Larissa McPherson is a metalsmith and jewelry artist from Adairsville, GA, currently living and working in the Atlanta area. She is the daughter of a pre-k teacher and a disabled veteran wood carver. An appreciation for craft and the arts was instilled in her from a young age. Later in life, seeing her father use wood carving as an outlet for the pain from his disability would inspire her to explore craft as an outlet for herself.
McPherson graduated from the University of West Georgia with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in studio art with the intent to become a counselor specializing in expressive arts therapy. After graduating she started to find herself more and more drawn towards a career in craft. By studying metalsmithing with an old professor and joining the Metal Arts Guild of Georgia in early 2022, McPherson started a path toward pursuing metalsmithing full-time.
Currently, McPherson serves the metal guild weekly as a studio monitor and social media volunteer, and she continues to take classes there. She is also a resident artist at Arts Beacon Gallery in Atlanta, where she will soon teach her first beginner metals course. Additionally, Larissa is a studio assistant for Eddied Farr, an electrical artist of South River Studios in Atlanta, and is assisting two artists, Ellie Richards and Dan Essig, at Penland School of Craft (Spruce Pine, NC) in a live /work exchange. All of this while working on her own studio practice.
She takes inspiration for her own work from nature and the organic/imperfect. Incorporating found objects and nature into her process and product, she has used organic materials such as snake sheds, dead butterflies, and dried flowers to texture metals. Additionally, she had taken molds of coral and barnacles and even hornet’s nests to make wax molds for casting. She even incorporated found objects into the end product by prong setting, wire wrapping, or riveting pieces of oral, sheet mica, and found pieces of iron.
She is interested in the ideas of preservation of textures and organic materials, honoring nature in the creative process, and how we can invite nature into a very industrial process.
This pendant was an experiment incorporating organic textures. The piece is made with copper PMC soldered on top of a copper back-plate and then torch patinaed. This PMC was formed with a mold taken from barnacles found on pieces of coral and shells.
Barnacle Pendant, 2022
Copper, copper PMC, and silver solder.
