Artist Marte McMurry and husband Harvey live on a quiet, almost hidden, street in Sebastian, tucked away on a little remnant of the “old” Old Dixie Highway.
The structure is sturdy and welcoming, sitting comfortably on a jungle-y lot. She calls the house “my engagement ring. I got a great house … and a great husband.” Harvey opened his business, On Site Tech, 25 years ago, “the first computer business in Sebastian,” Marte says.
The couple built in 2004, moving their stuff in that September, just before Hurricane Frances hit. They moved themselves in right after Frances, just in time for Jeanne. They had built the house to the new tougher building codes and were confident it would be okay. And it was.
These days, Marte, Harvey and their 19-year-old black and white shorthaired cat, Trixie, are experiencing a bit of an empty nest, with kids off to college. But they are surrounded by wonderful art, inside and out, McMurry’s own work and that of fellow artists.
As many artists do, McMurry creates in more than one medium: she is a fine jewelry artist. And a mosaic artist. She also paints. And she loves nothing more than getting together with other local artists to share, learn – and gab about what they love.
“I have always been artsy-fartsy,” McMurry says. Blonde hair frames her face in soft ringlets, very well suiting her outgoing, joyful personality. For some, she says, art is a hobby. For her, it is a passion, a way of life. “I have to do it. It’s an addiction.”
She earned an art degree from Georgia State University, focusing on painting and print-making, choosing GSU in part because of it good supply of lithography stones. She explained that the best such stones – a special kind of marble – came only from one mountain in Italy, which has long been mined out. So the stone is in great demand.
Getting into jewelry happened for McMurry rather organically. Her grandfather had done a bit of jewelry making for fun, but with the eye of an artist and a gift for whimsy. “He took a steak bone (from the previous night’s dinner), polished it, added silver and turquoise. I still have it.”
Her grandfather left his jewelry-making tools to her dad, so he started making some pieces, and discovered he was good at it. He and Marte started going to shows. She’d ask lots of questions, wanting to learn. It became something they did together. “We’d work together in his shop. We had a really great, close bond until the day he died.”
While her dad had taught himself, McMurry began to take classes, travelling to San Francisco to learn and acquire the kind of natural turquoise she loved.
“Jewelry making,” she says flatly, “is profoundly expensive. There is the gold and silver, and the tools.” These can include acetylene, propane and oxygen torches, a rolling mill, kiln, centrifuge, vacuum container, wax injector with air compressor, Dremel tool, vibratory polisher, and cleaners.
As she learned the art of jewelry making, working with precious metals, she found it challenging to adjust to using the torches. The metals had to be placed in a crucible and heated to molten form. During that process, she would stir the molten metal with a graphite “straw” and add Borax to keep it pure. During this process, “You wear full protective gear – a heavy leather apron and welder’s hood or goggles.”
She holds her hand up to reveal a sooty line deep in the skin. “I have several of these gold tattoos” from the molten gold.
When the economy tanked, the price of gold shot up, from $250 an ounce to $1,200, then $1,500. “That’s when I started concentrating on different things. I’d always done tile, since I was renovating the house and couldn’t afford new tile.”
So she scouted around for used, broken tiles, and began creating pieces in the ancient art of mosaic. Her tile works can be found in many private homes, and in her own: a striking blue-rayed sun welcomes visitors from the floor of the foyer; the bathroom shower wall is a fabulous smiling sun, in creamy tones with pops of red, radiating out over blue and white, Grecian-style waves lapping up from around the edge of the tub and faucets. Other tile works, inside and out, are wall-mounted, and incorporate various objects – a picture frame, parts of an alabaster lamp – within the intricate, curving broken tile designs.
Yet another artistic avenue along which McMurry travels a couple of times a year, is mokane gane (mo-khan-ee ghan-ee) – which, loosely translated, means Japanese wood grain. It isn’t wood, however, but metal, a method McMurry uses to create jewelry. Several layers of various metals, as thin as aluminum foil, are stacked together into rectangular sheets of approximately playing card or post card size. She then uses a blow torch to heat the metals, from top, bottom, or both – typically silver, gold, brass, copper – each with a different melting point. The heat causes the metals to meld together, each behaving in a different way, allowing McMurry to manipulate them and create various designs. It is a delicate and ancient process, first employed, she explained, in crafting and embellishing Samurai swords.
McMurry was “on the road for years,” travelling to big fine art shows from Stockbridge, MA, to Miami, showing as a jewelry artist. Then, as the price of gas shot up, she began to stay at home more, and now sells mostly to clients and patrons she’s has for years. She continues to create, in a nearby studio, and is one of the group of artists who welcome visitors in Sebastian’s annual Art Studio Tour. Putting her love of music to good purpose, she helps organize each season’s Sebastian House Concert series.
No question about it, Marte McMurry is hard-wired to be an artist.