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pp. 32, colour illustrations of the art pieces. “Internationally recognized artist Karen Cantine is marking almost seven decades as a metalsmith with a new Alberta Craft Council exhibition called “Karen Cantine: A Metalsmith at 80. // I couldn’t do anything else. I’m driven to do it because it’s the way I speak … it’s the way I say who I am,” Cantine told Taproot. // The Edmonton exhibition was initially meant to be a small sampling of Cantine’s current work, celebrating that she is still working at 80. But as the show came together, it evolved into a retrospective of her career — including the first drinking vessel she made by hammering out a flat disc in a process called raising, and an early pin she designed with her father as a gift for her mother. // The show also features a variety of new work, including copper wall sculptures and jewelry. // Cantine was initially drawn to metalsmithing as a 12-year-old growing up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, when she started taking classes to learn the craft. // It was the novelty of it, and once I started working with metal and learning how to saw it and file it and shape it and hammer … you can change its contours so beautifully,” Cantine explained. “(Sterling silver) is such a cooperative metal. It was so much fun to learn that this metal that looks permanent, solid, and hard, was cooperative when you tell it what to do. // Cantine also works with copper and other non-ferrous metals.”