A metalsmith trained in Senegal will teach Black girls and women the craft in Berkeley

Karen Smith (center), owner of the nonprofit We Wield the Hammer, held a soft opening for family and friends for the new space in Southside Berkeley on Jan. 15. The space will officially open in March. Courtesy: Sita Bhaumik Credit: Sita Bhaumik

One morning Karen Smith woke up and decided to move to Senegal to train in the metal arts. While the thought came in a flash, it didn’t quite come out of nowhere. 

Smith, a longtime resident of Oakland, who had worked in academia and in the corporate world for most of her life, had been pursuing more creative work after a divorce changed her mindset about life.

“ I was working at a corporate job here in the Bay and I hated it,” she said. “I really wanted to be doing something creative, but I had a more traditional life that I was living. And when I got divorced, I was just like, this is it, I’m just gonna do what I want to do.”

She soon found her way to jewelry making and metalsmithing and fell in love with it. She wanted to advance her skills but didn’t want to go into debt attending art school. And she wanted to learn her craft in the time honored way—as an apprentice. After doing some research, she realized the best place to get the kind of training she desired was Senegal, a country with a long history of metalworking, goldsmithing and jewelry making.

She started asking friends and colleagues for connections to Senegal and ended up speaking with a Senegalese-American professor who offered to put her in touch with a master goldsmith he knew in the country. But first, he gave her a word of warning about how the country’s patriarchal society often restricts labor opportunities for women. 

“He  said to me, ‘Do you know that Senegal has a saying that women don’t wield a hammer?’” Smith recalled. “And I said, ‘No, I don’t know that.’ And he said, ‘Do you also know that the way this gets transmitted is from father to son? This is how you learn this art form.’ And I said, ‘I didn’t know that either.’ And, he’s like, ‘Well, what do you think about that?’ I was like, Well, ‘I think that’s all unfortunate, but I’m still going.’ And he was like, ‘Good.’”

When she made it to Senegal, where she worked with Ibrahim Sow in the Village Artisanal de Soumbedioune in Dakar, she indeed was the only woman in the village doing metal work, and she was seen as something of an oddity. 

Karen Smith working on an electric rolling mill in Senegal in 2019. Courtesy: We Wield the Hammer

“The older women would just sort of shake their head like, ‘What is she doing?’” said Smith. “The women who were 20 or 30 were kind of curious, but the little girls were just awestruck.”

That awestruck reaction made a huge impact on Smith, and after spending six months in Senegal honing her craft, returned to the Bay Area determined to pass along these skills to teens and young women of African descent in her community. She created a nonprofit organization and named it We Wield the Hammer (WWTH).

“Once you see somebody who looks like you doing a thing, then you know that you can do it,” said Smith. 

She remembered learning this lesson first hand in the third grade when her teacher read her a Langston Hughes poem. “And then I knew that I could write. Do you know what I mean? So that’s how the seed of We Wield the Hammer came about.”

Smith began incubating the program in 2019 at the Crucible, the industrial arts school in West Oakland, but she soon had grander visions for WWTH. She wanted more time to train the young women, and a bigger dedicated space. She began searching for a studio space and eventually found one, with reasonable rent in Berkeley. The city is leasing her a space at 2440 Durant St., inside the Telegraph-Channing Mall and Garage, former home of the Cal gear store Joy’s Sportswear, which closed during the pandemic. 

But the process of moving into the space has not been easy. Smith signed the lease last March, hoping to open over the summer. But due to plumbing and sewage issues, a large trench was cut through the length of the space and left open for six months while the city made repairs, delaying Smith’s ability to build out the studio. While the city did not charge WWTH rent during this time (and won’t until July), Smith still had to carry insurance on the space. Its rent will start at $1,085 monthly.

Since the plumbing repairs were completed in September, Smith has spent countless hours cleaning and scraping and painting and routing electricity. 

“Did I mention that my shoulders and back had a meeting and they’ve decided they’re going to punish me for this?” Smith joked on Instagram, where she chronicled the process of building out the space. 

The studio is expected to officially open on March 1.

The eight-week program is free, funded through donations to WWTH, which has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, and involves three hours of training and three hours of practice each week.  Students learn the fundamentals of metalsmithing and how to fabricate with metals. 

We Wield the Hammer’s new workshop will be located inside the Telegraph-Channing Mall in Southside Berkeley. Courtesy: Sita BhaumikA We Wield the Hammer student works with a jewelers saw. Courtesy: We Wield the Hammer

“I learned to saw, weld, and solder and feel comfortable in a workshop now,” said a former student named Makeda in a testimonial on WWTH’s website who used silver, copper and brass in her designs. “This program has inspired me to stay creative and confirmed that I can be an entrepreneur.”

Students, aged 14-24, are selected through an application process. The program is limited to 12 students at a time, with four cohorts per year. Applications for the spring program will open on Feb. 1, with classes beginning in March.

WWTH receives support from local jewelers such as Esqueleto, and from national brands like Rio Grande, and Catbird, a New York-based jewelry company, which gave WWTH a grant to cover its rent. Snap-on Tools contributed customized cabinetry for the Berkeley space. 

At the Crucible, Smith often got inquiries from older women who wanted to join her program. These were women who were pivoting in life, women who were empty nesters and looking for a new hobby, who were thinking of changing careers, or women who were looking for a side hustle to be able to afford living in the Bay Area.

“So one of the things I’m really looking forward to in this space is doing We Wield The Hammer part two or the adult version,” she said. “Because we pivot in our lives. Frankly I pivoted in my life. And I always want to make sure that when people want to do that, especially women and girls, that they have a place.”

We Wield the Hammer, 2440 Durant Ave., Berkeley. Phone: 510-519-1429. Connect via Instagram.