Working In Tandem with the Allegheny Metals Collective
View the work of artist collaborations at Bruce Gallery through January
Engraver Michael Germanovich grew up in his father's workshop. Vasily Germanovich — also an engraver — had a massive oak double workbench commissioned for the shop and placed his son's bench right beside his own. As Jason Stein writes in the statement for their collaboration, father and son worked side by side, "'in-tandem' in the most literal way, sharing tools, ideas, and words of encouragement."
Vasily died in early 2025, a month before Stein's own mother. "The workshop," Stein writes, "feels much quieter these days."
When the Allegheny Metals Collective organized In Tandem, now on view at the Bruce Gallery, the idea was to create a truly interdisciplinary exhibition. Each member partnered with someone from outside metalsmithing — an artist, scientist, poet, writer, engineer — to explore a shared theme and make at least one work shaped by that exchange. Many of the artists chose partners who were already part of their lives: fathers and daughters, spouses, cousins, colleagues, and friends of several decades. What unites all of the partnerships forged through the exhibition is an understanding of collaboration as an act of trust.
Gideon Hermann and photographer Natasha Kravchenko built their collaboration around a pre-existing trust in one another. Hermann made a silver necklace quickly, freeing himself from the pressure of creating a permanent object, and gave it to Kravchenko without knowing how she would respond. Considering its shape, texture, weight, and emotional quality, she chose a model whose presence resonated with it, and photographed the work and the model together. Then the necklace went back to Hermann, who melted it down to make the next one. After three cycles, what remains is a triptych of photographs and a spool of silver wire. "The photographs could not exist without the necklaces," the artists write, "while the necklaces no longer exist except through the photographs." Permanence — the quality we so often prize in metal — becomes irrelevant. As the pair reflected on the process, they articulated the power of collaboration: "giving up some control creates more room for experimentation, trust, and unexpected ideas."
For Sarah Stewart Vasquez, the handoff happened across a lifetime. Her collaboration with her father George Stewart, a longtime wooden boat enthusiast and tree-lover, began with two interviews about his relationship to craft and materials. He told her about boats he tested in a puddle outside his childhood home, and a toy canoe his own father carved for him with a screwdriver. She remembered family canoe trips, maple sap collected in milk jugs, a steamed knot hanging in his metal shop, and a paddle he made for her birthday. From these memories, Stewart Vasquez designed a knotted paddle; her father engineered the plan for steaming and molding it. Together, they cut a 10-foot board from his collection and steam-bent a loop at its center. The finished work holds three generations of memories in a single continuous curve.
Suzanne Amendolara and Suzanne Proulx, longtime colleagues in the art department at PennWest University, Edinboro, turned to a different kind of letting go. Their work, Release, grew from conversations about their changing roles as mothers of adult children: "Sometimes joyous, sometimes painful — we must allow for our children to lead our relationships as they become independent from us." Amendolara carved seedpod forms from walnut and fabricated sterling silver ring forms; Proulx painted cloth with ink made from foraged black walnuts and embroidered it with hair from their families. They traded the piece back and forth several times, each responding to the other's decisions. Making the work required the same patience and letting go that parenthood has asked of them.
Which brings me back to Stein and Germanovich. While going through his mother's belongings, Stein found a binder dedicated entirely to his career — every catalog, postcard, and article, along with notes on their conversations about his work and reminders to ask about upcoming deadlines. "She never told me," he writes. "I had no idea she was operating 'in-tandem,' as it were, as my personal archivist and studio assistant." Their collaborative piece honors both men's mothers, devoted gardeners who shared a love of flowers.
Stein's discovery underscores the exhibition theme. Behind every maker is a network of people — parents, partners, mentors, friends whose contributions are rarely visible. In Tandem gives those collaborators a place in the gallery, recognizing that creative practice is never truly solitary, that trust is itself a skill, and that what we make together can exceed what any of us could make alone.
As Stein puts it: "We will keep on making and creating. Stillness is death."
In Tandem is on view at the Bruce Gallery, on the first floor of the Baron-Forness Library at PennWest Edinboro, through January 31, 2027. For more info visit: brucegallery.info
