina 1995—1997 The Commemorative Cup, Rosanne Raab Associates, New York, New York (exhibition traveled nationally)Rosanne Raab Associates 1995—1997 Double Vision, Gallery IO, New Orleans, Louisiana, sponsored by Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine Wisconsin (exhibition traveled nationally) 1993 Implements, Kohler Design Center, Kohler, WisconsinKohler Design Center 1992—1994 Borne with a Silver Spoon, Rosanne Raab Associates, New York, New York (exhibition traveled nationally) 1991 Other Voices, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, New YorkNancy Margolis Gallery 1990—1991 Vessels from Use to Symbol, The American Craft Museum, New York, New York 1989—1990 Silver: New Forms and Expressions, Fortunoff, New York, New York (exhibition traveled nationally)Silver: New Forms and Expressions: Fortunoff's Commitment to the Contemporary Metalsm, March 18, 2002 1989 Dashboard Art, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WisconsinJohn Michael Kohler Arts Center 1989 City on a Hill, Twenty Years of Art at Cortona, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia/Venice, Italy 1988—1990 Metals Invitational, Visual Arts Resources, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon