Victoria Lansford is an alchemical artist who coaxes cold silver and gold into a filigree dance, draws with fire, and hammers soft curves into hard copper.
Blending ancient techniques and modern mastery, she creates as a jazz musician plays, riffing through multi-layered and complex themes, and creating work that is clearly her own no matter the genre.
Her work – from tiny, intricate illuminations to huge copper installations – can seem like ancient artifacts at one moment and entirely contemporary the next, and has earned her exhibitions in many museums and art institutions and an army of devoted collectors.
Never content to hoard information or technical discoveries, Victoria has created a renaissance for many old-world, fine metal techniques, including Russian filigree, granulation, chain making, and Eastern repoussé and chasing. Through her workshops, videos, books, articles, and app, she has mentored creatives around the world.
Victoria’s ground-breaking animated ebook Giving Voice, which has an introduction by best-selling author of the Griffin and Sabine trilogies Nick Bantock, won an Independent Publishers Award for Best
Design in 2019 and the e-Literature Award for Best Multi-media Book (silver) in 2020.
Victoria’s studio sits in the shade of old-growth trees on the ancestral lands of the Muscogee People in Atlanta, Georgia. She lives with her husband Chris, son Skyler, and two Shelties Boudica and Elizabeth. She considers the term ‘geek’ a compliment, can’t stand being pigeonholed, and has a constant creative drive that never lets up.
Involvement and Education
Technical Education Coordinator and SNAG Links Coordinator, Society of North American Goldsmiths
Saul Bell Design Award Judge (2015)
Adjunct Professor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Creator of Metals Program and Head of Metalsmithing Department, Spruill Center for the Arts, Atlanta
Jewelry Design and Silversmithing College of the Arts, Georgia State University (BA)
SOME VERY RANDOM STUFF ABOUT VICTORIA
Favorite Artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Hieronymus Bosch, Vincent Van Gogh, Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Albrecht Durer, Rene Lalique, Nick Bantock, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Schultz, Jim Henson, Marie Zimmerman, Mary Lee Hu, Bobbie Crow, whoever made Tutankhamun’s mummy mask
Favorite Composers/Songwriters/Musicians: Beethoven, Mozart, Hildegard von Bingen, Dave Brubeck, Steely Dan (Donald Fegan & Walter Becker), Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Joe Sample, Diana Krall, Randy Crawford, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Fleetwood Mac, Parliament/Funkadelic, most disco and most New Wave – My family jokes that I hardly ever like any music not written in a minor key.
Favorite Books: Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak), The Name of the Rose (Umberto Ecco), The Venetian’s Wife (Nick Bantock), Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie), The Doubtful Guest (Edward Gorey)
Favorite Movies: Rebecca, Vertigo (both Hitchcock), Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar), The Color Purple (Spielberg), Casablanca (Curtiz), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (Mira Nair), Muppets from Space (Hill), Top Hat (Sandrich), Mo’ Better Blues (Lee) , On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (Mannelli), The Ritz (Lester), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam), Like Water for Chocolate (Arau)
Favorite Choreographer: Alvin Ailey
Copper, hand lettered and mixed media over printed photo montages of original collages
Featured in Lark Book’s 500 Handmade Books, Vol 2, juried by Julie Chen.
WOW, YOU SCROLLED NEARLY ALL THE WAY DOWN. THANKS! HERE’S A BIT MORE…
Some Favorite Spaces on Earth: Valley of the Kings – Egypt, Fortnum & Mason – London (A must if you like tea and all the works. Puts tea at the Ritz to shame.), Tea & Sympathy – NYC (Ditto. If Miss Marple ducked into a tea shop to get out of the rain, she would step into this place. Also puts tea at the Ritz to shame, but in a mismatched china, killer scones, comfort food at Hogwart’s, shepherds pie/bubble & squeak kind of way.), Pike’s Market – Seattle, Elliot Bay Bookstore – Seattle, The Strand – NYC, Ashmolean Museum – Oxford, England, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum – Boston, MA, Rio Grande – Albuquerque, NM (If you are a metalsmith or jeweler, this is the ultimate candy store. Beware: ‘tool porn’ abounds. You may discover pliers or a hydraulic press you can’t live without.) Michael C. Carlos Museum – Emory University, Atlanta, The Agyptisches Museum Berlin (Except it’s not there anymore. Everything got moved to the Neue Museum), Zoo Station – Berlin, circa 1990 (Never been half as cool since they cleaned it up), The Rodin Museum – Paris, The Louvre – Paris (Yes, even I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid.) Any English pub that serves really good fish and chips. Alexandria, Egypt, San Diego Zoo, Antiqua, Sasebo Japanese Garden – Albuquerque, NM, the Japanese garden at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, the Butterfly Conservatory at Niagara Falls Botanical Garden- Ontario, Canada, the front terrace of The Winter Palace – Luxor, Egypt, Old Cataract Hotel – Aswan Egypt, The Fox Theater – Atlanta.
One of my favorite things to do in life is find independent art supply stores all over the world. Here are a few places I literally dream of buying plane tickets to just so I can shop in person (maybe one day again…)
- Kremer Pigments – NYC (if you go, be prepared to fall in love with color like never before)
- L. Cornelissen & Son – London (near the British Museum. If Ollivander’s Wand Shop carried art supplies, it would look like Cornelissen’s)
- Shepherd’s London – London, obviously (paper, paper, and more paper, plus other book binding / artist book needs)
- Binder’s Art Supply – Atlanta (My local. Been shopping there since I was 12, seriously.)
- Sennelier – Quai Voltaire, Paris (The store, not just the brand. Open since 1887, not only will you leave with gorgeous stuff, you can’t help but feel the ghosts of your influences.)
MORE? OK.
Odd facts: I grew up on a steady diet of 60’s and 70’s pop culture. I love nature but hate camping. I can ride a horse a bit but am a terrible swimmer. I am highly coordinated but am incapable of skiing (water or snow…just don’t even ask). If you throw a ball (or anything else at me), I will probably duck, for that is what intelligent people do. If Apple ever fails, I’ll use an IBM Selectric Typewriter before I’ll buy a PC though this has nothing to do with why many of my books and apps only work on Apple products. (It’s partly because development cost and partly because media-rich ebooks won’t work on anything else. Hello, Amazon…the world is waiting for you to catch up.) I am a practical idealist and a practical pacifist and can’t get enough deeply disturbing or convoluted British whodunits in book, radio drama, or TV formats. Every Thursday for over a year in the late 90’s, I visited the Fernbank Observatory like some people might go to church and saw way more things than one might expect in a big city. One of my favorite moments in time was getting to hear Stephen Hawking deliver his paper “The Universe in a Nutshell” in person. Despite being highly claustrophobic, I’ve been inside two of the three Pyramids at Giza…needs must. My husband and I were introduced by a mutual friend who is now the smuggest person in the universe. I’m barely 5’2″ but am frequently told I “look bigger on TV.” There is no such thing as too much dark chocolate.
Discover more on Victoria’s blog: Crafting an Artful Life: Imaginative Musings on Creativity
