Just like him. New and Auspicious encounters It may not be unusual in central Texas where Harvey Helmke lives, works, and demonstrates, but his easy, thorough-going approach made for an outstanding introduction to lace bobbin making. Lace bobbins are tools, he stressed, valued in large number by those who make and appreciate lace. They're also lucrative production items when turned with the efficiency and deftness that Helmke demonstrated. En mass, as they could be seen in the Instant Gallery in progress, these bobbins encompass an awesome variety of intricate detail, from spirals and free rings, to chatterwork and applied decoration.
Art has a way of asserting itself where it can take form unprepossessed.
So Helmke's lace bobbins have the charm and poise of works of art, and so, it seems to me, does the way he works. High craft, indeed. Christian Burchard, who wrote on the relationship between his limited-production bowls and his sculptural pieces in the March 1994 issue, brought a lot of seriousness and heart to the challenge of depicting and explaining his creative procedures, this his first time out as a demonstrator. He showed how he offsets the work on the faceplate and adds shims to throw the piece off center and out of plane. The process is incremental and interactive, and watching him demonstrate it afforded a glimpse of how he must work.