Spirit meets metal

BY HASTINGS HENSEL | PHOTOS BY JOHN GILLESPIE

SMITH, FOR GOOD REASON, is the most common last name in the United States. To be a smith is to make a useful thing out of metal, and we were once a nation of such artisans blacksmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, coinsmiths, bladesmiths.

So, when you sign up for a metalsmithing class with Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative member Joy Spirithawk Evans, and you step into her studio that’s tucked in the woods between Pickens and Pumpkintown, it feels very much like stepping back in time. (Forgive that cliché from a “wordsmith,” but it’s true.) Handmade tools and handmade jewelry adorn the wood cabin built by Evans and her husband, an artisan who makes museum-worthy flintlock rifles.

“How I teach here is the old way,” she tells me as I try my hand at metalsmithing for the first time. “We use hand tools. Right here you see an anvil on a stump with hammers all around it. That’s the old way it’s been used for hundreds of years.”

Evans is half-Cherokee. The name Spirithawk was bestowed upon her by her chief, and she teaches Native American Studies classes at nearby Hagood Mill Historic Site. For her, metalsmithing is not only a useful practice, but it also harkens back to when the Cherokee would forge copper armbands

Get There

To sign up for classes, call Joy Spirithawk Evans at (864) 417-7363 or email spirithawkjewelry@gmail.com. Evans offers beginners classes for $75 per person, per session. The studio is located a few miles outside of Pickens. For more details, visit spirithawkjewelry.com.

for religious ceremonies. It’s also why, 25 years ago, she left her sign-and-design business in Greenville and moved to the mountains to metalsmith full time.

“I always loved the Cherokee side of my family, of course, and that type of jew- elry. This was really my love, my passion,” she says. “I just decided, ‘I can do that.’ ”

On the day of my visit, Evans begins by showing me the basic tools. Jeweler saws for cutting out my design. Files for smoothing it down and sharpening the edges. Hammers for stamping the piece with decoration. Then she takes out three pieces of flat metal copper, silver, and brass and asks me what I’d like to work with and what I might want to make.

I decide to make a kayak paddle necklace out of copper a simple design that symbolizes moving forward with balance. She hands me a sheaf of graph paper, and I begin drawing my outline. This becomes the pattern I trace as I cut my design on a piece of flat copper.

Evans lets me work as she helps situate the other student in today’s class, Debra Jarrett, who runs a booth in the

Charleston City Market and has returned to work with Evans for a second session.

“I’ve been dabbling in metalsmithing for a few years now, and I came to know Joy last year when my daughters and I rented an Airbnb in Greenville,” Jarrett says. “Her site came up as ‘Things To Do While Visiting Greenville.’ ”

Jarrett is referring to the Airbnb Experiences tours, classes, and excursions hosted by locals near rental properties. Evans says that she gets most of her students this way and many return for longer workshops and extended sessions.

While I saw and file away, Evans is patiently instructive. From time to time, she comes over and offers me advice to hold the tool at a certain angle, for instance, or to remember to stay close to the bench vise. Later minutes? hours? I realize that I’ve fallen into a kind of hypnotic, concentrated trance while smithing my metal.

“It’s called ‘getting into the zone,’ ” Evans tells me. “It’s a beautiful place to be because it takes away every other thought and every worry and desire. You’re just focused on what you’re creating. That’s what we strive for.”