Well, it looks like we're going to be here for a while with this Covid thing.
My wife Blair is a silversmith, and has two teaching studios at historic Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo, Maryland. Glen Echo has a number resident artists, and Blair is the resident silversmith. Silversmithing is one of those disciplines that can involve a lot of tools. While other artists at Glen Echo (like the painters) have quickly been able to pivot to teaching classes online, most of Blair's students don't have the tools they need to smith at home. Blair's studios are also a kind of maker space, so most of her students have come to rely on the access to her tools there.
In addition to all the tools, working on jewelry involves a lot of small things like tiny stones, little jump rings, and saw blades that are thinner than a guitar string. How do you begin to teach jewelry design online over Zoom?
As we talked about it, we realized that in some ways it would look very much like a cooking show. Different spots of focus for different tasks, like the oven vs acetylene torch, dicing onions vs sawing metal, using a pasta mill vs using a metal rolling mill. What we need is a set and multiple cameras. I have some video gear and lights that can maybe work but making it look good is going to be a challenge.
So, I begin with Sketchup (a tool I know well) to pre visualize the set. We will need to work with what we have on hand to get started. Here I'm beginning to design the space that will have to fit in a small room in our basement.
