Women's Wear Daily

On the Art of Mary Buck A line as sinuous as smoke. A coiling river, silver or golden, which spirals and meanders around itself to come full circle. Solar halo, lunar nimbus, wheel of stars, circle unbroken, all driven by an exquisite sense of line. The metal-sculpture crowns created by Mary Buck Thompson from many varieties of wire reach deep into human memory, psyche and mythic imagination, recalling ancient splendor, suggesting royal alchemy.

Buck, who lives and works in Santa Fe , New Mexico , describes each of her crowns as “actually a very complex drawing. It’s so much about the line quality. The material tells me where to begin. I can never repeat a crown.”

The artist’s fabrication technique is intuitive, beginning with a length of wire approximately 50 feet in length, which the artist perceives as a single line. “I like the stuff from the scrap yard as much as the 18 karat gold from the jeweler’s supply,” she says. Like a calligrapher with a brush, she begins by moving the wire toward a circular shape, all the while heeding the fact that the wire may have a mind of its own, depending upon its inherent ductility, flexibility, and its past lives. Buck often chooses to work with wire which has been previously handled, incorporating lingering kinks and loops into the wire’s new expression as a crown. As the wire stiffens with manipulation, Buck keeps it pliant with an annealing torch, then refines the interior of the crown with a hammer to make it comfortable on the head.

The artist began creating crowns during her recovery from a grave illness. In personal terms, wearing a crown, even for a moment, seems to herald a life-passage or sacred journey, a victory or triumph, celebration, and above all, an initiation into a deeper mystery. Buck’s background as a sculptor is evident in the iconic nature of the crown designs, which may incorporate precious and semi-precious gems as well as found objects. Her creations are intended as much for display as for personal adornment. Either way, the effect is other-worldly. She says, “I like to think the crowns are from a realm beyond.”