ARCHITECTURAL AND DECORATIVE METAL DESIGN
About the Artist
Metal artist Dmitrii Volkov is a graduate of Russia's oldest art and design school, the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy, which specializes in contemporary and traditional decorative and applied arts. His professional achievements began early, starting while he was a student and received First Place in the Young Jewelers Competition in St. Petersburg on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carl Fabergé. Upon graduating, Volkov was selected as a metal artisan in the UNESCO heritage restoration of The Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, St. Petersburg, Russia.
With four generations of ancestors involved in construction and architecture, and having been raised by his grandfather Gennady Evdokimov as one of the leading engineers in civil engineering in Russia and the USSR, Volkov could not help but inherit a sense of structural strength.
It is possible that reference books on construction equipment given by the engineer's grandfather to his four-year-old grandson, who could not yet read, but was fascinated by the graphic diagrams of units and mechanisms, led Volkov to an understanding and artistic sense of structural units.
While training in all aspects of interior and exterior design, Volkov found himself particularly drawn to working with metals, which has evolved into a preference for working with “carbon steel”. Also known as low carbon steel, it is more malleable and softer than other steels, and has a rich texture that Volkov says stainless steel doesn’t have after forging. Volkov is also fully proficient working in bronze, silver and copper, sometimes combining metal with wood and/or glass. In his work, he focuses on combinations of volumes, patterns and colors – which can interact, agree or disagree with each other.
